091: How Prayer Can Completely Transform Your Birth (with Joselyn Johnson) [VBAC, Miscarriage, Preterm Labor]

Going into your first labor and delivery, when all of the women around you have had vaginal births, it’s easy to assume that you will too. But when Joselyn and her husband were told to have an induction for borderline low amniotic fluid levels, they did not imagine it would end in a C-section. For her second baby, learning that she was a great candidate for a VBAC, she switched practices and prepared in every way that she could to ensure a successful VBAC experience, and after a manual induction at 42 weeks, she had one! For her third baby, she planned a home birth, but at 35 weeks pregnant she never imagined she would go into labor early and while her home birth plans were forced to go out the window, God still answered all of her other specific prayers for this birth, and showed His faithfulness through and through. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I did have sciatica and SI joint pain that started in my second pregnancy that never went away, no matter the chiropractic and physical therapy and all those sorts of things. And whenever I was about five months pregnant with him, my third pregnancy, I was just exhausted. I was so over it. I couldn't take care of my kids. I couldn't take care of my house. I couldn't exercise. Everything just would cause like debilitating pain. And I one day just like cried out in prayer. And she was like, God, I can't do this anymore. You have got to take this away. I know you can. I know you can heal me. And that was it. Like I never had any pain again after that.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Hi, I'm Kayla Heater, follower of Jesus, wife and mother of five children, Christian childbirth educator in doula, and your host of the Surrendered Birth Stories Podcast, where we share God-centered birth stories, evidence-based birth education, and our pursuit of surrendering our birth plans to God. Let's get started. Happy Monday, everybody, and seriously happy Monday, because it is finally launch day of our online childbirth course. So I know, okay, it may not be what all of you have been waiting for, but what some of you have been waiting for is this online childbirth course. And it has been such an undertaking, so much work, but something that my husband and I are proud of and hopeful for. It is the same course that I teach in person every quarter. I teach this class to couples right here in the triad in person, and I love it, and it is so much fun. But as time has gone on, it has proven that there are people who really want to take the course but can't because they either don't live here close enough to the triad or it just does not work with their schedules to be able to come to the in-person class. So for that purpose, um, we decided to put this course in an on-demand online format. So everybody out there who wants to take the course can. Now, for those of you who have been wondering, and I've mentioned this um in a couple of prior podcast episodes, but the first 10 people to sign up for this course are getting a 50% discount. And part of the reason is because my husband and I not only do we want to promote this course and you know have as many people who want to take it, take it. But I also want to make sure you know that it's as good as it can be. So those first 10 people are gonna get a glorious discount. Um, but I also would love their feedback on the class. So in in exchange for a 50% discount, all I ask is that you tell me if there was anything wrong with it, any glitches, anything that could be improved or fixed or anything that can make it better, because we want this class to be as awesome as it can be. And I think if you were to just speak to the people who take our in-person class, since it's the same content, they would be able to tell you just how much they've loved this course and how much it's helped them. And that is our goal, just to help moms and dads prepare for not just birth, but postpartum, breastfeeding, everything, everything that comes along with this huge transitional season of life. So I have left the link um to access the course in the episode show notes. And I'll probably leave it there for the next several weeks. Um if you just click on there, it'll take you to the course page where you can sort of get an overview of it and then decide if you would like to go for it. So if you want to be one of those first 10 people to take this course at a 50% discount, then message me directly either on Instagram or at my email at contact at surrenderedbirthservices.com and I will give you the 50% off discount code. But I'm only giving it to the first 10 people. Once those 10 slots are gone, they're gone. But I cannot wait to see who takes the course and just how excited I am for your birthday to go. Okay, that was the big, big announcement this week. Share it with your friends. I'll make a post um on Instagram that you can share. But I'm so excited to finally have this um under our belt after so much time. It was a labor of love, that is for sure. Okay, let's get into this week's episode. Going into your first labor and delivery, when all of the women around you have had vaginal births, it's easy to assume that you will too. But when Jocelyn and her husband were told to have an induction for borderline low amniotic fluid levels, they did not imagine it would end in a C-section. For her second baby, learning that she was a great candidate for a VBAC, she switched practices and prepared in every way that she could to ensure a successful VBAC experience. And after a manual induction at 42 weeks, she had one. For her third baby, she planned a home birth, but at 35 weeks pregnant, she never imagined she would go into labor early. And while her home birth plans were forced to go out the window, God still answered all of her other specific prayers for this birth and showed his faithfulness through and through. Jocelyn, take a minute and introduce yourself. Uh, tell us a little bit about you and your life, and let us get to know you a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Yeah, sure. So uh yeah, I'm Jocelyn. I'm 31, um, mom of three now. Um, I have a five-year-old girl, a two and a half-year-old girl, and then a four-week-old baby boy. Um, I am from the Big Bend area of Florida, so like the Panhandle. Um, I was originally born in Panama City and then moved to Tallahassee when my husband and I got married 12 years ago. Um, and now I live just outside of Tallahassee and more rural Havana. Um and yeah, I'm a um I've been a Christian my entire life. The majority of my relationship with Jesus has been since I had my daughter, my oldest daughter. Um, and I'm also a family nurse practitioner. Um, I yeah, I now am going down to part-time. Um, and I'll actually only be working like one day a week because I've decided or found out that my true passion was being with my children. So yeah, that's a little about me.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Florida, you guys got a lot of storms. Did that impact y'all at all? Not really. Um, we did.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

