Aubree's HBAC + Home Birth After Cesarean

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Today on the podcast we have one of Meagan’s local doula clients, Aubree. Aubree’s unexpected HBAC story is one of overcoming fears and digging deep when birth moves much faster than planned!We also discuss the risks and benefits surrounding home birth. Julie mentions criteria you can use to help you decide if HBAC is right for you. However and wherever you choose to birth, our mission is to help you feel empowered, peaceful, and safe in that choice. Additional linksThe VBAC Link Blog: HBACMamasteFitJulie’s Fear Release VideoHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull transcriptNote: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. Meagan: Happy Wednesday, everybody. It is Julie and Meagan and we are so excited for you to hear this story today. We have our friend, Aubree, on and she has got a really cool story to share. And kind of a little side note or a little teaser, I was actually one of her doulas. It was me and my partner, Melinda, and I sadly didn’t get to make it to the birth. Melinda went, but I seriously can’t even believe how awesome this story is. I’m actually excited to hear her share it. We actually had scheduled to go to lunch and hear her story, and we never got to have that happen. So I’m so excited today to hear along with you guys her version of the story. As usual, we have a Review of the Week and our amazing Julie is going to share that with you before we dive right in. Review of the WeekJulie: Hello, I am so excited to hear this story too. Meagan was just telling me a titch about it before we started recording and it is always fun to have somebody local share their story with us. I do have a Review of the Week. This is from Apple Podcasts and it is from libbywilger. The title is “My Safe Space”. That makes me really happy– “My Safe Space.”Meagan: And I love her name, Libby. Julie: Libby. I know, that’s cute. Okay, so she says, “I have been listening to The VBAC Link from the very beginning and it has carried me through my own VBAC journey (and beyond)! I had an emergency C-section with my first baby in 2017 and knew immediately I wanted to pursue a VBAC with future pregnancies. I tried listening to birth stories on other podcasts, but initially, it was too difficult for me to hear from first-time moms whose stories ended with peaceful, unmedicated, vaginal births. The VBAC Link became my safe space to hear from women who had been through what I had and had come out empowered, triumphant, and healed, even if they weren’t able to have a VBAC. “This podcast helped me to heal emotionally from my first birth experience and to surround myself with the research, support, and POSITIVITY that I needed to prepare for my next birth. These stories allowed me to believe in birth again, and they carried me through my beautiful, healing VBAC during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. “Julie, Meagan, and all the women of strength who bravely share their stories are changing the world with this podcast. Thank you for giving so many mamas the gift of education, empowerment, and JOY while they bring their babies Earthside. God bless!”Meagan: Aww, that gave me the chills. Julie: I know, me too. Meagan: That is amazing. I love it so much. Thank you so much for sharing your review, Libby. Julie: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love it when people are with us from the beginning. We’ve been doing this for four years now. Meagan: I know. So crazy. Julie: It’s been a really long time and really fun to see people come around full circle. I was at our local ICAN meeting last night. They are starting up ICAN meetings again here. Meagan: Oh yay! That’s awesome.Julie: Yeah. So if you’re in Utah, look up ICAN of Utah County. There are meetings on the 3rd Monday of every month in Lehi and I will probably come to every single one of them because I just– you know me. I love talking about birth and VBAC and everything. It was fun because a lot of the people there– it’s been a while since we’ve had ICAN meetings– and everybody there knew who I was. It was kind of strange walking into a room where everyone knows you but you don’t know them. It was just a little strange. I don’t know. It’s been a while since we’ve been in front of real-life people instead of talking on Zoom. So it was just fun to be able to see and connect with people. I’m excited to hear the stories of when people found The VBAC Link. There are people who have found us at the beginning and they had their C-sections, then their VBACs, and VBAC after two C-sections. There was a mom there last night who is preparing for a VBAC after three C-sections