Episode 273 Amina's Incredible VBAC + Dialing in & Following Your Heart

The VBAC Link

Amina’s story shows the true POWER of a supportive provider. Both of her birth stories had similar interventions (but given in very different ways) with very different provider reactions and a very different outcome!

“That was the biggest change for me. It’s not like the second birth was just smooth. There were moments when there was blood. There were moments when her heart rate was in distress, but there was that confidence that this woman could do this. This baby is safe and we are doing this together.” - Amina

Amina also shares a very special story about visualization during pregnancy and how that can come into play during birth.

Her story is a perfect example of listening to the heart, mind, and body in all stages of childbirth.

Additional Links

Needed Website

Amina’s App

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details

Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. We are in mid-January and we have an amazing story for you today. We have our friend, Amina. She and I were talking before we started recording. She was like, “You are changing lives. You are inspiring. You are changing people’s pregnancies,” and I just want to talk on that. One, it’s absolutely an honor to even hear those words, and is so touching, but two, I’d like to counteract that even and say you guys, you, Women of Strength, you, Amina, you– every single person that has been on this podcast, is who is changing lives and these Women of Strength wanting to VBAC and know their options. I’m just here creating the platform. I’m so grateful to do this. It really, really is so amazing to hear story after story, to hear journeys, to hear how people overcome fear and anxiety and doubt.

You know, we’re not here to prove people wrong, but I do love a good proving someone wrong story when it’s like, “Yeah, you tell me my pelvis is too small. I’m going to show you.” No, but really, it’s just such an honor to be here. I’ve been on the podcast now for a year solo without my partner in crime, Julie, and it’s been really hard without her because I just loved being with her, but I’m still so grateful to be with you guys today.

Like I said, our friend, Amina, has a VBAC story. I just want to tell you a little bit about her. She is an International Yoga Teacher. If you haven’t checked out her page, you definitely need to. She’s a mother of two and the founder of Honey Studio and of the Movement and Mindfulness App. We know mindfulness, breathwork, and movement are all things that are going to benefit us through our child-birthing years. She is uncovering the infinite possibilities within your body and mind. I love that. Uncovering the infinite possibilities within your body and mind.

Review of the Week

Amina, we’re going to get into your story in just one moment, but of course, we have a Review of the Week. I love reading these reviews so as always, if you haven’t had a chance to drop us a review, please do so. You can do so on Apple Podcasts. I don’t know, Spotify? Maybe. Maybe. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen reviews on Spotify, or Google, or you can just email us.

This is from sydhayes and it’s from Apple Podcasts back in May of 2023. It says, “A Wealth of Information.” It says, “This podcast has so many helpful tools when it comes to birth and especially when avoiding a Cesarean. I listened to it every chance I had when I was planning for a VBAC and I know it helped me achieve my goals. Hearing other women’s stories is so powerful. Thank you for this resource.”

Look, she’s saying it too. Your stories are so powerful. We love them so much and if you also didn’t know, we are sharing them on social media because we do have so many inquiries on the podcast. We’d like to try to share more stories on social media. So if you haven’t submitted your story, you can do so and you can also submit for social media.

Amina’s Stories

Meagan: Okay beautiful lady. I am just smiling. I feel like my cheeks already hurt just looking at you. You are glowing. I can just see the excitement and the beauty coming out of you to share this story. Well, to share your stories. I’d love to turn the time over to you.

Amina: Thank you so much for having me. Like I was telling you before we started recording, this is a dream moment of mine. It’s a very manifestation kind of moment because when I was listening to all of these empowering stories, to get to share mine is a true, true honor. It’s something on my vision board so I’m just so grateful to be here.

Meagan: Well, thank you. I love that you are talking about your vision board. I think sometimes when we step back and we close our eyes and we truly visualize our life, our journey, and our goals, we truly can help achieve those by doing so.

Amina: Totally. I’m going to track this a little bit later on, but I was sitting with a friend in the very middle of all of this. She was telling me that she visualized her whole birth from the beginning to the end and that she saw it all. When I heard her calmly sitting over coffee saying that, I was like, “Wait a minute.” I went home and did my homework and I wrote down the kind of birth I wanted to have which I ended up having.

Yeah, I’m going to walk you through the story.

Meagan: Yes. Let’s hear the stories.

Amina: Yeah, so basically in 2017, I had very, very painful periods and I decided I wanted to have a baby. I went to just check out just to get a little check-up to see that everything was okay before we started trying. We hadn’t started trying yet. I go to the OB/GYN at the time. It was in Dubai. I’m like, “I have very painful periods to the point that I’m crying on the floor and sobbing. No painkiller is working.” She says, “Are you on birth control?” I’m like, “No.”

She says, “Well, if you’re not on birth control, then don’t complain.” These were literally her words.

Meagan: What?

Amina: I was like, “Well, can you check me first just to see what’s going on?” because I was very connected with my body. I had been doing yoga for a few years and I knew something was off. I had this intuition. Something in my body was telling me, “Something is off.” So she’s like, “Sure. Let’s check.” She checks and finds a big polyp in my uterus that would prevent implantation from happening. She’s like, “I’m sorry. You were right. This has to be removed before you start trying to make any babies.”

So that was a moment for me where I was like, “This is weird.” We really need to fight for ourselves to be heard. So anyway, we did the polyp removal, and then they said, “Wait three months and then start trying to have a baby.” We waited the three months. It was September 2017. We tried and I got pregnant.

Meagan: Yay.