We lost power, we did um have to leave for one of the hurricanes, um, but thank god we didn't have any significant damage. Um, and yeah, we get bad. It seems to always be raining here. It's either super hot or it's raining. Um, we just had tornado watch the other day, so it's always something, but at least we have the beaches, even though I'm not I'm actually not anywhere near a beach. We're about two hours away from a nice beach here.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Oh well, we do have the beaches. That's closer than most of the country is to a beach. So let's dive into your birth stories then. So let's start with your first. See your husband and you have been married for 12 years, and she is five years old. So sounds like we waited a while before you got pregnant with your first. So tell us the story.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Yes. So my husband and I actually got married when I was 19. Um, and I was not living for the Lord at that time. I was definitely living for myself. Um, and I wanted I was starting nursing school. I started nursing school six months after we got married. Um, we were living on just his income, um, which was not very much in the area that he worked in at the time. Um, and yeah, we were just not at the place to have children. Um, so five years of nursing later, I was in the ER working night shift weekends. My husband was working shift work nights, um, and still not at a place where we felt like we were ready to have children. And then I went to nurse practitioner school while I was working full-time. Um, and at that time we went through a lot in our marriage, reconciled, got in a really good place, and I was getting closer to graduation, so we decided to start trying uh for a baby. And I'd been on birth control for 10 years, and so everybody said that it was gonna take a while for us to get pregnant. But lo and behold, I got a um positive pregnancy test. Like we tried for two months. We had one month that I had a negative test, and then the next month was when we were pregnant. Um, so yeah, that was that was a very exciting point in our life because at that point we kind of just been, you know, living the double income, no kids, as they say. Um, we traveled a lot and just kind of did whatever we wanted to do. Um, but then we, you know, we had been together for eight years at that point, so we definitely felt like it was time. Um, and it was just a whole new, whole new chapter, you know, I'd never been pregnant before, never been parents before. And so it was very exciting. It was the first grandchild on my husband's side of the family, first niece for her first niece or nephew for his sister. And so there was a lot of excitement around that.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Oh, that is first grandchild is becomes a really, really big deal.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Yeah, she's um still, I wouldn't say spoiled, but um, she got a lot of attention those first few years before we had our second.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah, I'm sure she did. My daughter, similarly, also first grandchild, and yes, lots and lots of attention.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah, and the grandparents um that it was their first grandchild lived two houses down. So oh nice, yeah. So they um, yeah, she got a lot of attention, and then my parents also live like 10 minutes away, and so she was always with family and always got a lot of attention. So it was we had a lot of support, and it was a really, really nice time.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Good. It's always good to have that support. So going into your first pregnancy, then you had waited a while. Did you have any idea like what kind of care you were seeking, what kind of birth you were planning, like, or anything about birth? Like what was yeah, what was your prior thoughts leading up to it?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah, so the my philosophy on birth now, which I think this is the case for a lot of us who have had babies, has changed, you know, done a complete 180 from back then. Um little background, my mother was very um holistic. We never went to the doctor unless we were like really sick. Um, but she had also been raised for a with a strong respect for the medical community. Um, and so you know, if there was things recommended by the doctor, that's what we did. Um, we just didn't go all the time because we were she was very healthy, didn't take any medications, and we were too. Um, and she tried to feed us really healthy and that sort of thing. Um, but she had had four of us vaginally. Um, I was the fourth, and I didn't have any sisters, so that was the only experience that I had to go off of. Um, and I was also the first of my friends to get pregnant. Shockingly, at 26, like nobody else had had babies yet. Um, at least not anybody that I was still close to at that point in my life. And I have a stepsister who had had three children, but she lived up in New York. Um, she had been induced with all three of her babies, but they'd all been vaginal births. My mother um had had all of us vaginally, but my oldest brother is 52 now, and I'm 30, I was 26 at the time. So it had been a long time since she'd been around birth and been around um, you know, the hospitals and that sort of thing. And she had had all of us at the hospital because that's what everybody did. Um, but she was not induced, so all the babies came naturally. She said, you know, induction wasn't really a thing back then. She'd never heard of anybody having to be induced. So when the doctors told me with my first baby that I needed to be induced, she was like, you know, she just kind of thought because they said so, it that's what needed to happen. And that's how I felt too, because I didn't know any better. Um, and also I was a nurse, I was an ER nurse. Um, and being in the ER, you see the worst-case scenarios, um, and you see what happens when you know people have certain diagnoses and health problems, and they don't take care of themselves and they don't follow the doctor's recommendations. So at that point in my life, it was just whatever the doctor tells me to do, that's what I'm gonna do. Um, and like I said, the people that I knew that had had inductions, it had been fine. Um, and so I got to, I didn't have any birth plan per se. Um, being a nurse, that was like not even anywhere in my thought process. So I just went through pregnancy, going to the same OBGY in practice that I had seen, you know, as a um just a teenager and young early 20s, the ones that prescribed my birth control essentially and gave me, you know, did my well women's exams. Um and the normal thing, you wait for a long time at the appointments and they do your urine and they check your blood pressure and they ask you if you have any questions and then you leave. And that was it until we got to 40 weeks and we're still pregnant, and I thought that something was gonna be happening at that point. And yeah, I said I never really had any sort of like philosophy or birth plan or anything. I just assumed because my mother had had four of us vaginally, that I was also going to have I wanted a natural birth, um, but I didn't really do any research into what that I didn't think that needed research. I thought my body would just do it.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

So, what prompted the induction?

SPEAKER_01 15:02

So the practice that I was at was an OBGYN practice that has probably upwards of 20 providers. Um, and yeah, it's it's huge. Um, I would see primarily the same doctor and same nurse practitioner at my appointments. Um, and I saw one other doctor one time just to kind of, you know, meet one of the other providers because I did know that my doctor probably wasn't gonna be the one that actually delivered. Um, but came to 40-week appointment. They had been doing cervical checks as they do routinely, um, and there was nothing, which, you know, not surprising, but I it was discouraging for me. Um, got to my 41-week appointment, which was technically 40 weeks and six days. They did an ultrasound, they had ultrasound in office at this practice. Um, and I don't know the point of the ultrasound necessarily. I think they did a non-stress test that same day too. Um, and the ultrasound tech was like the fluid's on the lower end of normal, but you're almost 41 weeks, that's normal. Um, nothing to be concerned about. And I also was at the point in my life where I was very um kind of obsessed about my weight, and so I would not eat or drink before I went to my OB appointments in the morning because you know they weigh you at every appointment. Um, and so nobody told me that my slightly low fluid could have just been from dehydration. Nobody suggested like going and drinking water. So I had the ultrasound, went in with the nurse practitioner for the appointment, and she's like, Oh, your fluid's low. Let me go talk to the doctor. And the doctor comes in, he's like, Yeah, let's just go ahead and send you over to labor and delivery and get this ball rolling, like do an induction. You're you know, overdue, your fluid's low. And at that point, you know, I'd been pregnant for 41 weeks and I was ready to have the baby, and everybody's asking me when the baby's coming. We were ready. My husband was there with me, so we went straight over to labor and delivery um for an induction. But mind you, I was still cervix was completely closed. Um, and I was I was like 80 or 85 percent of face, they said they always said they could feel like baby was really low. Um, but I was not having any anything, like no signs of labor. Um, so yeah, no medical concerns really. It was just this post dates and this low fluid that they live in the recommendation. I did end up getting induced at um 40, yeah, it was 40 weeks and six days when they started the induction.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

So did they start it just in the middle of the day then?

SPEAKER_01 17:38

My appointment was in the morning. I think we went and had lunch, grabbed our hospital bags, and went back to the hospital um and started the induction at about uh 3 p.m. Like after we were admitted and everything. The actual induction, I believe, started in between around like 3 or 4 p.m.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Gotcha. And so what did they do to induce? What was their tactic?

