Episode 333 Shelby's HBAC after Placental Abruption + Faith Over Fear + Defining True Physiological Birth

“My birth stories are my testimony…I have never trusted God more with any situation in my entire life other than with the lives of my children and bringing them into this world.”

Shelby’s story is one of faith, trust, and surrendering. Shelby joins us today from Indiana sharing her wildly traumatic Cesarean story due to a placental abruption and her peaceful, healing home birth.

Shelby was on vacation at a cabin in New York at 34 weeks when she woke up to regular contractions and heavy bleeding. She rushed to the nearest hospital, was put under general anesthesia for her Cesarean, was transferred via a separate ambulance from her baby to a hospital 3 hours away, and had a 23-day NICU stay in the height of COVID 800 miles away from her family and community.

She and her husband were certain they would not have any more children. But as they fought for healing through faith-based counseling, their hearts yearned for another baby and a chance at a healing birth experience.

She completely surrendered, found holistic prenatal care, and created a birth space for herself where she knew she felt safe. She was brave and vulnerable, and her second birth was everything she hoped it would be.

As Meagan says at the end of this episode, “Get educated. Love yourself. Have faith in you and your body and your baby. You are amazing. You are a true Woman of Strength.”

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details

Meagan: Women of Strength, we have our friend, Shelby, here with us today sharing her HBAC story. In addition to her HBAC story, she’s got some other unique things that I think are going to be important for us to talk about today. One is placental abruption. That is something that is definitely a reason for a Cesarean and one of those absolute needed reasons for a Cesarean. We are going to talk a little bit more about that and then we are going to talk about faith and how faith in whatever faith looks like to you, it’s so important to cling onto that. Shelby has some messages about that.

Then we really want to talk about physiological birth. We hear it. We see it online. I mean, if you go on Instagram and you go into the birth world, you’re going to see it almost 100% guaranteed but what does that really mean? We’re going to be diving in with that today.

Shelby, you are in– where did it say, Indiana?

Shelby: Indiana, yeah.

Meagan: I have to look at my notes. Indianapolis, Indiana. She’s in Indiana so Women of Strength, if you are coming from her area, definitely listen up as well.

Okay, so we have a Review of the week and this is by birthing confident. It says, “Invaluable information. I love this podcast. As a mom planning a VBAC and a VBAC-trained birth doula, the information shared on this podcast is invaluable. I have become so passionate about helping all women know their birth options and avoid unnecessary C-sections. I think this podcast is great for all expectant mothers” and I 100% agree with that.

This podcast is for anyone and everyone because like she said we are wanting to help people avoid unnecessary and/or undesired Cesareans. We have a ridiculous Cesarean rate. It is through the roof. I would love to see it start dropping and I don’t know if this podcast truly is going to impact the Cesarean rate the way I would love it to, but I do believe that it’s a starting point. It’s a starting place for you guys to learn your options for birth after Cesarean and to learn how to have a better Cesarean experience if you have one because that’s also a really important factor that I think a lot of people forget about. Not only do we share just VBAC stories, but we do share healing, beautiful CBAC stories and repeat Cesareans.

Thank you so much, birthingconfident, for your review. As always, please if you haven’t yet, leave us a review. You can do so on Apple Podcasts. You can message us. You can rate us on Spotify and all of the places that you listen to your podcast.

Meagan: Okay, cute Shelby. Welcome to the show.

Shelby: Thank you. I’m so excited.

Meagan: I am so excited. So let’s dive in. I am actually really excited to talk a little bit more about placental abruption as well and hear about your experience.

Shelby: Yeah. I don’t think I even knew it was a thing honestly before it happened to me. I think it’s something that people don’t really talk about and it’s probably a good thing because it’s really scary but also, it would have been good to maybe know what was going on. I know it wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but yeah. I just had no idea that was even something that could happen.

With my first pregnancy, it was very run-of-the-mill. Everything was good and I was planning on birthing at a birthing center in Indianapolis so I was still going for that natural, unmedicated birth. I didn’t really know anything that went into that as you do with your first and I feel like you do the typical making the baby registry and doing all of these things that don’t really actually help you with your birth. Not that I would have gotten the chance to even try anyway.