Amina: It was just like that. It was amazing. Pregnancy– I felt good. I wasn’t nauseous. I was pregnant with a boy. We did all of the testing and throughout the pregnancy, I started to find my way through Ina May Gaskin’s book. I started to read about it and just learned a little bit more about the system of birthing in the U.S. at the time. I decided I wanted to have a midwife instead of a doctor so I switched out.

Again, uneventful. I wanted the birth at a birthing center and I felt like I was super prepared. We did a HypnoBirthing course and on the due date, on the due date exactly, I started to have a little bit of bleeding, not even a period kind of blood but just a little brownish discharge. My mom was like, “Oh, you are not supposed to be bleeding. Why do you have blood?” I’m like, “I don’t know,” but I was super excited. I’m like, “We’re doing this. I’m having the baby.”

That was at 4:00 AM. I went to sleep. I woke up soaking in a lot of water. The water had broken. We’re like, “Okay, let’s go to the hospital.” The water was a bit tinted with some blood. I’m still very calm. It’s fine. My body knows what it’s doing. I had all of the mantras and I showed up to the hospital and everybody was panicking at the hospital. I don’t know why, but they were panicking. They’re like, “You’re bleeding. You shouldn’t be bleeding during birth. You have to be monitored.” All of the things that I was prepared for which is to deny interventions, to say, “I don’t want to be checked,” I just remember it being a very intrusive experience where I was constantly being bombarded by nurses and by faces I didn’t know.

I was definitely not relaxed and then my doctor was like, “Look, I’m going to give you a few hours to labor on your own because I know what you want.” It was basically a doctor with a group of midwives. A doctor was there and one of the midwives was also there. The doctor said, “I’m going to let you labor for a little longer. I’ll give you the afternoon to labor and we’ll see what happens.”

I go into the room and I start to have very intense contractions that were not stopping. It was just like one long contraction. I was just breathing through it and doing all of the coping tools that I was prepared for. My husband is doing the hip squeezes. We’re in that labor land, but then someone keeps coming in and I have to constantly argue for myself because you know how they monitor your belly with the contractions, something will move and then they won’t get the baby’s heart rate and the panic and they run in all of the time.

I wasn’t really relaxed I would say. Then the doctor comes in. She’s like, “Okay, look. We’ve been monitoring your contractions from the office. You should be in the transition phase at this point, but your contractions are very intense and they are not stopping. I’m suggesting to give you an epidural just to help relax you and we see what happens.”

At that moment, I was in so much pain that I was like, “I want a way out. Give it to me. Give it to me.”

Meagan: Yeah.

Amina: They gave me the epidural and within minutes or so, everything started turning black. I heard the monitors starting to beep and 30 doctors were in the room. Everyone was panicking and my midwife’s hand was inside of me moving the baby or doing something and saying, “We’re losing him.” I just remember that moment. I was just fighting, fighting, fighting the whole time. In that moment, I was just like, “Surrender. I just want to see my baby. I want to be okay.” My mom was there with me by my side, her and my husband. My mom is this source of strength for me who is always very strong. She didn’t panic, but her face was just stricken with fear. I was like, “This is not good. I need to let go of my dream of birthing this way. I can’t do it. I give up.”

In that moment, my doctor, after they get the baby’s heart okay, was like, “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I know that neither you or your baby can handle any more of this labor. We have to get the baby out.” I said, “Okay, go ahead.” I was very okay with it like, “Just do it.”

So very quickly, I was in the emergency room or the C-section room.

Meagan: The OR.

Amina: The OR. I was just in total panic. I was shaking from the drugs and it was just so much. I remember looking into my husband’s eyes. He was like, “Just breathe with me.” It was like yoga. I was breathing in, breathing out. This moment was all that mattered. I was just going to stay present.

We had the C-section. I had my baby and all of this. He was placed on me in the recovery room and honestly, from then on, it was a very smooth postpartum journey. I healed very well from my C-section. It led me to learning a lot about the core and how to heal and just all of these really amazing things that I didn’t know about before. It strengthened my knowledge of its nature.

That journey was great and then I think it took me a little while of, “I don’t think I want to have any other babies. This was the worst experience of my life.” I kind of just shoved it away. I just didn’t think about it. Then he was 3.5 years old. I was like, “Okay. I am starting to miss the baby phase and I would love for him to have a sibling, but I really don’t want to go through another birth.” That was just the trauma.

But I think the love for him and bringing him a sibling overcame that fear. I was like, “Let’s just do it.” So 3.5 years later, we tried to get pregnant and I was expecting it to be just like that just like the first time, but it didn’t happen. It was, I think about 6 months that we were trying and when we got into the 7th month, I was like, “Okay. Something’s up. Maybe I have another polyp. Maybe I have a fibroid.” I started going from doctor to doctor to check why I was not getting pregnant.

It turns out that they were like, “Everything is great. Everything looks perfect. There’s no reason why you’re not getting pregnant.” Then, in the end, I decided to go the IVF route. I was like, “Let’s just do this. Let’s save some eggs.” I was 34. I said, “Let’s save some eggs in case I want to have future pregnancies and also get genetic tests taken and all of this stuff.”

We started doing IVF in July of 2021, I believe, 2022. Yeah. We started doing the first round. We got the eggs out and all of this. It was an easy, breezy IVF cycle I would say. The embryo transfer was in September which was the same time I got pregnant exactly four years apart, almost the same due date so it was crazy.