SPEAKER_01 18:00

They did servadil, which I had never heard of um at the time. I actually slight backstory was I had a strong interest in pregnancy and birth. Um, and I actually wanted to go into labor and delivery as a nurse, and then I did a rotation in labor and delivery, and it was nothing like what I imagined, you know, this like beautiful birth scene. Um so I was like, I want nothing to do with this, and I end up in the ER. Um, so from that point, I really didn't know any of the medical side of um the labor and delivery other than C-sections, because I had watched a C-section in school. So um I knew in my mind, I was like, that that's not that's not happening. We're not gonna learn anything about that because that's I'm just gonna have a natural birth. Um, so they suggest cervodil. They said, you know, I trusted my doctor, he said it was the best option because I was not um dilated at all yet. So that's what they did. And the cervadil is the little um like vaginal suppository that they put up near the cervix to um soften the cervix as the prostaglandins essentially. Um, and so that's what they did. And they said that it was gonna take probably 24 hours, um, that they would come back at 12 hours and check me and then put another one in. And it could take up to like three days for it to actually do anything. So we were just we're like, okay, we're gonna get some food, we're gonna hang out. It was just my husband and I. Um, and yeah, that was what we did. So they put the cervadal in and we were just gonna wait. Um, and that place it was around probably, I think it was actually 4 p.m. that they did that. So is that what ended up happening then? Um yeah, so they put the cervadil in and they've put an IV in too because this is a you know induction. Um, and we're just hanging out. My husband and I are like taking pictures and we're laughing, um, and I feel nothing at all. And then at about 9 p.m. I start noticing some like discomfort, some cramping, and I didn't know what I was supposed to be feeling. Um, and then within a few minutes of feeling the cramping, it went from zero to 100. Um, I started having from now having other babies naturally, um, almost like transition contractions where they were on top of each other and it would build, they had me on all the monitors, of course. Um, and the contraction would build and it would start coming down, and another one would start. And this started, I mean, at nine o'clock, this as I said, went from zero to 100. Um, I had no idea what was going on. They had not prepped me for this. They, you know, I was expecting like three days' worth. So I called the nurse in and they're just telling me it's okay. Um, you know, trying to get me in different positions and stuff. Um, it's just so intense that they're like, here, why don't we try some IV pain medication just to take the edge off? And I, of course, don't know any better. I just need something, and that's the only thing they suggested. So I took it and it didn't do anything. Um, so then they did another dose about 30 minutes later. Um, and at that point, it made me so groggy that I fell asleep, but I was still having contractions. And I remember waking up um and like telling myself I needed to breathe. It had made me that sedated. Um, I'm a lightweight whenever it comes to medications, like I hardly ever take ibuprofen. Um, and they had given me state all was what they gave me in the ivy. Um, so the contractions continued, super intense. They gave me the state all. Um, and then things got really blurry at this point because I think of the medication and how intense everything was. Yeah. Um, I ended up getting an epidural, backtracking a little bit. Whenever they put in the cervadil, an hour later, the nurse and she had a um new nurse with her that she was training, came in and said, We're gonna be here for a while. If you need anything, call the nurse's station. But the girl next door needs an emergency C section, so we're gonna be with her for a while. Um, so call the nurse's station, somebody will come in and help you. So all the while, while I'm calling the nurse's station, kind of you know, concerned that things are going the way that they are, everybody that comes in is different. And nobody, there's not real good communication, nobody seems to know what's going on, and they're thinking that I'm just not tolerating labor well. Um, so they offer the epidural, we do the epidural. Um, at that point, after that epidural, it works great. I can't feel anything. Um, but then so then I lay down to sleep and my water breaks. Um, and so we called the nurse and let them know, and they come in and they're checking me. I'm only three centimeters at this point. Um, and they notice that baby's starting to have D cells on the monitor, which thinking back is not really surprising because the contractions were still on top of each other at this point. So she was not getting a break um from you know the constant squeezing. So they put try get me on all fours, hands and knees, which I can't feel my legs, so they're having to pick me up and do this. Um, and that helps briefly, but then she starts having D D cells again. They put me on oxygen. Um, and yeah, I don't think her heart rate was going that low, but apparently it was enough that they were concerned. There was quite a few nurses that came in. Um, but at no point did anybody suggest um giving any taking the cervadil out or giving me anything to reverse it or kind of slow down labor. Um, it was just uh you're not tolerating labor very well, and baby's not tolerating labor very well. So that started at nine. Um, and then at by I guess about four o'clock in the morning, um, labor started at nine. By about four o'clock in the morning, the OB that was on call came in, and he was the one other OB that I had met that wasn't my own OB. Um, and he said, you know, and he had no, he had not seen me all night to this point. He just walks in the room and says, You're only three centimeters, you know, baby's not tolerating this very well. The cord could be wrapped around her neck, that whole thing that freaked my husband and I out because we we didn't know any better. Um, and we could keep going like this, but you're only at three centimeters. So, or we could go ahead and get her out. And I was like, just get her out. Let's, you know, be done with this. Um, so they kind of rushed me back. It wasn't an emergency C section, but it was a it went super quick. Like um, everybody gowned up, they threw a gown to my husband, rushed me back to the OR, and we get in there, super bright lights, and I'm very groggy, still from the state hall and the epidural, and it's four o'clock in the morning. I go in by myself because they have to prep you and do all the stuff before your birth support can come in. And so then my husband comes in, and my husband is a big man, he's a strong, very manly man, and he works in law enforcement, and he comes in and he just looks absolutely terrified. Um, and so then at that point, that was the first point in my entire, I think, pregnancy and labor that I had prayed about my pregnancy or labor. For some reason in my brain, I was, I wouldn't say a new Christian. Um, I've been in church my entire life. But like I said, my husband and I had been through a whole lot. And just prior to um getting pregnant was really whenever I gave my life to the Lord and started living for him. But I still have a long way to go, obviously. Um, I had been used to doing things myself and especially being a nurse. I, you know, the pregnancy thing I just felt like was that it was a medical thing and not a spiritual thing. Um, but when my husband came in and he just looked terrified and had tears in his eyes, I didn't know I knew nothing else to do other than to pray. Um, and so I just grabbed, I didn't grab his hand because my hands were tied down. It was the typical had my arms out on the you know things um strapped down with the blue sheet in front of me. Um and I just told him um, not my will, but his will, because we had just learned, we had just studied about that at church um and in our small group, and that was exactly that was all that I felt in that moment was this was not at all my plan, but if this is you know God's will, everything's gonna be okay. And I just kind of kept saying that to him to keep him calm, and it helped keep me calm as well. Um, and so they did the C-section, and it was fine, you know, like she came out, but I was like once again so groggy that I really didn't know what was going on. Um they pulled her out, my husband got to look over the curtain and see her, and he's starts crying, and they take her over and do all the things and wipe her off and wrap her up and bring her up to my face just long enough for me to kiss her. Um there's a picture of that, but I don't actually remember that happening. Um and then they took her um and my husband to recovery, and I was in the OR by myself getting stitched up. Um and I could see it in the OR light as they were doing it. Um, but I was so groggy that it didn't, it didn't really bother me. I was like, it was almost like I was a fly on the wall watching that, watching it happen. And I started having the postpartum shakes, and it's freezing in the OR, of course, and I start getting nauseous from all the medication and probably watching my abdomen get sutured up. Um, so they're trying to give me all these like nausea medications and stuff and putting blankets on me. And finally they get me back to recovery with my husband and the baby, and my daughter's been screaming the entire time because my husband's never held a baby in his entire life, and he had no idea what to do. So they're in recovery for 45 minutes and he's terrified and she's screaming. Um, and they bring me in there, and I don't take medications. Um, my blood pressure always runs really low, even during pregnancy. And so, from all the medication, my blood pressure was in the toilet. Um, and so they couldn't sit me up to hold her um or to nurse her because every time they set me up, my blood pressure would go like in the 60s. Um, so I'm lying flat on my back, and their nurses are hand expressing colostrum into a syringe or spoon and syringe trying to feed her. Um, and they're giving me IV fluids to get my blood pressure up. And finally we get it gets up a little bit, they get me out of recovery and then to postpartum. Um, and I was ultimately happy to have my baby. The cord was not around her neck, and they, whenever they pulled her out, they were like, Oh, it's a big baby. She was seven pounds, 12 ounces, so very average, I think. Um, cord was not around her neck. She came out screaming, she was perfectly healthy. Um, I was healthy other than just my blood pressure being low. Um, then yeah, that was my that was my first baby, my first birth experience.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

I could hear you getting emotional as you were retelling the story. I mean, looking back on that, it it didn't go at all how you thought it would, at all how they told you it would, at all that you were prepared for. How much uh do you feel like that's impacted you in your life, that experience?

