As you know from previous posts, I can get quite riled up about women and birth—particularly when I know a woman isn't given access to her full array of options. Over the past week, I've had to sit on my hands and proactively shove foot in mouth as I watched a cousin navigate her way through an attempt at vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC).
My cousin's first birth was a cesarean section. She and her husband spent months doing hypnobabies and planning on a vaginal birth with a midwife, possibly even at home. But when the baby turned out breech and no amount of inversions or acupressure would make her flip, my cousin had no choice. Finding a health care provider in the U.S. who has the skills to deliver a breech baby is next to impossible. I pray I don't have to embark on that mission when my 40 weeks is up.
Two years later, after being blessed with a healthy baby girl, my cousin got pregnant with her second baby, due December 24. She planned on a VBAC from the beginning and chose to go with a physician in a hospital along with a doula. On December 21, they stripped her membranes. The physician would be on vacation beginning December 25, and if she didn't go into labor before then, the on-call physician would have to be her provider. That's when I started fuming. Through the family grapevine, I heard that my cousin didn't want the on-call physician to attend her birth, but I couldn't help but wonder if she was being pressured by the physicians, hospital, somebody, to deliver before Christmas.
Stripping (or sweeping) the membranes is not recommended if you want your labor and birth to unfold naturally. It can make you crampy in the days leading up to birth and rob you of the sleep you need to prepare for labor and delivery. My cousin had well-controlled gestational diabetes and was terrified of having to be induced. I doubt that anyone adequately explained to her that stripping the membranes is a mechanical method of inducing labor—one that doesn't always work and sometimes leads to complications.
But it had already been done. What could I do? Calling her to explain what I know would have upped her anxiety and would have been down-right rude. So, I zipped my lips and hoped for the best.
My husband spent Christmas in Kansas City visiting his sick grandmother, and I drove down to Fredericksburg, VA, to spend the day with my very pregnant cousin. Everything in me wanted to blurt out a list of instructions: don't let them strip your membranes again, watch out for pitocin, don't let them make you stay in bed during labor, move your hips. But I refrained and settled into drinking tea, talking about expectations for labor (neither one of us had experienced it before), knitting, and getting a killer lesson from my cousin on cloth diapers.
The next morning I woke up to an email letting me know my cousin was in labor. She was laboring in an upstairs bedroom with her husband and doula, trying to hold off going to the hospital for as long as possible. I let out a hoot and incessantly checked my email for updates throughout the day. At about 10:30am, they left for the hospital. At 2:45pm, there was still no update. I closed my eyes and thought about my cousin and, in my head, I encouraged her to know she has the strength to birth this baby and that just when she thinks she can't go on, it's almost over.
At 4:42pm, my cousin birthed her second healthy baby girl—this time via VBAC. I also have to mention that she went through 12 hours of labor with no epidural. She doesn't get a badge of honor for experiencing the pain. In fact, I know she wasn't completely opposed to having an epidural. But I have to give her props for knowing what she wanted and following through with what she thought was best for her and her baby. It was a long, scary journey to watch. I am so very proud of my cousin and so very thankful that she was able to do things her way in spite of the many factors working against her.
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