and I love that VBAC after three C-sections is becoming more common. We are hearing more stories in our community and more on our podcast. I think it’s incredible. Aubree’s StoryMeagan: Okay, Ms. Aubree. We are so, so excited to hear your story. We are so grateful that you’re here with us today. We are going to turn the time over to you to share this beautiful birth story. Aubree: Oh, yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Meagan: Absolutely. Aubree: I actually was going to say that I’ve almost been with you since the beginning. My daughter is three and a half. She’s my C-section and that’s how this all got started. Meagan: Mhmm, that’s awesome. We really do. We get emails all the time where it’s like, “Oh, I’ve been with you from the very beginning,” and we are like, “Thank you. Thank you for sticking with us this whole time.”Aubree: I love it. Thank you for allowing me to share my story. I’m super pumped, actually. Meagan: Absolutely. Aubree: I’ll just start with my daughter’s birth first. She’s the C-section one. Right off the bat, I went and actually had an IUI which is intrauterine insemination. It worked on the first round. I’m infertile, so that’s why we had to see a fertility specialist but it worked and I had a pretty normal pregnancy with her. Nothing out of the blue or anything. I did find out, though, about two weeks before birth that my doctor told me, “Oh, I’m going to be going out of town.” That was a big surprise to me.Meagan: Shocker, yeah. Aubree: I had never even thought of that being a possibility, so I just assumed. She had told me, “Everybody there that will be there will be awesome. You don’t need to worry.” I did not think about it. Fast forward– it actually gets to two days after 40 weeks, so 40+2, and that’s when my contractions started. I was visiting the gravesite of my father and it was really special that my contractions started while I was visiting him.It was exciting because I had taken a HypnoBirthing class. I had done a lot of work– what I thought work was– mentally to prepare for it, and so it just felt super exciting at first. The whole car ride back– it was about an hour away and every five minutes, or not five minutes at first. It was about every 7-10 minutes apart. We got to our apartment. I decided to do a little bath and that’s when it slowed down and stopped, my labor. I just got bummed. I was super bummed. I was like, “You have got to be kidding me. I have been waiting 40 weeks for this.” So I hopped out of the bath.  I shouldn’t have. I should have rested. But I hopped out of the bath and I was like, “Let’s get this ramped up again.” So I just started cleaning the apartment, vacuuming, everything like that, and lo and behold, my contractions started right up again. They slowly got closer and closer together. Even though I was working on breathing through them, I was managing them so well. About an hour later, I was like, “These are clockwork. Five minutes apart and they are lasting,” I can’t even remember, but they seemed textbook and I was like, “Let’s go to the hospital.”I didn’t want to wait for them to get even closer. It started to get to the point where I was like, “I’m needing a little bit of help, too.” So we get to the hospital and that’s when my anxiety kicked in. It felt really real. We got up to the tower or whatever where we get checked in and the nurse was like, “Why are you here?” I’m like, “Can you not tell? I’m in labor.” I had to do that little bit even though I had pre-done everything. She still asked me a few questions. We finally got our way back and they said, “Okay, we’ll check you in triage.” I was like, “Joke’s on them because I’m five minutes apart and I’m going to be super far along.” But come to find out, I was only 3 centimeters. They said, “Well, we’ll keep you for an hour and then we’ll see,” but an hour later, still no progress which makes sense, but the contractions were just so intense for me. I was asking, I’m like, “Can you do something for me? I need something to help with this” and I had forgotten everything, literally, from my HypnoBirthing class. I just remember being in so much fear. So finally, I think they did administer– I can’t even remember what it was– a little shot to my bum. It kind of took the edge off, but not really. Meagan: Maybe morphine?Aubree: Yeah. Meagan: Was allotted or something? Sometimes in that earlier stage, if it’s really intense, they’ll give you a little morphine shot in the bum while you are awake just to take it away a little bit. Aubree: Yeah, that’s probably it then. They said, “We’ll allow you that, but since you are not admitted, we can’t even start an epidural or anything.” I was like, “Why isn’t this on-call