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Oh, um a lot. I think that experience was kind of the trajectory for almost everything else that's happened in my life since then. Um my reliance on the Lord and knowing that I can't control things, my outlook of pregnancy and health and you know, um health care, medicine, all that sort of thing. Um, yeah, my relationship with my husband, you know, my my motherly instincts at that point I had was completely out of touch with those, never went with my instinct with anything with that pregnancy, or even after she was born, um, because I had looked to the doctor to tell me everything. And then during labor, they didn't really tell me anything, they just did all this stuff to me. And then after she was born, my OB that had been so sweet and kind the whole pregnancy, he wasn't the one that did the c-section. Um, I forgot to mention the doctor that came in and said that he was like, I don't want to do this. This will be my fourth C-section tonight. He did he had done, I was his fourth C-section and just that, um, his 12 hours of call. And so the doctor that was actually my OB came in um to see me whenever he, because he was actually on call at 7 a.m. And I had had my daughter at 4 54 a.m. Um, so my OB came in and he was so sweet and he sat on the bed and he put his hand on my leg and he just looked at me and he never apologized for anything, um, never really asked me, never went over what happened. Um, he just essentially said that he was happy that I was healthy and the baby was healthy. You know, the healthy mom, healthy baby sort of thing. Um, and then from there I was, you know, discharged a few days later and had no support. Um my, you know, you don't see the OB again for another six weeks. Um, the pediatrician really gives you no guidance either. And I was expecting somebody to tell me what to do because they had told me what to do all during my pregnancy. And so that um, yeah, and I didn't end up really learning much and changing my philosophy until closer to my second pregnancy, but it was all of that experience that kind of shaped how I went, you know, once I get out of the postpartum um fog with my first one that I really realized what had happened and how I dealt with it and didn't deal with it and all that sort of thing. And then that really played into um everything going forward. Did you end up being able to nurse your first? I did. Um, so they actually commented in the hospital. Um, I think I think one of the lactation consultants um used the term dairy cow. Oh very I had a yeah, right. Um, I was very engorged on like day two of her being born. Um, and it might, it might even have been later in the afternoon on the day she was born. Um, but yeah, the lactation consultants were trying to help with latch because um I was having a hard time sitting up from you know having the seven layers cut in my abdomen um and the blood pressure issue and all that sort of thing. So the lactation consultants are coming in and trying to help, but it's more so of than just like shoving baby's head onto my boob, which is not not very helpful. And then they're telling me to pump um because I have a lot of milk and she's not getting a lot out. So they're telling me to, I guess, pump to alleviate some of the engorgement. Um, but nobody explained to me that I didn't need to fully pump every time after I fed her. Um I just thought that I was supposed to pump afterwards so that I didn't get engorged. I didn't realize that pump. That was elongating your engorgement. Right, right. So I yeah, I leaked all the time. I was choking her because I had so much milk and such a heavy letdown. And she I had an inverted nipple on one side and she had a tongue tie, and I cried every time she latched for the first two months. My nipples bled, it was terrible, but I was very determined because I hadn't had my natural birth. My mom had breastfed all four of us, my aunts had breastfed their babies, um, my stepsister had breastfed her babies, I knew it was the best thing, I was going to do it regardless of what you know what happened. And so I did. Um and I nursed her for 22 months, but I did pump the majority of that um too. And so I ended up going back to work when she was like 10 weeks old, and I was working full-time and the ER at that point, and so she was getting um express milk and bottles, but she never had any issues with it. We got the tongue tie, just a simple like clip revision when she was, I don't know, maybe two months old. Um, and we never had any issues past that. Everything she was always she was very healthy, and um the nursing journey overall was good after those first couple of months.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Good. How did you guys go about deciding you're ready to have your second? And how did things change between the first and the second?

SPEAKER_01 35:21

Yeah, so after I had her, um, my first, her name's Caroline, uh, my husband and I decided that um I wouldn't go back on birth control just because we knew that um at that point had learned kind of what it does in the body, and um that there was a potential that it could cause issues with us getting pregnant again. So we decided not to and just did kind of like fertility awareness. Um and I was breastfeeding, so I didn't get my cycle back until 11 months. Um, I graduated nurse practitioner school two weeks after Caroline was born. That was that was the fun thing. I actually had a final exam, um, I think, or I was studying for boards after she was born, after having my C-section. Um, and so I we traveled to Mobile, Alabama when she was two weeks old um for my graduation, and then traveled up to Georgia when she was three weeks old to take my nurse practitioner boards. Wow. Yeah, so I got my first nurse practitioner job um whenever she was a baby, and so I was learning all of that. That was a big, you know, very stressful um change. So um by the time that she was getting close to two, um, we started, you know, missing the newborn and baby phase and all that sort of thing. We didn't want our children to be too far apart in age. Um, so we started trying and we got pregnant on the first cycle. Um, but unfortunately, um we had a chemical pregnancy, which was a total shock. Um, I had never heard of that happening before. Um, I didn't even know what it was. And, you know, we had only had, I had only ever taken pregnancy tests a couple of times, and when it was positive, it was positive, you know, with my last pregnancy. And so um I had the positive test. We got super excited. I think we went ahead and told our parents and um maybe a close couple friends, and then within a week I started bleeding um and lost that pregnancy, which was really hard. Um, a lot harder than I would have expected because as soon as you find out you're pregnant, um, or as soon as I found out I was pregnant, that baby was, you know, just as real as the one that we already had. Um so thank God we got pregnant, I believe, the cycle after that loss. Um and so we ended up announcing, we waited longer this time, um, and announced that pregnancy at my daughter's second birthday party. Um, and I was like 10 weeks along at that point. Um and yeah, that was um that was the start of the second pregnancy, was yeah, two years, about two years after my um C-section.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

So did you decide to go back to the same care provider this time, or did you go a different route?

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Yeah, so actually at my six-week postpartum appointment with my OB, um, I saw the nurse practitioner that I had seen through my pregnancy, and she was very kind and she looked over all the notes and she said, Um, you know, I'm I think she actually apologized and said, I'm sorry this happened. The good news is that you're a great candidate for a V back. Um, and at that time I had no idea what that meant when I was in the hospital um after I had my C-section, we actually had friends that were in the hospital for a scheduled C-section at that point because she had had twins via C-section. And so then we were pregnant at the same time, and she had a scheduled C-section. And so I had always heard once a C-section, always a C-section. Um, and so I'm at this appointment, she says, and so in my mind, I'm like, you know what? We have future babies, I'll just schedule my C-sections. I don't have to go through labor. It's fine. That's fine. Um, and then she says this word V back, and I'm like, what is that? And she explained, you know, vaginal birth after a series. She's like, You're a great candidate. Unfortunately, we don't do them here. Um, this practice, because it was so big, I guess they can it was all of the doctors would have to be comfortable doing it because they all rotate and take call, and so they never could come to a consensus. So they just across the board did not do um VBACs. So I immediately after that appointment started doing research, um, started listening to the VBAC Link podcast, if um anybody's familiar with that, and um started doing research. And then when we decided actually before I got pregnant, um we were thinking about trying, I actually did a um few consultations with um another OB practice and also with a midwife. Practice. Um, and the midwife practice, they were under it was all a bunch of midwife that worked at the hospital, but they worked under the residency program. And so essentially, if I ended up having to have a c-section, it would just be whatever resident was on call would be the one that would do the um c section. And I didn't feel comfortable with that, so I ended up going with a smaller OB practice who did was very, very VBAC supportive. Um, it was just three female OBs in the office, and whenever I started there, they had midwifes also. Um, but the midwife that I saw ended up leaving, and I just saw an OB, a female OB, the entire time at a new practice.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

So the goal then was VBAC. Did you feel like in all your research that you did anything else to prepare for the VBAC to have like a higher chance of having that VBAC?

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Yeah, so um I went to the chiropractor my entire pregnancy, my second pregnancy. Um I hired a doula um who was VBAC like certified or she had experience with VBACs. Um, I got a different provider, obviously, that was um supportive of that. And um and just listened to a ton of birth stories and to hear, you know, the possibilities, what could happen. Um, and just yeah, lots and lots of research because I didn't do any of that with my first pregnancy. Um, so those were the big things that I changed. Um and I at some point in that pregnancy stumbled across the um I started reading a ton of books, like every resource that I could find about natural birth. Um, because from listening to all the viewback stories in my mind and just reflecting on my story, um, it was the cascade of interventions. You know, the um one thing led to the other, led to the other, led to a C-section. Um, and so I wanted as hands off as possible. Um and so that was what I was pursuing. And I educated myself on all the options and what was necessary and what wasn't. Um, and so that was the big difference was I went into this pregnancy and birth very um educated. And I also spent a lot more time in prayer um this pregnancy. I came across the book and podcast, um, supernatural childbirth during that pregnancy. And that kind of opened my eyes to, you know, God's actual design for birth and pregnancy and birth, and that it can be um spirit-led and filled and all those sorts of things, which my first labor was completely void of that until I got on the OR table. Um, so I spent a lot of time walking and praying, listening to podcasts. Um and yeah, that was that was a much better pregnancy. Um, I just felt a lot more prepared. Um and yeah. Well, take us to the labor then. Yeah, so I was really hoping that I would go into labor naturally because um with VBACs, most people don't want to induce because it can um the big concern is um uterine rupture because you have this, you've had this incision on your uterus. Um, and so if you do artificial contractions, it can increase the risk of uterine rupture. Um, so I wanted to go into labor naturally, so I'm doing all the chiropractic things. I'm doing things with my doula, um, like spinning babies and um the mile circuit from spinning babies walking all the time. Um, and I get to 40 weeks, and I'm to I think I decline cervical checks this go around until 40 weeks. We got to 40 weeks and I did a cervical check, and I was I think like a fingertip, a half centimeter, something like that, 50% effaced. Um, and they did a membrane sweep and I started having kind of predromal labor, which was exciting because I had never had anything before, but I'd never had predromal labor either. So I thought that you know, every time it started, I thought it was it was it. Um well I went another two weeks and got to my 42-week appointment. Um, and I was two centimeters and you know, same amount of effacement, um, had been up all night with predromal labor, and they in Florida, and I think this is a lot of places, 42 weeks is kind of the cutoff with the medical community for pregnancy. Um, and I was quite confident of my dates, and so we agreed to do a um manual induction. So no medication, um, but it's where they, you know, insert something into the cervix to kind of force it to dilate. Um, so that's what we did after the 42-week appointment. Um, we went over to labor and delivery and started that process.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

So, did you do like a fully balloon type situation?

