Birth story - Mum and Baby Boy

Baby BOY is here!! (We we’re team green)

Born September 5, 4:08am, I got my VBAC! He was 40 weeks, I didn’t expect him until after 40 weeks because my daughter was almost 42 weeks. There’s 20 months between c section and successful VBAC.

I woke up with some mild contractions September 4, went about my day, they disappeared around lunchtime. Around 7pm they came back, I ignored them thinking they were going to go away…they didn’t. At 10pm I showered and went to bed to try and sleep, didn’t work out. I was in denial that this was the real labour time, around 1am my boyfriend insisted we go to my parents house who live 5 minutes from the hospital.

I called my midwife and she told me to shower or bath and see how I feel after that, as soon as I got off the phone with her I lost my plug. I called her back and decided to skip the shower and just go to the hospital.

On the 5 minute drive to the hospital, my water broke. I was feeling some pressure to push each contraction after that, we parked in the loop of the hospital, went up and got checked in at 3:28am, hubby went back to the car to get our stuff.

My midwife met us in the room as they were trying to get the heart rate bands around me, they couldn’t get a good reading (same as my daughter) they wanted to do the scalp clip and I told them I didn’t want it but eventually agreed. My midwife checked me and I was 10cm already. They couldn’t get a proper reading with the clip so they decided it was just time to push the baby out. Ten minutes later, maybe 5/6 pushes, he was out! It was 40 minutes from check in to birth.

I did get a 3rd degree tear (ob said it was mild, basically a 2nd degree) and his face was bruised (and his eyes had popped blood vessels) and he was mucus filled since he came so quickly. But it’s a night and day healing/aftercare compared to my c section.

I am so happy I got my vbac, I also had a natural birth, there just wasn’t much time for anything 😂 On September 3, my midwife checked my cervix out of curiosity and I was 1cm at one part and starting to soften, less than 48 hours later, I had a baby. Your cervix is not a crystal ball, I also did nothing to bring on labour. The VBAC calculator also only gave me a 50% chance of having a vbac, mostly because my bmi is high.

I did the digital pack, I focused a lot on the positive affirmations before labour and tried as best I could to remember to do the breathing during labour and pushing! I truly believe the course helped me, put me in the right mind set and had great information about actual labour to help me get through it.

I was already 10cm before I even went to the hospital! Just to clarify, I am in Canada.