doctor allowing me to be admitted?” Because they kept saying, “Well, the on-call doctor thinks this,” and “The on-call doctor thinks that.” Already, I’m not liking this on-call doctor very much. And so they said, “We are going to come back in one more hour. I manage through that one hour. I think I progressed to a four. Because I had made some progress, they said, “Okay, we’ll go ahead and admit you now.” That’s when my mom had gotten to the hospital. My husband was with me in the room and I still was just very fearful. I couldn’t find a position that was comfortable for me. And so I basically asked for the epidural right as I got to my room. I just was like, “I need rest.” Meagan: And relief. Aubree: And relief, yeah. I call him a nice, old anesthesiologist because he was pretty old. He actually helped me relax. He administered it and it was actually smooth sailing from there but my body– even though I hated not feeling my legs, I had that relaxation. By I think, so sorry. I should have said. I checked in at about 8:00 p.m. and by 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, they told me, “You are 10. You are complete.” It actually helped me relax so much that it allowed me to dilate which was awesome. They said, “For an hour, we are going to let you rest and descend.” I had no idea what that meant. I was like, “Okay.” And then around 6:00 or 7:00, we started practice pushing. I think I knew from the beginning, “That is a lie. This is not practice. They really want me to start pushing.” It was the coached pushing because they had me push, push, push for ten whole counts. I had to hold my breath and it just was awful. I had heard and I had told them. I had my whole birth plan and I said, “I prefer not to have coached pushing,” but I don’t think anyone cared too much to look at it. I definitely didn’t remind them because I was just in the moment. So I am in the middle of quite a few practice pushes and this is the first time I saw the face of my on-call doctor. He comes into the room and he goes, “Push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push!” He sounded like a barking football coach.Meagan: I was going to say, “What are we doing?”Aubree: I am like, “What are we doing?”Meagan: Are we sprinting up a hill right now?Aubree: So shocked. My husband said he wanted to (inaudible), but he was trying to help me, so I just dealt with it. I dealt with all of the coaching. I did not like the coached pushing. In fact, I was holding my breath and they were like, “Oh, she needs more oxygen. Let’s put an oxygen mask on her.” That made it even worse. I just felt claustrophobic with that on, and then they would try to rotate me. They were like, “Let’s rotate her to her other side,” because I had been on my left. Every time they tried to rotate me, they were like, “We lost baby’s heartbeat,” or it had deceled, and so I couldn’t move. I had to stay on my left side. I had to keep the oxygen mask on and it just did not feel good. In fact, I knew I was pushing because I am one of those people that pooped on the table. It was like, “Come on. You know I am working!” It was so embarrassing.Meagan: Listen, poop is a good sign. It means you are doing things really well.Aubree: Okay good. I pushed for an hour and a half and that’s when the doctor said, “Okay. I need to probably give you the C-section talk,” because she had not descended. She engaged but she had not decided one bit, not even with pushing. There was nothing from her. He said, “You look exhausted. I actually see a little bit of blood in your urine output and we can’t get you to move on the other side for your baby's heart rate.” He was like, “I could let you go for another hour and a half,” but he said, “I think the best option for you is just to have a C-section because this will just get even more exhausting.I consented honestly because well, I took a minute with my husband. We talked about it because I did not want a C-section although I had no idea what it entailed anyway. We decided it was the best for the baby and for myself, and we wanted to go through with it. It did go really well. The C-section went fine. I just did not like that right after the procedure, I was so shaky. Literally, so much to the point I couldn’t even hold her when they finally brought her back from the NICU for her breathing. I couldn’t even hold her. I was violently shaking.Man, I don’t want to get emotional, but that was the hardest part. I couldn’t even bond with her. I was able to still learn and work through everything and enjoy her afterward. I just feel like I had a rough start, especially being a first-time parent, and especially because two weeks later, we came to find out she had colic. I kept blaming