Planned Homebirth After Cesarean Transfer (My Hospital VBAC)

Not getting your desired home birth experience can be soul-crushing. Planning and preparing for something that is so deeply important to you, and then having it fall apart, is something that takes time to heal from. Birth experiences are not some willy-nilly thing we get to “do-over” or just a “better luck next time” type of scenario. Conceiving a baby, gestating a baby for months, birthing them, and then integrating a new human who will be yours for your entire life is not a light choice. 

In this blog article, I want to share with you the birth of my second child. This was a planned home birth after cesarean, which ended in a non-emergent transfer to the hospital. This was my SECOND home birth transfer. Gaining knowledge about birth is essential and important, but this pregnancy and birth experience peeled back yet another layer of deeper learning that I did not realize I needed. We can know A LOT, but knowing information does not automatically mean you’re fully equipped with what you need to get your desired outcome. KNOWING in your body, on a subconscious level, that you can and likely will have what you desire is what I discovered I needed to know before I gave birth a second time. 

If you haven’t read it yet, you might want to jump back to my first birth story here. It was a planned home birth turn C-section. After that first birth I quit consuming basically any birth content for about 18 months. I really couldn’t handle listening to birth stories. I was sick of hearing about how women are so strong and they’ve been doing it for thousands of years and how “you can totally do this.” I was over here like, “Yeah, that’s true, but also things happen and they don’t just always work out. Stop speaking blanket statements over every woman and stop assuming that because she plans a homebirth she will have one.”

Birth info was so triggering to me that I just shut all of it down completely. I have not been a social media gal for a long time, so I really did not have any social media to refer to. ***please brace yourself*** I had never even listened to a podcast, and this was early spring of 2023 LOL.

Someone sent me a few podcasts on another topic, and I began listening to them. I love long form content like blogs and podcasts. It just feels so much more connecting to me. Side note: I’ll be launching my own podcast soon! 

It has been nearly two years since my cesarean, and we were thinking about having another baby. As I was in this newly discovered realm of podcasts, I thought I would look up one about homebirth. I did, and I stumbled upon a podcast that was about homebirth after a cesarean. GASP!!!!

I literally gained knowledge about things I didn’t know existed. My midwife with my first baby told me that my next baby (our second) would have to be delivered in the hospital, because licensed midwives in Indiana cannot attend a primary (AKA your first) vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC)...but if you have a “successful” VBAC in the hospital, then your third birth can be at home with a midwife attending. So for almost 2 years, I never even questioned what that midwife had told me. I just blindly took it as the absolute truth & did not think to maybe look at other options or explore it deeper. It wasn’t until I listened to this flippin homebirth after cesarean podcast that I realized people absolutely do have their first VBAC at home, and there are ways around the licensed midwifery model of care. With my newly discovered platform of podcasts, along with occasional dabbling in “Homebirth After Cesarean Facebook groups, I was in an extremely deep rabbit hole that not even Bugs Bunny has been in. I started rampaging through this information. 

I had a limiting belief that all I had was this small, unsatisfying buffet of options to choose from for my next birth experience. Well, it turned into a full blown feast of options after I started exploring. Hello Golden Corral! (jk, gross- sorta). I was on fire as I binged other women's stories about birthing after cesareans, free birth & the reality of the ridiculous handcuffs licensure puts on capable midwives. I began to get very excited and this is when I started to finally realize I was in charge of deciding what was and was not an option for me- a huge shift that continues to snowball in my motherhood, career, and relationships today.

I began to get angry at my original midwife, because I had come to the realization that my chances of having a successful, safe vaginal breech birth at home were actually very, very high. The transfer and cesarean were not necessary in all reality. It was only because I had chosen a licensed midwife, who was very “by the books” and not personally comfortable with breech. She presented everything to me as if there were no other choices, as if breech was completely off-limits, and that it should never be attempted vaginally. That’s how I interpreted everything that occurred during my birth. That is false. 

I hope as some of you read this, maybe you can take time to reflect and ask yourself if some of the events that happened in your past pregnancy or birth were TRULY necessary, or were they just simply presented as an absolute problem that needed to be solved. IF you did some digging and exploring. If you got creative and thought about alternatives, how would that have possibly changed your experience? Ask yourself, when I sit and I really look at my story, were there actually more options then there appeared to be? 

Like I stated earlier, I then started going down the rabbit hole of licensed midwives, the history of midwifery, education and certification. I discovered that there are multiple lay midwives practicing (also known as traditional midwives- meaning they have been trained through an apprenticeship model, which is how all occupations used to be structured- carpenter, herbal healer, fisherman, etc.) See this blog post about the different types of midwives. 

I was riled up to say the least. I became pregnant with our second baby in the spring time of 2023 after I had jumped face-first into a sea of new opportunities. I felt so empowered. I felt like I knew I was going to do this pregnancy and birth totally differently. I hired an unlicensed midwife who had 30 years of experience under her belt. I took more charge of my prenatal care. I declined various tests that I did not feel were necessary. We had a real discussion about breech, and the plan was to stay home even if my baby was breech. 

During this pregnancy, I was a consumer of information. I read books, listened to podcasts daily, and I was involved in a select few FB groups gaining more information. I was a freaking fountain of physiological birth knowledge. I felt quite confident, and I felt very knowledgeable, and I did not feel ignorant whenever I was making choices in my pregnancy. However, looking back there was a small part inside me that would say,  “homebirth works out for some women, but it might not work out for you, so be prepared for this to not work out.”