SPEAKER_01 44:53

Yeah, so we talked about the different options, and my OB is very old school. Um, she had eight babies herself and had been practicing for 35 years. And so she suggested dialopans, which um are actually like little seaweed rods that are kind of the size of um bobby pens, and they insert them into your cervix, the cervical opening. Um, and as they come in contact with like the cervical mucus and I guess maybe other fluids, the fluid causes them to expand. Um, and so that's what we did. And the reason she said that one was because it would get me further than a foley bulb. Like the foley bulb, I think, will only get you to like maybe four or five centimeters, whereas the dial of hands could get you to like seven or eight. Um I've never heard of that before. Yeah, and so I talked to my doula about it beforehand, and she was like, Yes, her mother had been a home birth midwife, um, and she attended a lot of home birth, and she was like, a lot of the midwives use this, it's been around for years under like different names, I guess. Um, but at the time it was called the brand that they used was called Dilopans. Um, and so that's what we did, and it was no medicine involved. They put them in and then they could take them out, you know, and there was no um no like lasting effect essentially. Um, so yeah, she sent me over to labor and delivery um at uh it was around noon, and they start the get me all admitted and everything. Um, they do an IV, um, I guess just in case, and to give me fluids and stuff like that. And then my OB came in and inserted the dilapans, which was an uncomfortable experience to say the least. Um, she put like seven of them into my cervix. Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of that feeling of like a I don't know, like a tampon, like a too big tampon up there. And then she also put beta dine soaked um gauze inside to keep it, keep them in place. And so it was very uncomfortable and lots of cramping kind of from the get-go. Um, but things were happening and I had had prodromalic labor the night before, so I was excited. Um and yeah, things kind of took off from there. She put them in at 1.50 p.m. Um, and I think by about three o'clock, um, 3 p.m., 4 p.m., once again, um labor had started. I was um, you know, having contractions about every 10 to 12 minutes. Um, but and that continued all through the night. Um, never they never had to do anything else, thankfully. Um, like I never got any ketose and it put me into active labor, thankfully. Um but because I was a B back, they wanted me on the monitors the entire time. Um, so I was hooked up right next to the bed, so I could either lie in the bed, I could sit on the birth ball next to the bed, and that was about it. And my husband was across the room because you know, I'm laboring through the night and I'm on this tiny hospital bed, and his little tiny pull-out couch is on the other side of the room. So I'd like try and call him for support for contractions. But um yeah, yeah, we did the dialogans induction, and um at I called the nurses in the morning and said, you know, things were really intense. I think the doctor needed to come because she was planning on actually coming back 24 hours later after putting the dialogue pans in. Um but she came at 8 a.m., took them out, and I was seven and a half centimeters. Um, and their protocol also is to do for VBACs to do internal monitors, um, the little ones that like go on the baby's head. And to do that, they have to break your water. Um, so after she took the dialogans out, she broke my water, um, put the internal monitor in. So I no longer had the ones on my belly, which is actually nice because those things move all the time. Um, but then I have this thing hanging out of me. Um, and also with them, with her breaking my water, I almost immediately went into transition. Um, as you know, does happen. It was very intense after that. So that was at, I guess, 8 a.m. by the time we got done with that. Um, my dual came at about that point and because I started needing support. Um, and her and my husband, she's coaching my husband on how to, you know, do counterpressure and they're doing essential oils and all this sort of thing. Um, I'm laying in the bed and she got me up on the bedside commode because contractions had kind of petered out. Um, got me on the bedside commode and things picked up again really fast. Um, and I've felt the, you know, as every laboring woman does, um, felt like I needed to poop and she's like, okay, that means that you're ready to push. Well, of course, they get me onto the bed on my back, um, and that sensation goes away. And then we did coached pushing for an hour, um, which was so exhausting. I was falling asleep in between pushing. Um, and my doctor's like, you're supposed to, she's like, You're breathing and not pushing. And it was this whole terrible thing where you're, you know, holding your breath, and ugh, it was so exhausting. Um, but she finally came out um and at 1.50 p.m., wait, Dilopans went in at 1.30. She came up 150. So it was just over 24 hours after the induction was started. Um, and she came out screaming, perfectly healthy. Um, I had just a first degree tear, just needed like a couple stitches. Um, and yeah, I got they put her right on my chest, which was such a night and day difference from my C-section. But surprisingly, I thought that I was going to be a lot more clear headed and have the oxytocin rush and all that sort of thing. But because I had had prodromal labor the night before, and then I had labored all night that night, I had been up for I don't even know, well over 24 hours, and I'd been pushing on my back and holding my breath for an hour, and I was like a trauma survivor. I had, I was just shell-shocked. They put her on my chest, and like my duel is taking pictures and looking back at the pictures, I'm just staring out into space. Like, I don't I have no idea what happened. I don't know where this baby came from. Like it was, it was really bizarre. Um, because I was unmedicated too. So, you know, I felt everything. But after I had um, we did the skin to skin, my duel ordered us food, and I was so tired I couldn't even eat. Um, I just wanted to go to sleep. So I handed the baby off to she, I think she nursed, handed her off to my mother-in-law, and I went into a like the hardest sleep of my life for like three hours, and then I woke up and ate and nursed her, and it was wonderful. But immediately after birth was a little bit of a shock.

SPEAKER_00 51:49

You took a good nap. That was good, yeah. Very necessary after an experience like that.

SPEAKER_01 51:55

Yes, yes, but it was um, it was night and day from my first, and I did feel um a lot more like of God's presence and that birth. I listened to the Christian hypnobirthing app the entire time. Um, and that was really the only thing that got me through. Um, I had my I had it in my ear pod the whole time. And even when I was sleeping in between contractions and like at night, um, I listened to it just on repeat. Um, and it was so soothing and helped a whole lot. Um, and yeah, and in transition, I was definitely crying out to the Lord to rescue me or do something. But um, yeah, it was it was a much, much better um experience, but it still took some surrender because you have to, you know, you can't control everything and labor. And the harder you, I don't know, just the harder you work, the harder things become. You really just have to give in to it. Um, and I thought it was going to be, you know, this beautiful experience. And it was messy and it was hard. And I, yeah, I didn't feel that immediate bond with my baby because I was so exhausted and so shell-shocked. Um, but I was just still so grateful that, you know, I had my unmedicated V back that I so desired. Um, and then I went into that postpartum experience feeling a lot more in charge. Um, and you know, I refused the lactation consultants in the hospital. And um we just, yeah, it was a it was a much better experience, aside from the fact that she ended up being a colicky baby and screamed for the first few months of her life. But right after she came out, it was very peaceful. And um I felt just better, I don't know, better prepared for motherhood at that point.

SPEAKER_00 53:51

I'm curious how much she ended up weighing at 42 weeks.

SPEAKER_01 53:54

Oh yeah. So she was eight pounds, 11 ounces. Oh, not bad. No, no. So uh, but she yeah, she was a nice, nice, healthy size. Um and my yeah, her and her sister were both, but she was a solid pound heavier than her sister and a whole inch longer just one week later.