the C-section for her colic because I was like, “She never got the microbiomes from my vaginal canal.” I just knew at the end of all of that and the rough recovery of not being able to lift much or walk around as easily at first. My friend is who introduced me to you guys. That’s when I just knew things had to be different the next time. So yeah. That’s my C-section story.Meagan: Yeah, thank you.Aubree: Yeah. My son’s story is completely still baffling to me because I did not expect it. We had to go back to the fertility center. He took five or six rounds of intrauterine insemination and we were actually close to them saying, “Hey. You probably need to go to IVF after this.” But anyway, we were so lucky and blessed to get him in the fifth round. We had a pretty good pregnancy with him. The only thing that I had fear about was the birth and choosing the right care team.And so at first, I knew for sure, I think I contacted Meagan to be my doula right out of the gate. I think I was only five weeks along.Meagan: Yeah, early.Aubree: Early, yeah. I wanted to secure you and I wanted to secure my provider. I initially went to a hospital here with a midwife because I wanted things a little bit more natural, but when I went to my first meeting with her– I had given her my whole story and she had said, “I don’t see a reason to not let you try, but I do want you to consider having an induction at 39 weeks and I would like to monitor you as we get closer.” Things didn’t sound VBAC-friendly. It just sounded tolerant and I got that feeling of, “Is this who I really want?” because I don’t do well having to fight for myself during labor. I don’t want to have that as an additional thing to worry about.I had been keeping this other clinic in the back of my mind and I went and did a couple of interviews with the midwives at a freestanding birth center. They are an amazing team. The thing that made me feel so safe with her was that she said, “The odds are in your favor if you come to be with us.” That sounded really awesome, but I also decided to do one other thing which was that I wanted to go physically stand out in front of each place to see if I could get a feeling. You know, like, “Does this feel right for me?” I stood out in front of the hospital and then I stood out in front of the birth center and I did not feel pulled to either one. I was super shocked. I kind of figured out why later because he didn’t get delivered at either. Yeah. I will keep telling my story, but I think that’s the reason why my prayers went unanswered because he did not decide to come to either place. I did not make it. I would not have made it. So I decided, “Okay.” Around 20 weeks, you know when you have your anatomy scan, we found out he was not only breech, but that my placenta was anterior and it was also covering my C-section scar at that point. And so they said, “Okay.” This is with the birth center because I had decided to go with them. They said, “We are just going to need to keep an eye on that because we can’t have your placenta covering your C-section scar or sticking right there. It needs to move up and away from it,” as well as, breech, right? I did not want to deal with a breech baby. And so I did quite a few things and this is actually something I pulled from your guys’ previous podcast which is why they are so amazing. A previous person had said she started talking to her baby throughout the pregnancy and how she created a bond with them, so I was like, “I need to start talking to him.” That’s when I started having conversations. I was like, “Hey, honey. You are breech. We need you to turn.” I started to keep him informed along the way, even learning things from MamasteFit, or Gina. I kept telling him at night. I kept saying, “Okay. Remember when it is birth day, you have to tuck your chin in. You have to have the pointiest part of your head face down.”Meagan: Those things work.Aubree: They do. They just do. It did work. I had to have another scan later because we had to check both his position and my placenta at around 30 or 35 weeks. I can’t remember, but he did end up flipping. So I went and saw a chiropractor because I wanted to do everything to get him to not be breech. I went and saw a chiropractor here. I did the Spinning Babies Daily Essentials most days. Not every day, but I did that. I had the red raspberry leaf tea and dates. I just wanted to do all of the things I could to make this possible for myself. About one week before, I actually went into labor. My contractions started in the car when we were on our way back from the lantern festival. I was so fearful. I actually was like, “It can’t happen now. It can’t happen now.” It was a week before my due