At the time, I had a coach and I expressed to her that the only fear I really had was that I might transfer to the hospital again. I wasn’t really afraid of a medical emergency happening at home. I wasn’t afraid of something happening to my baby. I was literally only afraid that “something” would come up and that it might lead to a transfer. It was just this weird annoying line that would run through my head, “Birth works out for some women, but it doesn’t work out for everyone. You might be the one it doesn’t work out for.” I would then counter that thought and say, “No way! What are the odds of me transferring TWICE?! There’s no way.”

The Birth…

I was 40+4 and it was December 21, 2023 and it was around 11 PM when I felt my first contractions. I got a decent amount of sleep throughout the night, but by 7 AM contractions were consistent. This labor actually felt quite similar to my first. It also felt like it was quite intense as soon as the contractions were consistent. I called my sisters to come over around 8am and my midwife came by mid morning. They left me alone for much of the labor, which is what I requested, but they stayed close (I labored in my master bath while they stayed in my room for much of the time). 

Sometime around 7pm I felt I was struggling, deeply. with the intensity of the contractions. I was dreading each contraction that came. I started having lots of doubt about whether or not I could actually handle the intensity of the labor itself. I started to spiral and I thought something is wrong so I need to know my progress (almost as if I created a problem out of nothing, hmmm).

I thought, “There’s no reason that this should be taking this long and for it to be this intense.” I requested a cervical exam and I was delighted to find out that I was 7 cm. My midwife just said, “Awesome. You just let me know when you feel like pushing.” About an hour later I thought I had an urge to push (looking back and having now had an unmedicated birth where I know what true pressure to push feels like) I know that it was probably just some over excitement on my part. I don’t think there was a huge urge to push, but I pushed for about an hour with my husband supporting me in a squat. After about an hour we did another cervical exam, and I had actually REGRESSED to 5cm, and my cervix was swollen. 

My preferred pushing position

COMPLETE PANIC and DESPERATION set in. My midwife suggested I rest to try and let my cervix calm down. This seemed impossible…I thought, ”Rest? This is the hardest, most painful thing I have ever done!?” My contractions began to spread out to every 5 to 6 minutes, but every contraction was so intense. I was full of so much dread and so much fear that every contraction felt horrifically painful. I felt like I was suffering, and I was actually crying out for help, but nobody really knew how to help me. After a few more hours of this, my midwife suggested that I transfer so that I was not too exhausted whenever it was time to push.

I immediately agreed, and I waddled to the car for a 45-minute drive to the hospital. I was climbing up my husband like a cat on a tree as I was waiting for my epidural. Once that thing hit, it was a full-on motor block. I could not feel a thing, and I turned back into my normal self, and I was a chatty-cathy. My labor ended up being augmented with Pitocin (which we didn’t start until about 6 hrs after arriving at the hospital). I actually didn’t have my baby for another 15 hours after arriving at the hospital, and I was on the max dose of Pitocin. As I pushed for about 3 hrs, I felt decent. I was making progress, and I had just mentally decided there would be no cesarean. I would push the baby out. It was about a 40-hour labor from start to his birth on December 23rd, 2023. My precious, 9 lb 1 oz son, Rowan Lowell.  

Coming home to my box of homebirth supplies was devastating and humiliating. Though I wanted that epidural at the time, I was so angry at myself for “giving up.” I had come back down to reality and with all the learning I had done between my first and second birth, I had no ignorant bliss. I knew I transferred for no true reason outside of my inability to cope. Period. That was the last reason I thought I would transfer and it was humbling. 

*I use my blog to describe MY personal experiences & perceptions. In no way am I ever insinuating that another woman should feel how I felt about their birth if it was similar to mine. That is a bizarre, ridiculous, judgmental thing that is not part of what I am doing here. 

Shame and embarrassment were the feelings I had about this birth. I owned the outcome. I owned my choices that led to the outcome. It was heavy. During this pregnancy I had shared with more people that I wanted to do this thing. I am not an outgoing person and I do not openly talk about birth with others unless it is brought up by them. I do not shove my opinion down anyone’s throat. However, when people would ask me direct questions about my plans to have my VBAC at home, I felt confident discussing it. I felt so prepared, yet here I was again, walking into my house with that box of unused birth supplies. 

Though I did have a “successful” vaginal birth after cesarean, I felt zero joy or happiness. 

Why is this normal?

That birth was extremely hard to recover from. Every time I thought about it, I pictured myself helplessly lying in that hospital bed with no feeling in my lower half. I had to have nurses turn me from side to side every 30min. Catheter to urinate. Pitocin to make my uterus contract. I had an obnoxious, arrogant doctor with his hands all over my vagina as my husband stood up by my head. Spot lights on, legs in stirrups. Going with this flow, because I had literally chosen to become a temporary paraplegic, and I felt I had no power to stand on, literally. How the HELL did I choose this? There were many times I felt shame due to the process. This hideous process is just routine and normal for most birthing women in developed countries. It honestly felt like being publicly, sexually assaulted all in the name of “modern obstetric care.” However, I knew I had chosen it. I knew it was nobody else’s fault. That made it even harder to swallow. Taking responsibility is a requirement of stepping out of victimhood. Stepping out of victimhood is where our true power lies.  

It was tough, but it actually ignited my path into becoming more of a legit “birth worker”. I completed a holistic doula training with my lovely mentor, Whapio, of the Matrona (a retired midwife in her 70s who now does education).

As part of my own healing, I started studying neuroscience and psychology. I started to realize how much our mind directly impacts our lived experiences on a PHYSICAL level. This was the catapult that led to rapid transformation as I healed and then prepared for my third birth. My redemptive, powerful birth at home. 

Snug as a bug

I wanna hear from you. Send me a message. I read them.

If you’re pregnant and you are preparing for your homebirth, is there a quiet voice inside you that says this might not work out for you? Where do you think that’s coming from? Where is that doubt coming from and why does it exist for you? 

With love,

Elaina