SPEAKER_00 54:15

Oh yeah, an extra week in there definitely grows them. So you've recently had your third baby.

SPEAKER_01 54:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

Your little boy. Why don't you take us in to that experience?

SPEAKER_01 54:31

Yeah. So in the state of Florida, kind of backtracking to the V back thing, um, I had known that the hands-off approach was the you know highest likelihood of getting what I wanted. Um, but in the state of Florida, midwives cannot attend primary VBACs, meaning like your first vaginal birth after a cesarean. Um, so home birth wasn't on the table, birth center birth was not on the table. That's why I ended up with a at an OB practice in the hospital again. Um, but I did know that that midwives can't attend if you've already had a VBAC. So this going into having a um getting pregnant the third time, I knew I wanted a home birth. Um, and same thing, we waited about two years and didn't want the babies to be too far apart in age. So, and my husband had said that um he wanted a son. And so we got um once again started trying, got pregnant the first cycle, had another chemical pregnancy, um, which that actually plays into the story a whole lot. So I will say that I think I had a chemical pregnancy. Um, we got pregnant in June, um four days after we had told everybody or told a lot of people, very real, felt already felt like we were having a boy. Um, and then on Sunday morning, June 30th, um, actually Sunday afternoon after church, I started bleeding. Um, and I was just crushed, and I was crying out to the Lord and just praying and um, you know, believing that it wasn't going to be a miscarriage and that it was, you know, everything was gonna be fine. It was just some spotting or a fluke or what have you. Um, and that went on and it got heavier and heavier, and um, I ended up taking another pregnancy test, and it was still faint, and then I took another one and there were, you know, it was negative essentially. Um, and then I did end up getting a blood test with my doctor, and the HCG levels were low enough to the point that they said it wasn't consistent with pregnancy. Um, and so we mourned that loss, and then we considered the day that that Sunday, June 30th, that I started bleeding as the um as like my last menstrual period, because I seemed to ovulate um approximately 13 days later, which actually was my two-year-old's my um VBAC baby Clara, her second birthday was on July 12th, um, which was when I ovulated or felt like I did. Um, and we tried, and then two weeks after that, got a positive pregnancy test. And we waited a little while, contacted the home birth midwife, and the home birth midwives do not do um or at least she doesn't do dating ultrasounds, like the early ultrasounds, which was completely fine with me. I was good with being hands-off. So we never had our dates confirmed, but we went off of when I started bleeding from that um, what we thought was a chemical pregnancy. So we pursued the home birth midwife. She's a Christian, um, very, very sweet. My husband felt very comfortable with her, and we just felt very much at peace with having a home birth after, you know, everything that we had known and everything that we had been through. And so, yeah, this third pregnancy was by far my healthiest. Um, I did have sciatica and si joint pain that started in my second pregnancy that never went away, um, no matter the chiropractic and physical therapy and all those sorts of things. And whenever I was about five months pregnant with him, my third pregnancy, I was just exhausted. I was so over it. I couldn't take care of my kids, I couldn't take care of my house, I couldn't exercise, everything just would cause like debilitating pain. And I one day just like cried out in prayer, and she was like, God, I can't do this anymore. You have got to take this away. I know you can, I know you can heal me. And that was it. Like, I never had any pain again after that. Wow, and it was truly, truly miraculous, and I still don't have any pain from that, and so thank God I for continued through that pregnancy, and then I that was how I dealt with every pregnancy symptom that came up. I started having restless legs at night, and I was just like, Lord, I know that you can heal me from this, and this is not your portion for me, and I'm going to sleep, and I did, and so like reflux everything that came up, and so I just lived my best life through this pregnancy. Um, got to 33 weeks, was feeling wonderful. I was nesting, cleaning my baseboards, cleaning the grout, um, doing all the things, and then I had a chiropractic appointment, and after that, I did like a little prenatal yoga. I don't like saying yoga because that can sound like new agey. It was really just stretching, but um, and then I went for a walk um on the treadmill at the gym for 20 minutes. Nothing intense at all. But that evening I was 34 weeks and um five days, four days, and I started my belly felt really tight, and I felt like I was having a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions, and so I told my husband I thought I had overdone it and I needed to hydrate and rest. And he was like, Yes, by all means, do all that. I did that, didn't have Um, ended up the following night having predromal labor at before I even reached 34 weeks. Um, and so I contacted my midwife, and his movement pattern had changed, and my belly was staying tight all of the time, and so with the history of C-section, she was a little concerned um for maybe like some bleeding or something like that. So she wanted me to go like internal bleeding. Um, she wanted me to go to labor and delivery triage to get checked out, and so I did. Um, and I got up there, and of course, they put me out of the monitor, he starts moving like crazy. But I'm having contractions every seven minutes. Um, but they're not painful, but they're different from Braxton Hicks because they're starting like they feel like they're down in my cervix and then building up to the top of the uterus. Um, but they weren't progressing. I wasn't having any bleeding, I wasn't having a discharge, and so they said, you know, maybe you just have an irritable uterus. Um, maybe it's predromal labor, try and stay hydrated. That was all that there was to it. Well, long story short, that went on for two weeks. Um, and it didn't matter what I did. They I had contractions with like every little movement. If something touched my belly, I'd have a contraction. Um, they were really I'd have a lot of prodromal labor at night with melatonin kicking up and oxytocin going up with that. Um, but two days after the triage trip, when I was 33 weeks and six days, I lost my mucus plug. Um, and then yeah, and so I contacted my midwife and she asked if there was any blood bloody show, and I said no. And she's like, Okay, well, it can regenerate. Um, you know, it could be preterm labor, but there's not really anything that we can do to stop it at this point if it's not stopping with rest, and it's not stopping. I was taking magnesium, I was doing everything under the sun to try to, you know, taking bat Epsom salt baths, like nothing was changing it. Um, and so we're just like, okay, a week later, lost mucus plug again. Um, because apparently it can regenerate and you can lose it again, but still no blood. Um, got to two weeks from when this started, had another chiropractic appointment, crying to my chiropractor that I'm so miserable, I can't sleep, I'm having contractions, I'm only 34 or I'm only 35 weeks at this point. I don't know how I'm gonna go on for another five weeks. And I have the adjustment. I head home because I'm home with my girls on Thursdays by myself, um, put my toddler down for a nap, put an episode of something on for my five-year-old so that I can try and take a nap myself. I lay down, have a really intense contraction, and um to the point that I can't go to sleep, even though I've been up since midnight the night before because I had been woken up with contractions. Um, and I'm not thinking anything of it because I had been having diarrhea for three days, and so in my head, I was like, this can be an early labor sign, but also I'm only 35 weeks pregnant, and I also have two small children, so I could also have just a GI bug. Um, so I'm thinking that I'm dehydrated or the stomach cramps are causing the contractions to be worse. Um, and so I'm laying down and they're getting more, they're getting closer together. At least I think so. Um, and I'm like, maybe I'm just tracking them better because I'm not, I'm just laying here. But they're over five minutes apart, then they're over four minutes apart, and I'm just so over it. I call my husband and he's like, if you want me to come home, I'll come home because I'm home by by myself with the girls once again. Um, and so ultimately I tell him, yes, come home, because I don't even know that I can get Clara out of the crib because I hit my belly on the crib getting her in and it caused a painful contraction. Um, and I tell him, I think I want to go back to triage. Maybe I need some fluids because I've been having diarrhoea for three days. I don't know, just come home. And so he comes home and he gets there, we get in the car. My mom comes over to watch the girls, we get in the car, we get down the road, and I'm like, I don't want to go back to the hospital. I don't want to be at the hospital, let's go home. I'll try and take a bath, see if these calm down. Um, and I get in the bath and they're not as uncomfortable, but they're not slowing down. Um, they're like every three minutes apart now. And so I decide, well, if I'm gonna go to the hospital, my hair's really dirty, I'm gonna take a shower and wash my hair, get in the shower and have a contraction that takes me to the floor. Um, and I'm on my hands and knees in the shower, and my husband like walks by because we have one of those like last shower doors, and he's like, Are you okay? And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, I'm just having a contraction. I gotta get it, get my hair washed, and I get my hair washed, get out of the shower real quick. Um, and then I go to the toilet to go pee. And sitting on the toilet, you know, they say like the dilation station, I sat down and immediately um have a the strongest contraction that I'd had so far that I have to vocalize through, and it also takes me down to the floor. And my husband comes in, he's like, Um, I don't think that this is normal for 35 weeks pregnant. He's like, I think we need to go. And I'm like, okay. And so I'm trying to get dressed. He calls my midwife, she hears me have a contraction. She's like, Okay, I'm gonna send your records to the hospital and I'll meet you up there. I'm still in denial that I'm actually in labor at this point. Like, I'm thinking that this is the same nonsense that I've had because again, I haven't had any bloody show. I haven't had my water break. So we really get in the car this time to go to the hospital. But mind you, since I was planning a home birth, I did not have a hospital bag. I also did not have the car seat in my car because I wasn't planning on leaving the house with my baby. And also, I had carried my last baby to 42 weeks and had to be induced. So I was fully convinced that he was gonna be late. Um, and that my we might risk out of home birth because he came too late, not too early. Um, so pausing there real quick, I had a lot of specific prayers about this birth. One was that he would be, I would labor and he would be born during the day because I had had kind of a lot of anxiety and difficulty coping overnight with labor, um, because I'm not a night owl at all. Um, that it would be a short labor, that he would come on or before his due date, um, and that my water would not break until I was pushing and no medical interventions, you know, that he would be healthy, that I wouldn't tear, um, and that labor would be less than five hours.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:42