I feel like I just definitely didn’t really have much knowledge and I think the problem is that you don’t know what you don’t know which is why I literally recommend this podcast to all of my friends who are even pregnant with their first baby because I’m like, “Just learn the things. Learn all of the things.” We took a very basic birthing course through the birthing center and it was just virtual, like four sessions and it was not super helpful honestly but we also didn’t get to implement it.

The pregnancy itself was just very normal. I mean, I have pretty much all of the symptoms which is the worst like really horrible rib pain and nausea and heartburn and all of the things. What was crazy though, this was in 2021 and I actually got COVID while I was pregnant also. Everyone I’ve talked to thinks that’s probably why I had a placental abruption.

Meagan: That’s interesting to know.

Shelby: Yeah. I had it in about my 5th month of pregnancy in September and I was due in January. It was horrible for a week but then I recovered and I was back to working out. I was totally fine. I didn’t have any blood pressure issues after that. Everything reallly seemed okay.

We decided at 33 weeks that we were going to go to New York which is really far away from Indiana on vacation for Thanksgiving to gather with all of my husband’s family. My midwives cleared it. Like I said, I was working out. I was healthy. I was fine.

The trip was going super well. I was working out while we were there. I was doing barre obviously so I was doing safe things. Fitness is a really big part of my life but also, it’s not something I added in during pregnancy. It was just normal for me.

Meagan: I used to take barre too. I took barre and was teaching barre with my second TOLAC. It’s a very low impact but very, very good for strength and cardio.

Shelby: Yeah, and my husband and my father-in-law were doing them with me so we have some really awesome videos of me at 34 weeks pregnant working out with my husband and my father-in-law doing barre.

But yeah. Everything was going well and anything that was slightly risky which really even wasn’t, I wasn’t doing. They did this office chair floor hockey where they were pushing each other around in office chairs and playing hockey in a building and I didn’t do it. I sat on the sidelines and observed. I was being really what I feel like was cautious.

Meagan: Responsible.

Shelby: Right, yeah. We even took family pictures on Saturday and everything, I have pictures of us smiling and laughing and then literally the next day we had a baby which was crazy.

I start having Braxton Hicks contractions at 20 weeks. For both of my pregnancies, I just feel like I start having them really early so they are not shocking for me. But that Saturday, I remember several times looking at my husband and being like, “These feel a little stronger than I remember them being,” but with your first, you don’t know anything.

I kept mentioning that to him but they weren’t super regular and there were no other signs of anything, just Braxton Hicks contractions. Then that night when we went to bed, I couldn’t really sleep. I was laying there by myself the only one awake.

We were all staying in this big cabin together which was great. My husband and I were in our room. At 4:00 AM– this is so funny to me now that I know what labor is actually like. At 4:00 AM, I started timing contractions and they were less than 5 minutes apart when I started timing them. I’m like, What was wrong with me?

So after an hour of them being like that, I woke my husband up and I was like, “I think you should go get your mom,” because she is actually a midwife which was good.

Meagan: Oh, convenient.

Shelby: She was in the room next to us. Yeah. I was like, “I think you should go get your mom because this is not right.” They were not just less than 5 minutes apart. They were pretty uncomfortable. She came over and checked things out. I know now that she definitely knew that something was going on but she was really good at keeping her cool. She was like, “Why don’t you go shower and try to relax?”

When I went to go to the bathroom and shower, I started bleeding. Like I said, I knew nothing about labor, so I was like, “Oh, well maybe I am in labor” which was really scary because I was only 34 weeks but it was a lot of bleeding. I was like, “Well, I don’t know what’s normal,” but I know that obviously, my mother-in-law knew what was going on.

She was like, “It’s okay. We’ll have Chad (my father-in-law) just go start the car and we’ll go in and get everything checked out.” So we were in the middle of the Adirondacks which is literally nowhere. We had a 25-minute drive to the nearest hospital and this hospital, I mean we were probably the only people there. It was 5:30 in the morning maybe.

They didn’t have an OB there. They didn’t have a surgical team there. They were all at home so we come in and the front desk lady is like, “What’s your occupation?” She’s typing like a sloth. I was like, “Girlfriend, I am bleeding and I am in full-on labor. Can we just go inside?”

So that was crazy. She’s asking me to sign stuff and I’m telling my husband, “You have to sign.” At this point, contractions were pretty back-to-back and they were super strong. I could tell I was bleeding with every one. I could feel it.