date. Mentally, I wasn’t prepared. The fear came back. Feeling those contractions put me right back in the hospital remembering how scared I was and it was surprising to me because I just kept saying out loud, “I am not ready. I am not ready. You’ve got to stop. We need to wait.” They fizzled out by the time I got home. That whole week, I worked with, and even throughout my pregnancy, I worked with a life coach about my fears. I did your guys’ fear release from your course. I worked through it. I wrote out everything and then I burned it. I burned my piece of paper with my fears and it felt so good.Meagan: Mhmm. Listen, that is such an amazing thing too. In fact, Julie has a whole recording on our YouTube channel about that and how to do that. It’s so amazing. It really is.Aubree: Yeah, for sure. I think that’s partially what helped me get to be okay with whatever could happen because I was so afraid of things like shoulder dystocia, needing to transfer, all of those things, and so it just needed to get out, be said, and be burned because, at that point, I did all that I could and had to let the pieces play out.Meagan: Just let it go.Aubree: Yep. Just let it go. So a week later, it was still two days before my due date. I had been feeling kind of nauseous all day and I was like, “I feel off. Let’s go to bed early tonight.” And by early, I didn’t get to bed until 11:00, but it’s fine. I said, “Let’s go to bed early.” At 11:17, I kid you not. I was not even in bed for seven minutes when the first contraction came. It made me go, “Oh no. Did I dream that?” And then five minutes later, the next one came. I shot up out of bed and I said, “This is it!”Meagan: You can tell a difference.Aubree: Yes. I told him. I was like, “You have got to stay asleep.” I did not expect to be fast. Knowing my C-section and whatnot, I was like, “We have got at least six hours. I want to labor here as long as possible.” I went and started a shower bath for myself with Epsom salts. It was so great. I let myself go for a whole 45 minutes. I was alone and it was awesome until it kind of really started picking up. They were consistently already five minutes apart. The intensity just grew and grew with each one. So 45 minutes later, I was saying, “Justin, can you get out of bed? I am needing help squeezes. Help me.”That’s when he was like, “Okay. Let’s text the midwives,” so I sent a sweet text like, “I’ve been pushing for an hour. I’m just going to check–”Meagan: Contracting, yeah. Contracting—Aubree: Oh sorry, not pushing. Yeah, contracting for an hour and things are going well. I said, “Just keep us informed.” Seven minutes later though, I had a freak out because they just were ramping up so much. It’s not like the part you want to see in a movie because I was frantic. I was on my knees in my bedroom. I was like, “I can’t move. I can’t go anywhere.” I was like, “I picked the wrong thing. I need the epidural now. Get me somewhere. Fix it.”Meagan: It was a lot happening really fast.Aubree: Yeah. So my husband, bless him because he knew how much I wanted the VBAC and he said, “We need to remember what we want to try.” He was like, “What can you remember that you want me to help you with?” I said, “All I can think about is how funny it was that Gina said you can turn around on the toilet and sit there while you are in labor.” He was like, “Okay. Let’s go try it.” And so I made it there and it actually felt so good to sit there backward. For every contraction, I do not recommend this. But with every contraction, I pushed my forehead into the wall because it gave me some more counterpressure. He was giving counterpressure behind, but it gave me a counterpressure on my head too. It’s just what I did to cope. That’s when my husband was like, “We need to get places.” So that’s when– let’s see. I think it was at 12:21, he was like, “Call your mom.” I finally called you guys, my doulas. My mom quickly came and so did–Meagan: Melinda.Aubree: Melinda, yeah.Meagan: She was really close to you so I was like, “It sounds like it is going fast,” and so she was like, “I’m going.” “Yeah. You’ve got to get to her.”Aubree: I’m so appreciative of her because I don’t know if you would have made it, Meagan.Meagan: I don’t think I would have. I mean, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have because I’m not that far, but still, with the way things were going, I was far. Do you know?Aubree: All right. You were far enough, yeah. So my mom arrived and she was kind of like, “Wow. Don’t you guys have to get going?” Justin was like, “Yes. Yes, we know. We are trying to get everything.” I couldn’t really talk. I just was in the zone and saw my mom arrive. The doula arrived and then he called