So all of that said, um, my husband gets home at two o'clock, and that's when you know things kind of start picking up. When I have the contraction that I'm vocalizing through on the toilet, it's about 4:45. Um, and we get in the car at 5 15, so it's rush hour traffic. We're outside, we're out in rural um Havana, which is outside of Tallahassee. We have to drive into Tallahassee at rush hour um to get to the hospital. So it takes us like 40 minutes to get there. And my husband is uh low-key panicking. We have car seats, our other children's car seats in the back. So the only place that I can sit is in the passenger seat with my seatbelt on, sitting straight up. Um, and at this point, that's when I realize I'm in labor because I realize that I'm in transition because I'm sweating and it's like cold outside, and I've got the air on as low as it'll go and the fan as high as it'll go. Um, and so I'm like, this is happening. So I get the car in that terrible position, and the contractions are on top of each other. Um, and I am blaring my birth playlist, which is all um praise and worship music, and I'm trying to sing in between contractions to like calm myself down. And I'm like, God lord, I just need a break. I need a break. And I got a break long enough that I could say some stuff to my husband. Um, and yeah, we get to the hospital. It is 6 06, whenever um I finally get into the room and get checked, which is really funny because I get out of the car after a contraction and bolt for the elevator at the labor and delivery because you have to go upstairs. Um, and I'm trying to get up there before I have another contraction because they're on top of each other at this point. I press the button in the elevator, the door closes. My husband's having to show his ID to the people at the desk. Um, and then he has to park the car. So I'm in the elevator by myself, the door opens, I'm on my hands and knees again, and the elevator vocalizing very loudly through um a contraction, and I see the feet of some woman, and she's like, It's okay, somebody's coming. And a nurse shows up with a wheelchair and they wheel me straight back to triage. Um, and they're like, ma'am, we need to get you on the table or we need to get you on the bed. Do you think you can get on the bed? And all I can say is no. Everything they asked me was just no. Um, and she's like, Well, we need to check you. And I'm like, no. And she's like, We need to put you on the monitor. Like, everything is just no. I managed to get out of the wheelchair, have another contraction on the floor. Um, and so she wraps the monitor around my belly while I'm kneeling next to the stretcher. We hear his heartbeat and it's good. And I immediately rip the monitor off. Um, and my husband and the nurse is talking to me this whole time. She's like, ma'am, if we don't, if we don't check you, we can't admit you. And I'm like, then don't. And my husband's like, Jocelyn. I'm like, and I have another contraction. And he sends the nurses out and he's like, I know you don't want to be here, but you have to comply with them. And of course I'm laboring, and so like I can't even have a rational conversation with him at this point. I wasn't trying to be difficult, I was genuinely just having such strong labor that I couldn't, I could not get myself onto the stretcher. Like it was not happening. And in my mind, I'm like, I'm having this baby. You don't have to admit me. I will have it right here on the floor. Like it's gonna happen, whether whatever you do. Um, but I managed to climb onto the stretcher in between contractions, have another one, flop on my back, and I'm like, you better check me now because I'm about to have another contraction. She checks me and I'm nine centimeters, and my bag is bulging, and they're asking me all these questions and um about you know how far along I am. I'm only I'm 35 weeks and four days at this point. Um, and they're like, Oh, you're a V back, and I say yes, but then they're like, Well, because you're a V back, you're at higher risk. And I'm like, No, I'm not, and I'm trying to explain to them that I've already had a V back and I was planning a home birth, but of course I can't, you know, talk through all the stuff with them. Um, and so long story short, they're trying to get me to do an IV, they're trying to get me to do all these things because I'm higher risk, um, and I'm refusing everything. They rush me back to a room after they realize how far along I am, and they've got the NICU team in there, all the lights are on, all the nurses, like everybody is in this room because he's premature, I'm a V-back, all the sort of stuff, and I'm about to push this baby out. Um, and I've as soon as I go in the room, they push me in the room on the stretcher. Um, I'm like, it's so hot in here. Turn the lights off, and they're talking about putting an IV in, and I'm just saying no to everything. And this angel nurse comes in and kicks everybody out and tells them to let me labor how I want to labor. She turns the lights off, and so then it's just her, me, and my husband. Um, and I'm still I couldn't get from the stretcher to the actual bed. I've got to the floor again. Apparently, that was just what was comfortable. Um, and I started feeling a lot of pressure like I needed to push, but I also felt like I needed to pee and I couldn't empty my bladder. So she gets me over to the toilet finally, and she's like, Yeah, this is a great place to labor. If we empty your bladder, um, then he, you know, things should progress even faster. I get onto the toilet and I reach down instinctively and I feel his head. And she's like, Oh, okay, all right, we need to get back to the bed. We can labor on the toilet, we're not having a baby in the toilet. Um going, no, no. And so I'm like, No, I still have to pee. I had now I feel like I have to poop. She's like, nope, that's the baby's head. And I'm just arguing with her, like, no, I still I need to poop. And then my water breaks um on the toilet, and out he comes. And thankfully she sticks her hand in between my legs and like in the toilet bowl and catches him. And he came my water broke right there at the end, like I had prayed. Um and he came right out with like no pushing. Um, and she grabs him and puts him right on my chest, and it's just me, her, and my husband in the bathroom. And I had had my baby, and the first thing I said was I think I said, Oh, thank goodness you're out. I was just so happy he was out and he was screaming, and he was the color was good, and he was perfect. Um, so she I'm holding him, the cord's still attached, plus Senna's still um inside, and so they helped me over to the bed, and the residents meet us there because I didn't have a doctor um or a provider that practiced at the hospital. Um, it was just whoever was on call. And it was these two very sweet residents. Um and they got me on the bed, and they're asking if I um consented to Pitocin after delivery, I guess, to help with placental delivery and prevention of postpartum hemorrhage, and I declined that. Um, and they were like, Okay, do you want to cut the cord? And I said, No, I want to wait until it's completely white and limp. Um, and so they did. They just stood there and I was holding my baby and we waited until it completely went limp. Um, because that would have been, I'm, you know, now I'm talking at this point now that I've birthed him. I'm like, yeah, I was supposed to have him at home and blah, blah, blah. And I'm just chattering. Um, and so finally my husband cuts the cord once it goes completely limp. And um, I wanted the they asked if, you know, if they could like help deliver the placenta or how I want to deliver the placenta. And I said, I want to wait until, you know, I want to deliver it naturally. If I need to stand up or move or position whatever, I want to do that. Um, so I then I felt contractions. My midwife came in at this point, um, and she's standing there and she's kind of helping advocate for me. Um, and I felt a contraction, and they did a little cord traction, delivered the placenta, and everything was perfect. Um, and I got my skin to the skin with him, and I got the oxytocin rush, and I was talking, like I said, talking right away. Like I was just so beside myself that I had gone into labor naturally and that I had had a baby, and this was at 6 46 that he was born. We arrived at the hospital at 6 06. So it was 40 minutes after we got there. Um, it was less than two hours of active labor, like less than two hours from the time that I realized that I was in labor. Um, and less than it was about four, no, like right at five hours from the time that I knew something was happening, and I called my husband to come home. Um, so I got my got my quick labor, got my daytime labor, um, no medical interventions. I did not tear. Um, I had no postpartum hemorrhage. He came out screaming, his Afghar scores were nine. Um, at 35 weeks and four days, he was six pounds and eight ounces. So he was like the size of a full-term baby. Um, and so they were asking me all sorts of questions like, did you have pre-eclampsia? Did you have um gestational diabetes, like all these things that could be risk factors for preterm birth? Um, and I'd had none of them that had been my healthiest pregnancy. And so then I go into the well, maybe my dates were off because at my anatomy scans or my a growth scan, something he had measured two weeks ahead. And then my last midwife appointment, my fundal height had measured two weeks ahead also. And once I started having this like preterm labor stuff two weeks before, I started questioning whether my dates were accurate. But my midwife never changed the date. Um, so I don't know if I truly had a chemical pregnancy and he was actually full term, or I don't know what happened, but he came out perfectly healthy like a full-term baby at 35 weeks.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:50