They got me back into the ER and the poor nurse. I know that this was probably so scary for her, especially with an OB not even there but she was asking me, “Have you felt her move recently? I can’t find a heartbeat.” I was like, “I don’t know. I’m in labor. I don’t know if she’s moving or not.” Every time I’d have a contraction, she’d just be like, “Oh wow, that’s a lot of blood.” I’m like, “Thank you. I know.”

Meagan: You’re like, “I can feel it.”

Shelby: Yeah, it was wild. By the time the OB got there, she checked. She said I was fully dilated and effaced.

Meagan: Holy cow.

Shelby: This was maybe 2 hours. It was not long. Now that I’ve been through a full labor, I’m like, that is crazy. My body had to have just been in panic mode like, We have to get this baby out right now.

She checked and something that was kind of cool was I knew that my baby was head down. She had been from 20 weeks. She was perfectly always in the same spot because I could always feel her kicks really high and one of the times the OB checked, she goes, “Oh, and she’s breech so we’re just going to have to go.” I was like, “She’s not breech. Check again. She’s not breech.”

She checked again and she was like, “Oh, you’re right.” I was like, “Yeah.”

So the nurse brings in all of the scrubs and stuff for my husband to put on and as he’s getting dressed and everything, he’s fully ready to go. He’s all excited because he wasn’t really super scared.

Meagan: He didn’t understand what was going on.

Shelby: Yeah, but also, he’s like, “I’m going to meet my baby today. This is so cool.” And the literal most gut-wrenching thing of my life was when the OB was like, “No, we don’t have time. It’s going to be under general. You can’t come.” She wheeled me out of the room and I looked back and saw him standing there fully dressed just like yeah. It was awful. In that moment, I wasn’t even worried about myself and I wasn’t worried about the baby. I was just like, He’s going to be traumatized from this. This is horrible.

They took me back there and I’m in labor holding onto the top of the bed. I was only in there probably for a minute, but it is scary. The whole room is white and there is somebody over here counting instruments. They stick a mask on your face and you can barely breathe and then the next thing you know you wake up in recovery.

I woke up as the only person in this room. There were maybe two guys sitting at the desk but that was it. Nobody else was there. They didn’t say anything to me. Nobody told me if she was okay. I knew nothing. Yeah. I was just laying here.

Eventually, my husband came in and he showed me pictures of her. He was like, “She’s okay. She’s on oxygen but she’s doing all right.” But yeah. It was totally crazy.

Then they moved me to– I don’t even know. It probably wasn’t actually a postpartum room. I don’t even know if they have those at this hospital. I feel like they probably try to send everybody everywhere else.

Then basically, they told me, “Hey, you have 10 minutes if you want to go see her and try to hold her before the ambulances get here to transfer you guys,” because there wasn’t a NICU there and they probably weren’t even– they couldn’t have cared for her.

I think as soon as we got there, they must have called Albany Medical Center because it’s 3 hours away. She was born at 7:30 in the morning. I started timing contractions at 4:00 AM. We didn’t leave until after 5:00. The whole thing was so fast.

I’m getting ready to get out of bed and get in a wheelchair to go see her and they didn’t warn me how much pain I would be in and they didn’t really help me get out of bed either. As I went to stand up, I leaned back a little and after you’ve had a C-section, I almost passed out.

Meagan: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

Shelby: Yeah, so I get in this wheelchair and I get in the room where she is. She’s got the oxygen mask on and she’s got all of these tubes and all of the things and you could tell in the pictures I was barely with it. What I remember bothering me the most is I had obviously been intubated so I felt like there was stuff in my throat because it was so swollen. My mouth was all dry and I got to hold her for a couple of minutes but it didn’t even feel real.

Then the NICU team got there. She was on one ambulance and I was on a different one and my husband was in a car so we were all separated for 3 hours to Albany. Halfway there, my ambulance– so hers left first, and halfway there, we passed hers pulled over on the side of the road. I started panicking.

There was no communication between the two ambulances.

Meagan: Oh my heavens. I’m dying right now.

Shelby: Yeah. The EMT, bless her heart, was amazing. She was like, “It could be anything. It could be one of the monitors isn’t hooked up right and they’re just stopping to do that or they need to change out an oxygen tank and they can’t do that while driving.” She helped me calm down a little bit. She probably shouldn’t have said this, but we got closer to Albany and she said, “We don’t need to panic.” I don’t remember if she actually said this but she said, “Unless they pass us again going fast.”