I did the embryo transfer. She stuck and I felt very nauseous for the first few months. I was just super nauseous and I looked up the doctor next to me that was just a great surgeon. I was like, “I’m going to do another C-section. I don’t want any surprises. I just want the easiest, safest option.”

I go and see him and he’s like, “Yeah, you probably had a placental abruption the first time.”

Meagan: I was going to ask you if they ever gave you an answer and if it was placenta-related. That’s what it sounded like to me.

Amina: Yeah, they said that they suspected that the placenta was shaped funny because of my polyp surgery being so close. They said it was a bilobed placenta but they didn’t say anything about it was an abruption. They didn’t mention those words. They were scared of it at the birth and when I would say, “Is my baby okay?” they were like, “Yes.” So okay, they let me labor until it went to a C-section because of the epidural. It was more that it was the epidural that caused a bad reaction to me and the baby.

Meagan: Yeah, blood pressure drops which is going black.

Amina: Yeah, going black, exactly. I had all of this fear from all of this and I was like, “I want something very low-risk and safe with a great surgeon, but I want to meet with a doctor.” He was like, “How do you want to deliver this baby?” I said, “I would love to have a repeat C-section.” Then I started to get curious. I was like, “But what if I go into labor?” He said, “Well if you go into natural, spontaneous labor on your own, we can do a trial of labor.”

I was like, “Okay. That sounds fair.” Throughout, I think, once I was in the second trimester, I started to feel really good. I started to feel very empowered and strong. I was working out and I was just loving the pregnancy. It wasn’t like I felt an alien with the first pregnancy. The second time around, I was savoring it a lot more. I was a lot more in tune and a lot more connected. I was pregnant with a baby girl. Yeah. I was just in this confident feeling.

I noticed that whenever I thought of the birth, I started to feel fear. I was like, “I’m going to do a repeat C-section because it’s too scary otherwise.” Then I asked myself this question. “Are you avoiding trying for a vaginal birth because you are scared or because it feels like the right thing to do?” It was 100% because I was scared. There was nothing beyond that. There was pure fear.

So I started to talk to my therapist. I started to tell her, “I want to dive deeper into my first birth. Why am I feeling this way?” We started to really dive deep and realize that it was a mystery. We’re never going to fully know why it happened. I’m not going to get the answer that I need of the reason for my Cesarean. It was just something. This was how he was meant to be born and there was really nothing in my hands.

I started to listen to The VBAC Link as soon as I felt that spark of curiosity. I would get on my treadmill and I would walk for, I think, an hour every single day on an incline listening to the stories of all of these women. I started to feel like, “Wait. Maybe this is a possibility. Why am I so scared? Let me see what’s on the other side of this fear.”

So I decided to have a real conversation with my doctor. He was always throwing around the words “39 weeks”. “When you’re at 39 weeks, if you go into labor–” I was like, “Wait a second. The first time, I went into labor at 40 weeks. Why do I have to get to a very small percentage that I go early?” I started to ask him. I was like, “You know what? I would really love to avoid another surgery if possible.”

His response was, “First of all, don’t glamorize vaginal birth because, with vaginal birth, you’re going to most likely tear because you’ve never had a baby come out of there before. You’re not going to be able to hold your pee. You will be in pain sitting down. It’s not something glamorous. It’s not likely to be the better option,” was what he was telling me.

I was skeptical. All the stats that I read was that a repeat C-section is the more risky option. It’s not the less and it’s a major surgery. And then I said, “The reason that I had a Cesarean the first time was a bad reaction to the epidural most likely.” He said, “No, it was placental abruption and you can rupture your placenta again.” Again, I researched this and I was like, “Wait, just because even if you say it was–” because we don’t know it was, “the chances of getting that– it’s a whole new placenta, a whole new baby, and a whole new story, so the chances of this repeating again is quite low.”

He kind of scared me with these stats that I wasn’t convinced with because they are very low. Then I said, “Also, I would love to avoid the epidural because it was the reason everything literally turned black in the birth.” He said, “Well, no. That’s not possible because I need access in case I need to get the baby out in 10 seconds.”

I realized at that moment that I was just an emergency to this doctor. I am just this emergency case. I’m not seen as a human. I’m not seen as a mother wanting to birth the way that I’m designed to and I’m seen as this scare and this risk. Then he boasted, “I’m very fast. I’m known to be very fast. I don’t waste time.” Also, I asked for a gentle C which is like, “Okay, let’s get the baby out. Give me a few seconds for the pulsation of the cord.”

He was like, “Well, absolutely not. You are cut open. This happens in seconds. I’m very fast.” I felt like I was a medical emergency and also, I felt like, I didn’t want someone so fast by my side when I was doing the most intense, intimate thing of my life. I don’t want to have this rushed energy by me so I knew I had to get out of there. That was my screaming intuition, “Get out of this practice. Search for a supportive OB/GYN.” Your podcast, The VBAC Link, helped me realize so much with realizing how much that actually can change the outcome.

Meagan: Absolutely.

Amina: I felt like I was empowered to know that no matter what happens, even if I wasn’t with a supportive doctor, I would still try to get my way, but I was like, “Let me just search through my options.” I remember I had seen one of the doctors when I was trying to figure out what was going on with why I wasn’t getting pregnant. I had met this beautiful doctor. She was a radiating source of warm, calm energy. I was like, “Why didn’t I go to her?” She’s more holistic and loves HypnoBirthing and all of this stuff, but she is an excellent surgeon which is why I went to see her.