So that's incredible. That was his story. I remember actually when you reached out with your story and saying you were pregnant with your third, and I was asking, like, well, do you just want to wait until after you have your third baby? And then you can do all the stories, or you know, you can share two now and we can do that one later. And I'm pretty sure it was like the next day or something like that. He ended up being born.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:15

Yep, I got your email, and then yeah, whenever I responded to your email, I was like, Well, actually, he's already here.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:22

So fast.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:24

Yeah, and so he was, and I had prayed a lot about my postpartum period also because my second had been colicky and I had always had the heavy letdown with my milk and just mood stuff and hair falling out and night sweats and all that. I prayed a lot about having a calm baby and you know, um, my milk supply being normal and being able to sleep and all this stuff. Um, and he has been the most chill baby, my best nurser, even though he was so much smaller than my other girls. Um, and he's just so sweet and he's so easy to soothe, and he's it's just been yeah, it's been perfect. He's been perfect. I didn't get my home birth, unfortunately, but everything else was as as hands-off as possible. Like I said, I never got the IV, we never got any sort of interventions at the hospital. I just pretty much had him there and then went home. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:21

Yeah. What do you feel like God taught you through those experiences?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:28

Oh, um just reliance on him. It's funny that um I think I found your podcast by searching like the title of the podcast, I believe, just because that word came to me during this pregnancy and I actually shared it with another friend who was pregnant that, you know, I can make all of these plans and know all of this stuff and educate myself. But at the end of the day, um, you know, God's in control and his will is his plan is good, and you know, it's gonna be his will at the end of the day. Um, and so, you know, I just had to really rely on him with going to the hospital and with, you know, my whole pregnancy after having what we thought was the loss, not having an early ultrasound. There was some fear that tried to come up, um, especially whenever like I felt like his movements changed, and I just really had to spend a lot of time in prayer um and not listening to fear and knowing that fear doesn't come from the Lord, um, and that perfect love cast out fear. And that was a verse that I, you know, prayed over my pregnancy and spoke over myself a lot through um through birth or through pregnancy and birth with him. Um and that that has been, I think, the biggest turning point is not making decisions out of fear. Um, I think a lot of with pregnancy, there's so many things that you can fear, you know. Know that your glucose test isn't going to come back normal, that um you're gonna see something on the anatomy scan that's less than ideal, there's gonna be a birth defect, all those sorts of things. Um how the labor's gonna go, how painful it's gonna be, you know, what the baby's gonna be like, all those sorts of things. Um, and that can cause us to make decisions in, you know, pregnancy and birth based on fear and not trusting in God. And so that was that this whole pregnancy and just my child rearing, I've learned that to not be anxious and not make decisions out of fear, but to pray and to um, you know, ask for the Holy Spirit's guidance in every every little aspect of life.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:46

It sounds like God was answering those prayers too throughout your pregnancy, like with your pain and with your restless legs, and any time that you would pray about something, that's that's incredible and just faith building.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:59

Yes. I listened to a lot of podcasts um on your podcast and then also on the um supernatural childbirth mama's podcast, and it was yeah, it was a definitely built my faith because I know that God can heal and God can literally do anything. And in the New Testament, Jesus pretty much every time he heals somebody, he says, Because of your faith, you're healed because of your faith. And I just had to stand in that and know his goodness and that his will is not for us to suffer and not for us to be in pain and not to be fearful. Um, and so if I truly trusted that and I truly believe that, um, then I just had to walk it out. And yeah, it's not, I would say it's actually anything that I did. It was just fully believing that God could do it and not listening to any other lies, anything that you know the world had to say, or even any symptoms that came up in my body. Um, if they wanted to come back up, I would just pray over it and believe that God could heal me and I was healed and just walk through that and walk out that.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:10

That's beautiful and inspiring too. Do you have any advice for moms or dads out there?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:18

Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I've learned is just once again, like be in prayer about everything. Don't make any decisions out of fear or what ifs, or um, you know, when it comes to getting pregnant, being pregnant, having children. Um, you know, as your children get older, there's still going to be things, there's always going to be things that are going to, you know, cause fear and cause us to second guess ourselves. Um, and just be in prayer about every little thing and ask for the Holy Spirit's guidance and don't make a decision out of fear or in, you know, an anxiety. And if things are confusing, if there's a lot of other voices um that are telling you to make one decision or fear-mongering or what have you, um, listen for that still small voice, you know, of the Holy Spirit. Um, He God's voice is never loud, it's never confusing, it's never gonna cause anxiety or fear. And so, yeah, just that's that's the ultimate thing right there is just do that and not operate out of fear, but just be in prayer about everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:27

I agree. That's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming and sharing these stories. I really appreciate it. Anytime anyone wants or is willing to take the time to share the stories, it means so much to me. And you have very beautiful, beautiful stories. I can't believe that you had a 42-weeker and then a 35-weeker. No one is as shocked as me.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:51

I still can't wrap my brain around it. I would still be pregnant. My due date is Sunday. Yeah, oh my gosh, that's right. Yeah. So uh, well, I really appreciate you having me on, and I know it was a lot, and I am totally a birth nerd, and so I have a lot to say, so I know that was a lot that I appreciate you having me on.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:10

No, I'm all for it. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. You can reach me at Surrendered Birth Services on Instagram or email me at contact at Surrendered Birth Services.com. Be sure not to miss an episode by hitting the follow button. Also, we'd love for you to leave a written review of the show so that more people's births and lives can be changed by the love of Jesus and the empowerment of accurate birth education. If you really enjoyed this episode in particular, please take a screenshot of it and post it to your Instagram story tagging Surrendered Birth Services. If you would like to be a guest on the Surrendered Birth Stories podcast, please click the link in the episode show notes to fill out your interest form. Also, if you're interested in taking my childbirth classes, birth consultations, or having me as your birth doula, please click on the link in the show notes to take you to my website for online and in-person options. Just as a reminder, this show is not giving medical advice. So please continue to see your personal care provider as needs arise. We hope you have a great week. And remember, learn all that you can, make the best plans, and then leave it in God's hands.