I kid you not but we were 5 minutes out from the hospital and her ambulance went by us with lights and sirens on. I had maybe seen her for 10 minutes before this and she couldn’t contact the other ambulance. So just traumatizing, all of it.

Thankfully, when we pulled into the hospital, the first thing that the guy on the baby’s ambulance did was come over and say, “Everything is okay.” It was just something. They had a lead or something come off so they needed to stop and take care of it so it wasn’t a big deal but it made it feel like a big deal.

We are in New York still for all of this. We get in there and I have to get settled in the postpartum section and she has to get settled in the NICU and then finally, hours later, I was still bleeding a lot so they were trying to take care of that. They were doing the fundal rubs and I remember texting my mom and I was like, “If they do it again, I’m going to punch someone in the face,” because it was so awful. They were saying, “It’s because the EMT didn’t do them on the ride over that you are bleeding so much,” so they kept coming over and doing them. It was so awful.

So then we had a 23-day NICU stay in New York, just my husband and I because no one else could even visit us because it was 2021 in New York which was pretty bad for COVID. Once I was discharged after 4 days, technically, the only visitors allowed were my husband and I with our NICU bracelets to see her. Even if they had someone come, they couldn’t even come into the hospital. We didn’t really want to leave the hospital because we wanted to be there with her.

We were Ubering to Target. We didn’t have a car because we flew there. We are Ubering to Target and thank goodness they had a Ronald McDonald house there so we were staying there and they supplied a lot of dinners and housing which was the biggest blessing in the world. I literally don’t know what we would have done otherwise.

Getting discharged without your baby is super horrible and she was only 4 pounds, 10 ounces so she was really little and nursing just never took off for us. I didn’t get to try for a while even because she was being tube-fed and she could barely stay awake because she was so tiny. Every nurse that you’d have would tell you their tips and tricks which is great but not helpful when every 3 hours you are being told something different.

We tried so hard and eventually got to the point where it was like, “Let’s just get home. We are 800 miles from home and if it takes a bottle, that’s fine. We just need to get home.” Yeah. After 23 days, my amazing mom drove to New York because we didn’t even have a car seat. It was all at home. She picked us up and drove us back home.

Meagan: Oh my gosh.

Shelby: Yeah, so then you are coming home with this little 5-pound baby and you are like, “How are we even allowed to do this? She doesn’t even barely fit in the car seat.”

It was so crazy. After that, we were really unsure if we’d have more kids. Especially right after, we were like, “I don’t know if we can do that again.” My husband and I always wanted lots of kids and a big family. That has always been something that we wanted so after that first experience– and you do a quick Google search of placental abruption and they say, “Once you’ve had one, it’s 15% more likely that you’ll have another one.”

You’re like, I can’t go through that again. That was horrible. I knew that if we got pregnant again, I was like, I’m going to feel like a ticking time bomb. All of these also quick Google searches tell you that it can happen as early as 20 weeks. Thank goodness we made it to 34 but I’m like, If that happens at 20, baby is probably not going to make it.

Meagan: That’s a scary thought. That’s a really scary thought. They really have advanced the medical world so much to a point where even when babies are born really, really preemie, there are higher chances than there used to be, but the thought of that in general is just too much to think about.

Shelby: Oh yeah, and my mom who drove to New York to get us– which is probably part of the reason they discharged us. She’s a NICU nurse so she actually knew how to feed this litle 5-pound baby who was still causing us feeding issues and all of the things, but I’ve obviously heard from her too the stories of the really early babies. I mean, even 29 weeks and I was like, It’s just too much.

But we also knew that we couldn’t stay in that place because we both were not in a good place with it. My husband was obviously so traumatized for different reasons and I was too. It was just a lot. We started seeking out some faith-based counseling basically like spiritual reconciliationing kind of to work through it all because I knew even if we weren’t going to have more kids, I could not just live with that raw the way it was.

Meagan: Both of you needed to process that.