I was standing– I remember this moment. While I was standing in a museum, I was like, “I need to do this.” It was a “yes” in my body. I called them and right away, they were like, “We can take you.” I met with her and as soon as I met her, she was like, “We are going to have this VBAC.” It wasn’t “you”. It was “we”.

Meagan: As a team.

Amina: It was this feeling of a team. She works with a bunch of other female doctors in the same clinic. She was like, “Look, I can’t guarantee that I’m going to be there at your birth, but I want you to know that every single person here will advocate for you here in just the same way.” I felt very in touch with her and I would always book my follow-ups with her. I developed this bond with her.

But when I would go for my check-ups with her, my body felt relaxed. I wasn’t feeling that something was intrusive which was also something. I had faith, I would say.

At about 38 weeks, we started to check for dilation. One time, I got this email from her clinic team saying that we were scheduling a C-section for 39 weeks just by mistake. I was like, “I would love to not see that or not have that.” She was like, “I’m so sorry. That was an internal error. There is no C-section being scheduled.” I love that she was just behind me every step of the way.

We started to check for the dilation and it was 0. I was like, “Okay. This doesn’t mean anything. It’s still gonna happen.” Then I was listening to one of the episodes that was talking about the Foley catheter and the low-dose Pitocin. I was very intrigued because I was like, “Okay.” They are starting to say that the baby was getting to 3 kilos or 7 pounds-ish. In the hospital when they would monitor me, they would start to raise the fear of, “Oh, the baby is getting big,” and starting to hint at that.

I want to have at least a plan B that’s not a C-section but maybe some light interventions. I read about the catheter and I mentioned it to my doctor. She was like, “Yeah. If the time comes and we need to use it, I’m totally fine with it.” She was very humble. She would research things that I mentioned to her that maybe she hadn’t tried before and she would be like, “Oh yeah, let me do some research on this,” not as if she knew everything.

Meagan: I love that.

Amina: She also refers to a HypnoBirthing doula that me and her work with. That’s how I knew her from the HypnoBirthing doula. She is so open to maybe we don’t have all of the answers already right away. We can go explore our options. I was being monitored consistently at the hospital and they were saying because of the history of the suspected placental abruption. They were always saying, “Yeah. Baby seems very happy. Baby seems very happy.” That made me feel good.

Then I heard also about the membrane sweeps so I asked her, “Can we do a membrane sweep at 39 weeks?” She said, “Yes. Let’s do a membrane sweep at 38-something.” I went in and I wasn’t dilated at all, but she was having a hard time even doing the sweep so she said, “Let’s try after you are 39 weeks. Maybe you will be a little more dilated and there is another doctor who has longer fingers who is very good with sweeps.” She said, “I want you to try her next time.” So 39 weeks comes and then I do the sweep. I feel some cramping, but nothing really happens.

That day, I go to the hospital and they are monitoring and they say, “The baby is getting big. The baby is over 7 pounds and the more you stay pregnant, the less likely you are to be able to birth vaginally.” I said to my doctor, “Okay, can we book an induction with a Foley catheter and the low-dose Pitocin?” She said, “Let’s do it.”

I go to the hospital at 6:00 AM with my birthing bag prepared. It ws going to happen. I had read about how painful it is to insert the catheter, but she’s just incredible. I was relaxed. Everything was in and it started to do its job. It started to mechanically dilate me because I was at a 0. I was in the room with my husband and my sister just joking and laughing and watching episodes and just not someone in labor. It had nothing to do with labor.

Then they would come in. They would check and be like, “Yeah, okay.” I think after 8 hours, they took it out. I was at the 3.5-centimeter dilation from the Foley but she said, “It might close up a little bit.” She said, “Yeah. Let’s just see.” So they started the low-dose Pitocin and I remember sitting there on the ball trying to ease into contractions even though they were very mild. I was like, “Wow. I have really good pain tolerance the second pregnancy. I’m not feeling those contractions,” because they weren’t real contractions. I’m like, “Oh, wow.”

Then I started to feel my baby moving up into my ribs. She was bumping into my ribs. They go and check and they’re like, “Yeah, she’s at a 0 station. She’s not moving down. We have to up the Pitocin a little bit higher.” That day, I had seen an osteopath who had checked me. I was like, “Yeah, I’m going for my induction tomorrow.” She was like, “Why are you going to an induction?” I said, “Because the baby is too big and I need to get the baby out.” She was like, “Your baby is not ready. You shouldn’t have the induction.” She said, “Your baby is not ready.”

I was like, “Well too bad. I’m not going.” I remembered her words while I was sitting on the ball and feeling the baby move up into my ribs. I was having pain in my ribs. They checked at 6:00 AM. It had been from 6:00 to 6:00, 24 hours in the hospital. My doctor came in. She was like, “Okay, I have the options. You have two options. I either break your water. This has its own risks or you go home. Now you have a more favorable cervix, and let’s let labor start on its own.”

I thought about it. I was like, “No. I don’t want that.” My body was telling me just to go home. So this was 39 weeks and 3 days. My due date was on Saturday and I had all of these things planned that the baby was coming out. My son’s birthday, my son’s graduation from pre-K. I show up very pregnant and everybody is asking, “Oh, where is the baby?” That was so annoying. I wanted to switch off my phone because everybody knew my due date and was texting, “Hey, where is the baby? Did you have the baby?” I’m just feeling all of this pressure.