Adrienne. Adrienne heard me grunting over the phone and said, “Is she pushing?” Adrienne is my midwife and I didn’t think I was pushing. Honestly, I was just, it’s how I was like, “I am just getting through the contractions I am making a grunting noise.” I actually was like, “I think we can make it if you guys just let me go poo really quick.”She goes, “Oh no. I am on my way right now,” because she knew what that meant and I had no idea. I was like, “Guys. Jokes on you. I really have to just go to the bathroom real quick,” but she knew. Anyway, I’m so glad she was on her way. She called us not too long after saying, “Hey. If you need to, call the paramedics. This is going to be quick.” But she luckily made it. So she made it and when she got there, she set up a birthing stool right next to me in my bathroom. It took a little coaxing to get me off the toilet because I did not want to move, but we ended up getting on the birth stool. I was hugging Melinda because I needed to hunch over and hug her. Justin was giving me the counterpressure still on my hips. They just switched back-and-forth so neither one got burnt out, but at one point, and apparently this is when I realized, “Oh, I really am pushing.” At one point during this pushing, I felt my baby boy. I felt him use his legs to push up into my ribs and turn. I felt him twist and turn and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, he’s doing it! He’s doing what I told him to do.”Meagan: Exactly, yes.Aubree: I told him to get in the position. I was like, “You do whatever you need to, baby. It’s fine.” I felt him do that and at first– I should back up a little bit before I felt that. They put a mirror underneath me and at first, I couldn’t see anything. I was like, “What if he gets stuck? What if he gets stuck?” I couldn’t see anything, so I decided. I was like, “Stop looking in the mirror to check your progress and just let it happen.” After I felt that push, I was like, “Maybe I will check now.” I looked down and that’s when I could finally see his head crowning. I was like, “Oh my gosh. This is it. He really is doing it.” And oh man, the ring of fire. Yes. I felt that so much. In fact, every time I would contract, I would probably push a little too hard to push him out because it was just so intense. I should have eased up. I should have probably eased up on it, but it was just so intense. I can’t tell you how many pushes it took, but man. He made it out and he did that slippery slide out. My midwife prepped my husband to catch him and that was super shocking because he is not the type of person that was like, “I want to catch the baby or cut the cord or do any of this,” but he was just right there raw and real with me.We were just going through it doing what we had to do with what was presented. I don’t want to share the pictures with you, but if you saw the pictures of my face, I was just exhausted. I looked exhausted because it just was a wham, bam, boom. Two hours, I calculated it. It was two hours and 40 minutes from start to finish. It just blew me away. I did not think that it could be that quick.But I should say that after he was delivered, they got my bed all set up and put all of this protection down. After I delivered the placenta, I did hemorrhage, and so I was so grateful for my midwife. She administered IV fluids to me. She stitched me up right there. It was such a turnaround, immediate bonding experience that I missed out on so much with my daughter even though I was purely exhausted. I just was so much empowered. Yeah. I’m trying to think if there is anything else. The recovery– I should say this. One thing that I have learned going through the C-section and a vaginal, it wasn’t like one recovery was amazingly better than the other. They just each had their pros and cons. Right? I’m not saying, “Don’t have a C-section” or “Don’t have a home birth”, but they just have pros and cons. Everybody is different and it just is okay no matter how birth happens. That’s the biggest thing, especially through my life coach that was helping me, my friend. She is now a certified life coach. She is the best. I really think that is what helped me. She helped me push through all of the fears I had and that is what started me on my own journey. I actually signed up now. I want to become a doula and I am going to sign up to be a life coach as well because I want to handle not only the birth, but I want to help people through their mental– it’s such a mind game for birth. So that’s my story.Meagan: Yay. Absolutely. Oh, I love it so much. We have a client that we just recently were talking to and she had a fast birth the first time. Not fast-fast, but it was a 24-hour first-time birth. She