Shelby: Yeah. We were just praying for the release of that and we even prayed over our poor baby because I was like, She’s probably holding trauma from that too. The losses that I was experiencing were also losses for her. She missed out on the golden hour and a peaceful entry into this world. It would drive me crazy thinking that her first moments in this world were with people she didn’t know and it was bright in the room and being hooked up to machines. I was like, That was probably so scary for her too.

We could tell for a long time, probably her first 7 months that she was so sensory. I mean, just screamed and hated the car seat, hated transitions, hated bedtime. I mean, it was basically non-stop screaming for 7 months. I was like, You were supposed to be in the womb for 6 more weeks and instead, you were in the NICU with lights and sounds and all of the things.

We just started praying really hard over all of it and speaking to some really trusted friends who worked through trauma with people. I started listening to The VBAC Link. This is probably when it started obsessively. I was doing Amazon deliveries just for fun on the side. I could take the baby with me so I’d put her in her car seat. This was eventually when she stopped screaming in the car seat so it took a while.

I would put my AirPods in and while I did all of these deliveries, I would just listen to back to back to back episodes forever and for months. I think honestly that was probably what started getting me thinking even about more kids. I started learning about VBACs and how really the odds of having a VBAC are not that horrible and that it’s really not any riskier than a second C-section and I was like, I really don’t want another C-section because that was– I mean, I couldn’t even roll over in bed by myself.

My husband told me, “You don’t usually need me, but that was the one time you actually needed me.” He was like, “Honestly, that was really hard to see you in that much pain and struggling that much.” I was like, “Yeah. I couldn’t even pee by myself.”

Meagan: Oh, I remember my husband literally helping with my second. He had to hold me up in the shower. I was like, “I just can’t stand the whole time in the shower. Can you just hold me up and shower me?” I remember feeling so vulnerable and I was frustrated because I’m like, This isn’t my personality. I’m very independent. Why is this happening? Yes.

Shelby: Independent and strong. Yes. But also in my fashion, I was walking to the NICU by myself very slowly by day two. I’m like, What was wrong with me? But also, we didn’t have a choice. I was about to be discharged. We had to figure something out. Thankfully, I didn’t need to stay for 4 days, but because I had nowhere else to go, they were like, “You can stay all 4 days if you want.” I was like, “Okay, great.”

But yeah, so I just started learning everything and consuming as much information as I could about physiological birth and about VBACs and there really isn’t a ton of information about placental abruption. There are risk factors which I had none other than COVID which no one talks about yet because it had just started, but I didn’t have high blood pressure. I obviously didn’t do drugs.

Meagan: You didn’t have multiples. It was a singleton. Yeah.

Shelby: It never happened before. My placenta was in a good location.

Meagan: Your membranes hadn’t ruptured.

Shelby: Yeah, my water never ruptured with her so it was crazy. But around when she was probably 9 or 10 months, I couldn’t even believe it, but I told my husband, “I’m not totally opposed to having another baby.”

He was like, “For real?” We talked about it and we prayed about it a lot and I told God over and over again, “If I get pregnant again, this is going to be the biggest test of my trust in You ever because I know that if I try to worry about it, I’m going to go crazy. If I try to control the outcome which I can’t, I’m going to go crazy.”

So it basically was like, “If it happens, I’m just going to have to trust you with it fully. No holding back.”

Actually, before we were even pregnant, started shopping around for providers.

Meagan: That is key. That is so important.

Shelby: Yeah. We do have one hospital locally that has midwives and birthing pools. I was like, “Okay, that sounds like a pretty good option for a VBAC.” We went to talk to them– well, I went by myself. I had my list of questions ready. I walked in ready to not take any crap because I also knew a lot about what they were probably going to say and they said, “Yeah.” First of all, they wouldn’t call it a VBAC of course because nobody wants to do that.

Meagan: TOLAC.

Shelby: That was the first thing. I was like, “No. I’m going to do this.” Yeah, so they were like, “We’ll allow you to try.” I was like, “Okay.” They were boasting about their VBAC rates and it was 60%. It was not very high and I was like, “Umm, okay. That’s not that awesome, but all right.”