She was cozy. She was just there happy and not moving down at all. So I started to go to acupuncture just to soothe my anxiety. In the acupuncture, I was just drifting off and then I started to see this round, black, sticky thing. I was like, “What is this? Why does this keep coming to my head? What is this round, black, sticky thing?” Then I realized, it was a head. It’s a baby’s head. It’s black and sticky and has blood on it. I was like, “Why do I keep seeing this? But this is amazing.” Then I realized it was my baby’s head. I was like, “It’s a good thing I keep seeing a head when I’m doing acupuncture even though I’m not trying to see it.”

Two days later, I went back to acupuncture again. I’m drifting off to that space where you’re not asleep. You’re not awake. You’re just in this crazy, floating space. I start to see that I’m feeling my baby’s head with my hands and I’m feeling her come out and she’s on my chest and I’m sobbing, “We did it. We did it. We did it.” I was like, “Okay, this is beautiful, but I don’t know what to do with this. It was just a very cool vision.”

Meagan: Hold onto it.

Amina: Yeah, hold onto it. The due date comes. The baby is not here. The baby is cozy. We go do another sweep a few days later. I started to feel some cramping and the dilation had even moved backward like she had warned me. I was about 2 centimeters. I was like, “Oh, this baby is never coming out. This is so stressful.” But I was trying to stay positive. The wait was so anxiety-producing because I was like, “What’s going to happen? What if I wait all of this time and I end up still having a C-section?” My mind was all over the place.

But then I went to see my osteopath four days post-due date. I saw my osteopath. She checks me and she works on all of this deep tissue stuff. She’s like, “Yeah. Your baby is ready now.” I was like, “Really?” She’s like, “Yeah. All of the muscles that are normally hard and tight are very soft and loose now. Your baby is ready.” That’s all she said.

Then my mom gets seen by her as well for a session after. She tells my mom, “Make sure you get some rest tonight. Tonight’s going to be a big night.” She knew.”

Meagan: Oh my. That just gave me the chills. Oh my gosh.

Amina: I know. It was crazy. I had no idea. That day, I felt pretty good. I had done the sweep. I had seen my pelvic floor therapist and she was like, “Yeah. Everything looks good. There is no tension.” She was allowed to do internal work at that point. She was like, “Everything looks good.” I was like, “Do you think my pelvis is too small?” She was like, “No. I think everything looks great and you will birth this baby vaginally.”

She gave me this boost. It was like someone had seen me on the inside and was like, “You’re good to go.”

Meagan: You’re good.

Amina: Yes, you’re good. So that day, I went for a walk in the rain with my husband. I came back and I was just suddenly, my mind was somewhere else. I was very distracted. It was like this wave and this film of dreaminess was on top and I wasn’t stressed about the time. I wasn’t stressed about when she was coming. I just felt very relaxed. My body was super relaxed. After that osteopath, I sat on the ball. I was bouncing and I started to feel a little something.

It quickly started to intensify. I couldn’t put my son to sleep as I normally do. I was holding his hand while I was on the ball rocking, listening to a playlist that I made that was calming labor music that I liked. While I’m putting him to sleep, I’m holding his hand and I’m just in that world.

By the time he fell asleep, it was 9-something and they were ramping up. So my husband was like, “Look. If baby is coming tonight, we should get some sleep.”

Meagan: Sleep.

Amina: Yeah, right. Yeah right, get some sleep. I got into bed and I tried to start sleeping and it’s very intense. I can’t sleep. Then I’m like, “Oh. That’s the contractions that I forgot about 5 years ago. That’s it.” I started to get on all fours and I tried to lay with the ball between my legs in the bed and it ramped up a lot that by midnight, my husband called the hospital, the doctor, and said, “She’s having 5-minute contractions. They’re getting intense.”

The doctor was like, “Okay. Just monitor her for a bit, but if you want, she can come in now and we can get her checked in. She can labor in the room. Let’s see.”

Oh, the next morning, I had an induction plan already. They had planned it.

So she was like, “We’ll get her in the room early and she can just labor there and be checked.” I didn’t want to go. I said no. I waited for a few hours and I think by 2:00, I was like, “We need to go to the hospital now. Now. This baby is coming now.” I just felt that it was not going to be a long time.

We go and this time, the different thing I did from my Cesarean is I had my headphones in and I was not talking to anybody. I was just listening to the song in that dreamy state. I was kind of riding the wave of dreaminess. I was just in that world and listening to the music. My husband was giving them my insurance info, my name, and all of this logistical stuff that didn’t make sense at the time with all of the bright lights. Then I’m having contractions. I’m breathing through them.

Then comes a resident who is like, “I need to check you. I need to see if your baby is still head-down.” I said, “My baby is head-down. I know that she is. No one is going to check me except my doctor.” He got very angry and he was like, “You’re risking your life and the baby’s life.” I said, “I know my body. I know my baby. I know that she’s head down. I was just at the hospital this morning. If she flipped, I would know.”

I was just confident. I was like, “And my doctor can check if she wants, but you’re not doing any exams. Thanks, but no.” My husband is the nicest guy. For him to have this kind of confrontation makes him super on edge.

Meagan: Uncomfortable?

Amina: Yeah. He’s like, “He’s just doing his job.” I prepped him before. “Look. No means no. No one is going to check me. I’m not being nice to anybody that’s in my body or my vagina. No one is looking inside unless I’m comfortable.” We had done also a HypnoBirthing crash course just to remember as a refresher course. We had decided that also, no one can offer me the epidural. If I want it, I’ll ask for it, but hopefully, I’m not going to ask for it.