is scared of that happening and it just being so fast. I’m like, “There are pros and cons to fast birth,” but when it’s fast, it’s usually really, really intense. Aubree: Yeah. Meagan: Yeah, and then you’re exhausted because it was so intense so fast, but yeah. As I said, there are pros and cons. I don’t even know if I would prefer fast and intense or if I would prefer what I had– 42-hour long labor. I”m like, “I don’t think I would prefer the 42-hour-long labor.”Julie: A nice, happy medium for me. Meagan: Yeah, just a nice, happy medium. Even just 8-10 hours. Aubree: Yeah. Meagan: Oh man, it can get intense. You are amazing. I remember Melinda was like, “Dude. That was insane!” I'm like, “Yeah. That sounded insane.” But so amazing, too. Like, so amazing. You are just incredible and you just let your body and your baby do exactly what they needed to. I also do. We love Gina. Everyone knows we love Gina so much. Julie: Gina is amazing. Meagan: Talking to your baby, connecting to your baby. There is something to be said about that. It’s so real. I feel like I did that so much with Webster and people probably would be like, “What? You’re just talking to your stomach?” I’m like, “Yeah.” And feeling your stomach and feeling him and saying like, “Okay, buddy. It’s you and me. Let’s do this. I’ll be okay with however you come, but this is how I would love for you to come.”Aubree: Exactly. Meagan: And that happened and it was amazing. I’m so, so grateful forever. I will be forever. But yeah, I just adore you and I am so grateful for you and your story. I am so excited that you are going the doula route and life coach route. There is so much goodness in life coaching as well. I think it’s going to benefit your mamas in the future. You’ve had it, but probably more than you even know, you are going to change people’s lives. Aubree: Aww, thanks. Yes, that’s my goal. There are so many friends that I even have that have had C-sections and at first, you don’t believe in yourself because you put a lot of stock in what a professional doctor will tell you. They told me, “You have such a small pelvis” and I’ve been told I’m small my whole life, so I didn’t really doubt them at first. I was like, “Well, they’re probably right. This is just another curse of the smallness.” But you know what? There’s also something to be said for educating yourself with other professionals as well and getting second opinions. Like you are saying, trust your body because when I learned, when I took your course, The VBAC Link course, and I followed people like Gina, you empower yourself with more knowledge. Even though it might not work out how you want, the fact that you empowered yourself to know no matter what way it goes, I think that’s what I hope any future client would want. “No matter how it goes, I’ll be okay.” Julie: Yeah, absolutely. Meagan: I love that. HBAC Statistics and CriteriaJulie: Should we talk a little bit about home birth? Meagan: Sure. Aubree: Yeah, sure. Julie: Have a little educational piece about home birth? First of all, if you are interested in our VBAC Prep Course for Parents, we also have a VBAC Doula Certification course, you can find all the information for those courses on our website at thevbaclink.com and we also have a blog about home birth after Cesarean. Surprise, surprise. I’m actually looking at it right now so I can go over some of the data because sometimes it will get all smushed around in my head. But it’s interesting because we have all of this data about home birth and its safety and things like that, but during the COVID pandemic in 2020 and 2021, preliminary numbers show an increase in out-of-hospital births because I feel like a lot of people were being forced to choose between having their supportive birth team or being really restricted with who they could and could not have in hospitals. So I love that home birth is an option in most parts of the country. You’re not going to face much of a kickback. There are a few Southern states that really restrict home birth options there and out in Nebraska. My best friend is getting ready to have a baby in Nebraska and home birth is just illegal there. It’s illegal for midwives to attend home births. They really don’t have any options out there in Nebraska, so you’ve got to work hard to create advocacy and change if you’re in that state.  