VBAC Birth Stories
ANSWER: “My husband and I were very young and I had grown up in a small rural town and the same physician had sewn up my stitches in my head and set, my broken bones, and he had stopped delivering babies because this obstetrician had come to town and so my family practitioner, we’re not a business essentially and we got the new fangled specialist obstetrician and I got the new fangled cesarean for failure to progress and Cephalopelvic disproportion and the warning signs were there that obstetrician told me, I was taught in medical school that any woman under five foot is an automatic cesarean. Well, I’m four foot 11 and a half. I should have known that. So we got this show on the road at 41 weeks pregnant and he put me in the hospital. He broke my water and there I lay, I didn’t even get Pitocin. The clock ran out.
He came in the next morning and he said, you’re not doing this. And I agreed with them. I wasn’t doing this. So we had this cesarean. Well, the second time I got pregnant I’m like, we’re not doing that again. And I called around to all of the hospital, all the doctors on my insurance asking them, well, first I went to the library and I looked up any book on VBAC that you could find. There was one by Nancy Cohen who was very cathartic book and I read it and I felt every emotion. I look, I find a doctor, they will allow a VBAC. And so I found a doctor that would allow me to have a VBAC. So I had to be back with an eight and a half pound baby after being diagnosed as too small for a seven pound four ounce baby birth is one of the most transformative experiences of our lives. It’s a rite of passage. It’s one of the few universal experiences that humankind shares. You can go to any country and talk to a woman about her birth experience.
We live in a world of misinformation and it’s very important for people to get good information, evidence-based information from credible sources. And when you google something and it comes up on your Google homepage, it’s the most google thing. So if most people get medicalized answers, that’s the first thing that pops up. Those search engines are based on popularity only not on evidence. We want to base our decisions on evidence. Birthpedia is important because it is an evidence, evidence-based, credible resource for parents who are looking for knowledge and empowerment. Hi, I’m Shannon Berta Shaw. I am a certified professional midwife and I’m a contributor with Birthpedia.’