At this point, the contractions are super intense. I have to sign this thing that says I’m okay with me and my baby dying. I’m in my world. I’m like, “Sure. Here you go.” Then we get to the room and the contractions get so much that I start to feel paralyzed. I start to feel like first of all, my intention with this birth is to feel good. I want to have a good experience and if I don’t get the epidural or if I don’t stop this pain, I’m not going to feel good. I tell my husband who is very well-intentioned, I’m like, “Look. I need the epidural now.” He’s like, “Amina. We talked about this. We said you’re going to ask for this and I’m going to tell you that you can do this.” I’m like, “I don’t care what we spoke about. I want the epidural now.”

He’s like, “You can do this. You said that this would happen, but trust me. You’re almost there.”

Meagan: That’s so cute.

Amina: He’s really doing all of the stuff that he was told to do, then he gets kind of upset. He’s like, “Let me go talk to your doctor.” He goes outside and calls her on the phone. She comes and checks me. I’m still at a 2 so she was like, “Okay. It’s going to be a long night.” She explains to him, “Maybe this will help her feel better.” It’s going to be a very long night. Let her have it. Let her relax. She’ll get some sleep. We’re going to be very careful because of the bad reaction last time. We’re going to give you a lot of IV fluids. We’re going to give you a very tiny dose. We’re going to monitor you so well that hopefully, we’ll avoid the blood pressure drop thing.”

It was very hard to get the epidural in because I was contracting so intensely. It was a lot. They managed to get it in and they were like, “Okay. This is the button. You’re going to press it if you want more.” I was terrified. I’m watching the heart rate monitor and the blood pressure watching it and waiting for the emergency. They were like, “You’re fine. Relax. Everything is good. Now you can rest.”

They put such a tiny amount that I could probably move around if I wanted to. I have the ball in between my legs. I was lying on my side and I could still feel the contractions, but they were just a little bit more manageable which was very nice.

This was around, I think I got the epidural around 3:00ish-4:00ish. Someone came to check and I was at a 4. I was like, “Ugh.” They were like, “It’s still going to be a long time. Don’t worry.” When I was a 4, a woman came in, a resident, and she was like, “You’re at a 4. Would you like me to break your water?” At that point, I was in this very surrendery kind of state. I was like, “Sure. Do it.” So she did. She broke my water.

As soon as I look, there’s red all over the sheets. I was like, “It’s blood!” She’s like, “Yeah. Birth has blood. There’s always going to be blood in birth.” I was just like, “But there’s no one panicking around me that I’m bleeding and it’s a lot more blood than the first birth?” They were like, “Baby is okay. You’re okay. Blood is normal. You’re fine. Just relax.”

Meagan: Wow.

Amina: It was the reverse situation where instead of me being calm and everyone is panicking, it was the other way around where I’m like, “Guys, look. You should panic now!” They’re like, “You’re okay. Everything is good.”

That was just such a moment for me where I was like, “Okay. Blood is normal. I have to not freak out when I see blood.” My doctor had warned me. She was like, “I know you’re going to panic when you see blood, but trust me. Bleeding in birth can happen and it’s okay. It doesn’t mean that something is wrong.” That was a very powerful moment for me.

She broke the water and then this was at 6:00 AM. At 6:15, I suddenly felt something shift. I’m like, “I feel a lot of pressure.” They had told me it was going to be a few hours. I tell the nurse, “I feel like I have a lot of pressure like I need to poop suddenly.” She’s like, “Poop?” She runs. She gets the doctor and they check. They were like, “You’re 8 centimeters. Baby’s head is right there. You’re almost ready to push.”

I start crying. When I heard the 8, I was like, “This has never happened.” That was the first moment that I was like, “This might really happen.” They had this dilation poster on the wall in front of you where you can visualize and see 1 centimeter, 2 centimeters all the way to 10. I would constantly look at it and I was like, “10. It’s possible. It’s going to happen.” That really also helped me, I think.” So when they said 8 and the baby’s head was right there, I had shivers. I was just so happy and so elated.

Then they were like, “But it’s still a few hours. It’s not going to be right away. You’re 8. It could take a while until you are ready to push.” 15 minutes later, I was 10 and I was ready to push.

Meagan: Oh my goodness.

Amina: From 4 centimeters to pushing was in 15-minute chunks. It was very fast, crazy fast. So then at that point, the doctor changed shifts and it was a new doctor, the one with the long fingers who had given me the sweep. She comes in and she’s like, “We’re having this VBAC. Let’s go.” The energy of the room was where everyone was excited for you and cheering for you. It was such a beautiful, beautiful experience. I was like, “I don’t care. I’m just so happy to be here.” The epidural stopped working on one side, so I was feeling everything on the right side of my pubic bone, all of this pressure. They were like, “Yeah. It’s normal. Sometimes it happens. You’re only numb on one side, but the baby is stuck behind the pubic bone, so we need to do some pushes to get her past that.”

The pushes, for me, were the hardest part because I felt like I couldn’t do the pushing that I prepared for with my pelvic floor therapist or the stuff that I read. It was all just like, “You’re going to inhale and then you’re going to hold your breath and push, and then you’re going to exhale.” It’s so counterintuitive to what I was taught to do that I was like, “I don’t know if this is doing anything. I don’t feel anything. I don’t know. Am I doing it?” They’re like, “Yes, but you have to keep going.”

Her heart rate was kind of in distress in between the contractions and they were like, “You have to push.” She’s like, “I’m not telling you that this is an emergency, but I’m telling you that we can’t stay here for long, so you have to push.” My husband was like, “Come on, Amina. Push!” I’m like, “Okay. I’m trying,” but I can’t connect to it.

Meagan: “I’m trying!”

Amina: So then I guess I keep purple pushing so much that her heart is going crazy. My heart is going crazy. There is all of this chaos and they were like, “Just forget about all of the monitors. Just push. Push the baby out of your vagina. You can do this.” She moves past my pubic bone and there is a sigh of relief. They start getting out their instruments.

There was a guy, a male resident, in the room who started to say, “Can we get out the instruments?” or something like that like the suction. I can’t remember what it was called.

Meagan: The vacuum?

Amina: The vacuum, yes. He started to say, “Can we get out the vacuum?”

Meagan: It goes right on their head like that?

Amina: Yeah, I didn’t even see. He just mentions, “Can I get out–?” The doctor says, “I don’t want to hear that word inside of this room.” I was just amazed.

Meagan: YES.

Amina: Then basically, they were like, “Okay. She moved past your pubic bone. Now is the time to really push.” I’m really struggling with the pushes. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m getting so tired. I’m about to cry. Then I had this moment of, “Let me just reach down and feel my baby.” I put my hand down. I feel my baby. The doctor is not even cueing me to push at this point, and suddenly, I feel her head. My body’s super strength takes over and pushes the baby out without cueing, without noise, and without anything.

Just by feeling her head, I don’t know what happened. It was like this super strength of all of the women in the world. I pushed her out of me and then out came her shoulders and then she was placed on my chest. I was just sobbing with joy. It was the same moment as my acupuncture. It was like, “We did it. We did it.” I’m just sobbing.

Meagan: I was going to say that. It sounds exactly like your visualization.

Amina: It was.

Meagan: You saw this head. You saw this head and then boom. Out on your chest.

Amina: There was another moment while I was pushing. The doctor was like, “I see her head. She has black hair just like her daddy.” I was like, “That’s the head I saw the first time.”

Meagan: Oh my gosh.

Amina: My son was born with lighter hair, so I’m like, “This is that moment, the black, sticky head.” I’m like, “This means it’s happening.” She was placed on my chest. My husband cut the cord and it was just the most healing, incredible moment of my life because I felt like in that moment, I was invincible. If I can do this, you just feel like you are so strong, but also so humbled by the experience. Yeah. It was the most beautiful moment of my life.

Meagan: You grew right there, right? I think there are so many things to say about birth. We grow through all of these experiences and you grew through your C-section and you have grown through your healing. Look how long this journey has been and you have grown in every single aspect of becoming pregnant, learning how to follow your body from the very beginning, something is not right, and then they find out, “Oh, she has this polyp.” You have grown into this person and you are just amazing.

This story is so beautiful and I love how your provider was there to back you up and be there for you and be like, “Nope. Don’t even say that. Don’t even talk about that.”

Amina: “Don’t say that word here.”

Meagan: “We are here.” Something else that I love is that you recognized. Breaking water is something, especially earlier in labor that we kind of stay away from a little bit, and in your mind and your body, you were like, “I feel good about this. I feel like I’m going to surrender to this. I feel this is right,” and then you did it. Then 15 minutes– and then you have a baby.

Amina: So fast, exactly. It’s not this black-and-white intervention or no intervention. That’s what I love about The VBAC Link because I was learning that, “Oh, the Foley catheter balloon can be a great way to have a VBAC.” There are so many different interventions that can actually help you and I think for me, even trusting the epidural again was a big, big, big lesson.

Meagan: Huge.

Amina: I was like, “This is the moment where I lost all control in my first birth.” Control is an illusion, but that was the moment where I was like, “Just cut me open. I give up.”

Meagan: Well, everything went in a different direction from that moment of your blood pressure dropping and maybe there were placenta issues, maybe not. You know, when you were talking about how this may not be something you’ll ever know, you may not ever know the exact reason why you were bleeding in that first pregnancy and things like that, it reminded me of our radical acceptance episodes and me too. There are things about my birth I will never know.

It doesn’t take the wonder route, but it doesn’t consume me anymore.

Amina: You are accepting.

Meagan: Yeah, you accepted that it was that birth. That was that experience. You’ve grown from that. You’ve learned from that. You are going on to this next birth with what you know and accepting this next birth as this new birth, right? I think that is so important because so many times in life in general, but birth specifically, especially if we have maybe had a more traumatic experience or a Cesarean or something that really seems to relate just like you were saying. I got this epidural and then my control was lost. I did this and then this happened. I think we can tend to relate and then fear those things to happen ever again.

Yeah, I mean, when my water broke for the third time, I mean they say so few people– 10% of people have their water break before labor begins and then it happened again, I was immediately triggered even though my mind knew that my body just needed time. I triggered back and I started having those doubts creep in and all of these things. We have to be able to dig really, really deep and be strong enough to say, “Okay. This is the situation. This is how I feel about it,” and be willing to make different choices.

Going in for an induction again, you were scheduled to go in again. I also love that about your doctor that they were like, “Hey, here are your options. We can push this forward and see what happens or this isn’t happening right now. We can send you home.” So powerful. So powerful.

Amina: This was unheard of. This was unheard of.

Meagan: It’s not very heard of, yeah.