In 2019, there was a peer-reviewed meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is a study that looks at a whole bunch of studies together so it’s really a more comprehensive view than an individual study would be. In 2019, there was a peer-reviewed meta-analysis of 20 years worth of studies on home birth that contained roughly 500,000 parents. So it is a pretty good size study. The study showed that low-risk parents who have a hospital birth have no difference in the overall birth outcomes than low-risk parents who have a planned home birth. Now, it’s really interesting because a lot of times, we’ll see and hear a lot, even now. Even last night at the ICAN meeting I was at, people were saying, “Oh my gosh. Home birth scares me. It scares me so much” or “Out of hospital birth scares me.” When you really look down at the difference in mortality rates and birth outcomes, they are very, very similar between birthing and home or birthing in a hospital. So there’s that if you are a statistic junkie like me. That is really interesting for you to see. But also, you have got to understand there are different risks associated. Sometimes your risk is a little bit different. Of course, if you’re having a home birth, we highly recommend that you have a midwife that has attended many, many home births and that has a solid transfer plan in case of an emergency or if you go the unassisted route that you have a solid transfer plan in case an emergency happens so that you can get to the hospital quickly if it is needed. But it’s really cool because this analysis also showed that birthing at home had fewer medical interventions and fewer Cesareans. Meagan, maybe you have a better idea of this than I do, but I know that in some of our birth centers around here and for our out-of-hospital midwives, their Cesarean rate is 5%. Like, 95% vaginal births. 95% successful home births. They go on to have hospital transfers and some clients will eventually need a Cesarean, but we have really, really high VBAC success rates at birth centers and with home birth midwives. Meagan, do you see that?Meagan: Yeah. I don’t know the exact percentage by any means because I am not good with numbers, but yeah. Yeah, for sure.Julie: It’s incredible. I love that. Home birth is not for everybody but there are four things, four criteria that you need in order for home birth to be a safe option for you. The first one is that you have to have a low-risk pregnancy. Here is a little plug-in: having a prior Cesarean does not automatically make you a high-risk pregnancy. I’m going to say that again. Having a prior Cesarean or going for a VBAC does not automatically make you high risk in your pregnancy. Now, you are at a higher risk for uterine rupture. That is true, but the risk is still fairly low. It doesn’t put you in a high-risk category. You don’t need to see maternal-fetal medicine. You don’t need to see a high-risk doctor or anything like that to manage your pregnancy.The second criterion is chosen, planned, and prepared for. A home birth that is planned and prepared for has better outcomes than accidental homebirths do. The care provider involved is qualified and experienced in homebirth so you don’t just have your next-door neighbor come and help deliver your baby. Unless your next-door neighbor happens to be an experienced homebirth midwife, then that’s okay.The fourth birth criterion is that your home birth plan includes a backup transfer plan in case of an emergency, as I talked about before. We know that it is relatively safe and most birth is a natural process but every once in a while, things happen where you are going to need more emergent care and you’re going to need an expert involved so having a backup transfer plan in place is important in that regard.We have a blog about it. It’s at thevbaclink.com/blog. You can just type HBAC in the search bar and it’s going to put up right there or you can just go to Google and I think it’s the second search result on Google. Meagan, what would you add?Meagan: I love it. Nothing, you’re just amazing. I guess I should say when I was preparing to have my VBAC after two C-sections, people told me that I was crazy and that I was going to kill my baby. Really, really awful things, and yeah. It can be scary, but if you prepare it can be just as great. I mean, Aubree was planning on going out of hospital but not at home, but she still had her team equipped and ready to help her and it was still really great. And so yeah. I just think that doing what you feel is best for you and being at the place where you feel safest is going to be the best place too. All right, well Ms. Aubrey, we are so grateful for you. Thank you so much again. We really love your story and are excited to share it with the world.Aubree: Yeah, thank you guys so much. Seriously, I’m so glad you guys have done The VBAC Link and keep doing it because it is so helpful for all of us out there.ClosingInterested in sharing your VBAC story on the podcast? Submit your story at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands