Adam Riley Case
born 1/8/01 10:37 am
10 lbs, 4 ozs
22 inches long
15.5 inch head & chest

SUCCESSFUL VBAC!
Homebirth transport.

Dilated to 9 cm with a cervical lip very rapidly and almost painlessly by Sunday 8 pm. Later, MWs thought AROM would apply the baby's head to my cervix enough to remove the lip. Wrong - the lip did not budge, and the secondary MW tried manually moving the lip multiple times which was very horrifying. I hit transition around midnight - contrax each 2-3 minutes long and only 30 seconds apart. By 6:30 am the cervical lip still wouldn't budge and I was exhausted after being in transition for 6+ hours, so we decided to transport to hospital.

We got very lucky to have an excellent transport experience. Turns out that the bumpy car ride to the hospital finally moved that cervical lip (ARGH) so I was completely dilated upon admission. The OB on call decided I could continue VBAC attempts without reservations and even extended their usual allowed pushing time for VBACs because I was taking longer. I took one shot of Demerol upon arrival to help me relax after the long 6-hour transition (I was shaking uncontrollably) - it seemed to help and rejuvenate me. Beyond that I had NO interventions during birth!! I requested no episiotomy and the OB actually did perineal massage with olive oil! I had only a small 2nd-degree tear despite the baby's size and I pushed him out all on my own. (CPD, my ass!) Adam was born less than 2 hours after hospital admission.

While the birth itself ended up being excellent and very low-intervention, the postpartum stay was not surprisingly a PITA and we checked out early. We were treated as the "homebirth freaks who keep refusing everything". I am having some issues to process about my MWs - I am not pleased with some of their actions during my labor (like that there were 4 MWs here instead of the planned 2, and for hours at a time *while I was in transition and asking for help* all four of them left me alone and watched tv and talked to each other!) Also even J pointed out after the fact that my MWs were MUCH more intervention-happy and less open to my input than the on-call OB. I won't go into the manual attempts to move the cervical lip - I know why they did it, but the MW kept literally yelling at me "push harder! you're not getting past this because you don't want to!" despite me crying "I'm sorry, I'm trying" and out of my mind with pain. But enough about that!

Adam is nursing very well (woohoo!) and is extremely calm and quiet. I am so over-the-moon in love with this little guy...I can now see that bonding after vaginal birth is way easier than after a c-s. I have no regrets about the birth - I wouldn't have wanted to transport earlier, but given all the factors I'm glad I went when I did. I am a bit disappointed to not have delivered at home, but am very happy to have reached my main goal of a very low-intervention VBAC without being cut anywhere!