They started listing off the things you have to do because I had all of these questions ready because I knew. So you have to have an IV hooked up. I was like, That’s annoying. I was like, “Can you at least have the hep lock?” They said, “Yeah, that would be fine.” Then they said, “But you have to have continuous monitoring.” I was like, “Okay. I really, really don’t want continuous monitoring,” and they try to make it sound better like, “Well, it’s waterproof and it’s mobile so you can still move around with it,” but I also knew about the statistics of continuous monitoring and how a lot of times they indicate things that aren’t actually an issue and then especially if you are a VBAC patient, they’re like, “Well, time for another C-section because baby’s heart rate is dropping.”

Baby’s heart rate is supposed to fluctuate as they are descending.

Meagan: Just like ours.

Shelby: There was that and then they also said, “You can labor in the water, but VBACs aren’t allowed to push in the water.” I was like, “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?” Especially if it’s a VBAC patient, we should be doing everything we can to ease the labor. Why would you make them get out right when they are feeling like they need to push? They were like, “Oh, well it makes the OBs uncomfortable.” I was like, “Well, the OBs aren’t delivering this baby so I don’t really care what makes the OBs uncomfortable.”

So they made me schedule out all of my prenatal appointments and I went to one of them but I told my husband, “I just don’t want to have to fight for it. I know I can. I know that I can go in there and say ‘No thank you’ and be confident in myself, but I don’t really want to.” So I had never ever even considered a home birth. I don’t even remember how, but we somehow heard about the only home birth midwife in our area and I scheduled an appointment with her. I didn’t even get established with her until I was 19 weeks. I pushed out the OB care for a really long time when we found out we were pregnant because I knew we didn’t really love them.

So I just didn’t go for a long time. I felt like everything was good. I felt like I was pretty in tune with everything. But yeah, I skipped a little bit but when we got pregnant with our second, it was a lot more immediate where I started praying about it all like, Okay God. This is for You because You are the only one who knows how long this baby is going to gestate and you’re the only One who knows if it’s going to end how we hope it does.

I started praying. This is something. I started praying really specific prayers. I believe that God cares even about the little things which really aren’t little things in this, but I prayed that my placenta would be in a good spot and I prayed that my placenta would be strong and that it would make it all the way to term and I prayed that this baby would make it all the way to term. Literally every little concern I had, I pretty much sat in the shower every day and just spoke it aloud. I was like, God, I know that You are a God of healing and restoration and I know that You can do that for me.

I believed that through this birth, He was going to heal the trauma from our first because I was like, that feels like this is how it has to go at this point.

We went and we met this midwife. She didn’t doubt for a second. She didn’t say anything that was like, “I’ll let you try.” She was like, “You sound like a perfect candidate for a VBAC.” I told her that I had COVID and she was like, “Well, that’s probably why your placenta ruptured.” She told me that the placentas she had seen throughout COVID and recently, she was like, “They are not healthy and they are not sustaining a lot of them until the end of pregnancy or if they are, they don’t look good by the time they get there.” She wasn’t surprised.

But yeah, she said, “You sound like a perfect candidate. I think you can do this.” At every appointment with her, we’d sit there for an hour and we’d talk and she totally respected all of my wishes. She’d ask me if I wanted to do something. I’d ask her for information and then she’d let me decide either way which was cool too.

With our second pregnancy, we didn’t use a Doppler until I was in labor. I could feel her moving first of all so I knew that she was well but we actually started using a fetoscope which was really cool. You can’t start using it until after 20 weeks so we had to wait for a really long time to hear her heartbeat but our toddler would watch us do it too. It was really cute because she would walk around with this fetoscope around her neck and she would go put it on daddy’s belly and say, “I’m listening to Daddy’s baby,” or she’d put it on her belly and it was really sweet.

Yeah, we took a full 180 with this pregnancy. I had learned so much at this point that I was so confident in my body and in my instincts and all of it. We didn’t find out the gender which with our first one, we found out at 8 weeks with the blood test. We didn’t find out gender. I didn’t do much prenatal care. We didn’t do genetic screening anyway with the first one either because that didn’t really matter to us.

But yeah, I didn’t even do an ultrasound until we were 32 weeks or something. We waited a long time because I had learned a lot about ultrasounds and how we actually don’t know as much about them as we might think we know.

Meagan: Might think we know. Yeah.

Shelby: I read about how sometimes the techs are like, “Oh, they’re moving away from it,” because they can feel it and I’m like, “We’re not going to do that.” We waited and just had the technician who worked in our midwife’s office which was perfect because we could tell her we wanted a very minimal one just to check basically the heart and vital organs and the brain to make sure everything was okay.