Amina: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when I told the nurse that day, “My doctor said I can go home now,” she looked at me and started laughing. She was like, “No, she didn’t.” I’m like, “Go ask her. I’m going home.” She came back and she was like, “I guess you’re going home.” She was baffled. This person was here to have a baby, but they’re going home without a baby because that was how much she honors what her patients want, that they are women, that they are about to have a very important experience in their lives, and that they should be a proactive part of it. That was the part that was so important. To be with a provider that doesn’t inherently believe that vaginal birth is always safer than a C-section, I think that was a trigger moment for me. He believed that they were the same or that one was better than the other.

Meagan: Well, he was putting a lot of things like, “You’re going to pee yourself,” and this. Let’s be real here. Those are real risks of a vaginal birth. We can have serious urinary incontinence. We can have serious tearing that needs reconstruction. Those are real. What he was saying is real. He was using them as a fear tactic to steer you away and that’s where it’s wrong. That’s where, okay. I’m sorry. I can’t say it’s wrong. That’s where I believe it’s wrong. We should be educating very well on both sides and also talking about the risks of a Cesarean and the risks of having our bladder cut, our baby cut, and having blood issues like having to have transfusions.

Also, uterine rupture is not eliminated with a scheduled C-section. It’s just not, but we don’t talk about those things, right?

Amina: We don’t talk about it, yeah.

Meagan: It’s just pushed so heavily. You could tell that he was pretty cool, “Oh, you could TOLAC,” until you were like, “Actually, I want to do that.” He was like, “Wait a minute. No, you don’t.” That’s where we are lacking here in the world of medicine and that’s, I think, a lot of the times why some people don’t trust providers and don’t trust the hospital because of things like this. We need to steer more into your second provider’s direction of, “Let’s talk about it. What does she want? We know the risks. We’re going to talk about the risks, but what does she want and how can we help her get that in a very safe manner?” Right? We want everyone to be safe, of course, but yeah.

Amina: Totally. Staying open. Staying open. If she hears about something that she hasn’t used before, she has the modesty to say, “Let me research that,” not just like, “I haven’t used this before, so hard no.” It’s like, “Oh, let me do some research. Let me ask my doula friends what they know.” I love that about her.

Meagan: I love that so much about what you said about this provider. The fact that she was like, “You know, I don’t know. Let me look at that.” We can have a conversation that’s productive. That’s what that is offering is a productive conversation between the two of you and not just shutting you out. She may have seen a different study about that and be like, “Nope. I’ve seen that. That’s not going to work.” But you’re like, “This study–”. I love that so much. It sounds like your provider was amazing. We had talked about providers.

Sometimes I think on this podcast, we sound a little provider-bashing maybe because we are like, “Don’t do that. Why would they do that?” We kind of speak poorly sometimes about certain things that providers do. That is absolutely not the case. We love providers here. We love any provider– OB and midwives both. But what we don’t love is when our community is mistreated, when they’re gaslighted, when they’re completely shut out of any options in their own birth experience, and when they’re really pushed in the direction of trauma or lack of support. That’s what we struggle with. It’s not the provider. It’s that this is happening to people who we love in our community.

I know I say this time and time again. I love this community. I love you guys so much. You mean the world to me. I see posts and there have been times at 2:00 in the morning. I’ll be scrolling my phone in the community and I end up crying just feeling, truly feeling those emotions from these people where they are like, “Help. What do I do?”

But then I also start crying when I pull up Zoom to record a podcast like this and I see you just gleaming and bursting for joy, so excited to share your story and inspire someone. So I truly love you guys so much. I am so grateful for you being here with us today and sharing this amazing story. It sounds like I might need to connect with your provider because this is amazing.

Amina: She is amazing.

Meagan: Remind me where this provider is located.

Amina: New York City. In New York City, it’s hard to find a provider that’s supportive for some reason. I went all over in the first pregnancy even. It’s quite hard, but really finding a provider who believes in you, who knows you can do it, who is excited for you, and who doesn’t just see you as a number and someone who believes you are a woman.

Meagan: Or an emergency.

Amina: Yes. You’re not just an emergency. That was the biggest change for me. It’s not like the second birth was just smooth. There were moments where there was blood. There were moments where her heart rate was in distress, but there’s that confidence that this woman can do this. This baby is safe and we are doing this together.

Meagan: Yes. Which is so powerful. That’s only going to help you during your birth. That’s only going to help build you up and move you forward and help you feel like overall, it’s a better experience. Like you said, sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned or it doesn’t go so smoothly where sometimes you have to move around because baby is struggling or there is blood or whatever, right? But because you were built up in this experience and the support was truly surrounding you, you were able to have that better experience.

Amina: Mhmm, exactly. I think also, I just learned so much from this the difference between fear and intuition. If you have that feeling within yourself, you can really easily mistake fear as, “This is my feeling,” but actually, is it fear or is it your real intuition? They can be blurred and when you just sit with that for a bit, you will see your body saying, “Hell yes,” then it’s most likely a yes.

Meagan: Yes. I love that you talked about that with your therapist. Let’s dig deeper here. Let’s find out. Is it that I’m scared or is it that this is really what I want? Don’t be scared, Women of Strength, to dig into that and dive deeper into those feelings because sometimes, it can be fear. You’re on social media so much. You’re seeing scary things and you’re like, “Nope. I’m not going to do that,” but once you dive deeper, you might realize something else.

Amina: Yep.

Meagan: Yes. Okay, well thank you again so much.

Amina: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Closing

Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

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