She would pause the screen and take the measurement she needed and take the Doppler off and everything so it was very minimal. I was like, “I don’t really care if they have 10 fingers and toes. We’ll figure that out later. Just check the important stuff. Don’t tell us the gender.” We did that and she basically was like, “Everything from as far as I can tell looks good.” That was pretty much all we did.

My lifestyle was still very active and I was eating as best as I could. I didn’t really feel like I had anything that was anything of concern which was perfect. I remember at my 30-week appointment, my midwife looked at me. We hadn’t really talked about specific expectations I think for the birth because I didn’t really know what I needed or what I wanted but she looked at me at my 30-week appointment without prompting and said, “I think what you really need from me in this birth is for me to just be there and for you to just do your thing.”

Meagan: I love that.

Shelby: I was like, “That’s actually perfect. That’s exactly what I want,” because at that point, I had listened to hundreds of birth stories and watched hundreds of birth videos and shown them all to my husband. Everything I was learning, obviously I was soaking it in but if there was anything I felt was pertinent to me, I was showing to him too. He really benefited from that because we went into birth also with him not being afraid. He would watch birth videos with me and he’d be like, “Wow, that’s amazing.”

That’s one of my things. Knowledge is power and educate your husbands too or whoever is going to be with you at your birth. Physiological birth especially, they should be comfortable with it. They should know what it looks like and how it progresses and how to best support you in that.

That was huge for us. I made him watch a lot of birth videos and he wasn’t even weirded with it by the time it came around. But yeah.

She said that and I was like, “Yeah, you know, that sounds great.”

We made it all the way to 40 weeks and I just felt completely at peace the whole time. I wasn’t worried and I was like, “She’s going to come when she’s going to come.” Another thing they had told me at the hospital was, “We only let VBACs go to 41 weeks and once you go past 41 weeks, you have to have a C-section.” I was like, “I’m not going to do that. I don’t even know what my typical gestation is because I haven’t made it term.”

Meagan: I was going to say, you didn’t even make it to 40 weeks.

Shelby: Yeah, so my midwife was like, “Well, if you get to 42 weeks, we’ll do an ultrasound and make sure everything is okay,” but she wasn’t putting a timeline on it which was so great. I did a lot of courses. I stay at home with my daughters so I just listened to a lot of courses. I did the Christian HypnoBirthing one, our midwives did a course. It was really cool. They got us all together at one of their houses and went through a course with us and our spouses with all the moms who were about to have babies.

I also did the Free Birth Society course which I was kind of so/so on but I was like, “If I want to know how to home birth, I just want to know about everything. I want to know about the complications that could happen and what you should do in those situations,” so even though I wasn’t planning to free birth, I still wanted to learn all of the things. That was one of the things that I did and I was just listening to constant everything.

When we made it to– I guess it was two days before my due date, so July 29, I was having fairly consistent contractions in the evening and so we were all excited. We’re timing them and we were texting our moms but then they stopped the next morning which was a Sunday before church so we were getting ready to go to church but then I lost my mucus plug in the shower. I was like, “Okay, just in case something is going to happen, we should probably watch online.”

We stayed home, watched online, and nothing was happening all day. We knew that we shouldn’t get our hopes up but also you make it that far and you’re like, “I’m just ready.” Our church had a picnic that night at a local water park so I was like, “Well, nothing has happened all day. We might as well go because we didn’t go to church.”

We went to this picnic and we were doing the mini playground with our 1-year-old at the time who is water crazy. I think I jumped to get into one of the tubes and felt something kind of funny then around 8:30 PM, I had a really strong contraction. I was like, “Okay. That was unusual.” I went to the bathroom and had bloody show so I went back out and got my husband. I was like, “We’ve got to go home.” On the drive home, contractions were 8-10 minutes apart. I showered and we called the midwife and our photographer and my mom and grandma who were coming to get my daughter and the dogs because we didn’t know how it would go so we didn’t want anybody else there who needed care obviously.

Meagan: Well and your last labor was actually pretty dang fast.

Shelby: Right, yeah so I was like, “I don’t know how this is going to go.” My mom came and helped us clean up the kitchen which is where we were going to put the pool and everything. The midwife and her student arrived at around 10:30 PM. At this point, I was between