VBAC

VBAC Birth Dreaming

It’s important to dream especially in birth!  For  Sarah, I encouraged her to imagine and write about her dream vbac birth.  With permission, it was too beautiful not to share.  I can’t wait to be a part of her dream coming true!  Please feel free to share your dream birth in comments!

vbac, birth plan, doula
dream birth from google images

1. Early labor:

Spring – warm day where you just want to lay outside and drink up the sunshine. Sitting on a porch on a birth ball eating sausage biscuits. Watching David and play Joseph run around. Drowsing in a hammock or porch swing being lazy. Kind of watching the last “just us three” time. Maybe my doula is around somewhere making sure I’ve got something to drink or a snack. Maybe get down and play ball or explore a little with David and Joseph. Just that sort of lazy, sunny sort of weekend day with birds singing and a breeze blowing. Things are calm (so maybe we aren’t at my messy house!). It’s just early labor, so no reason to be scared or tense – only need to know my people are around close by if I need them.

2. Active labor:

Evening – Joseph his off playing with someone else. I’m inside now. Can still smell the end of a warm Spring day. Got my people (David/doulas) around. Bed is made. Things are calm and quiet. Just rocking back and forth with David until it’s time to go to the hospital. No music – just the sounds of the wind. Like when you wake up at night when you’re tent camping and you hear the trees and all the little night sounds. Sometimes I might hear Joseph babbling in another part of the house. Maybe there are fireflies outside.

Drive down the hill to the hospital later in the evening. No stupid questions. No bright lights or clanging elevators. Just walk in the door and go straight to a room. No needles or silly paper gowns. Nice pool of water all set up where I can get in facing the window and watch the moon coming up. No clocks in my face. Nobody scared. I can just lie in the water and count and breath and wait for ten. My trainer likes the number ten, so I’m used to waiting for my muscles to get there. I always do even when I’m not sure I can. I like it when David strokes my arms or neck, so that helps. He’s just sort of there waiting with me.

3. Pushing:

No flipping around for a nurse or anything. I just know because suddenly my body is absolutely full of baby. She’s coming fairly easily, so I just wait and breath and let my body do the pushing. I can imagine how big I’m going to get when she’s coming out, so I just take it gently. It’s kind of like being a virgin again only this time from the other direction. Nothing good comes from forcing it. You just have to be patient and appreciate that this moment will never happen quite this way again. With most relationships in life intimacy comes after knowing, but with our children it’s so different. We mothers are our most intimate with our children before we know them hardly at all. This is the end of that moment for my daughter and I, so I don’t want to rush through it or tighten up against it. It doesn’t take long though for my body to open up and for my daughter to slide out. Now the time of knowing begins.

4. David,’s excited. We’re snuggling together in the late night. He gets sleeping Joseph, and we all four of us fall asleep for a little while. Babies nurse a lot though, so I get to see the early dawn light creeping in over all of us. There’s David and Joseph and little sister and me. Later in the morning we’ll let the grandparents come see everyone, and it’ll get a little loud and crazy. Right now though it’s just us.

Here are some good resources for planning your birth and vbac:

*Names have been changed. Books are affiliate links.

Marcie Hadley, CD(DONA), PCD(DONA), CLC, and LCCE(LAMAZE), has been serving families since 2010. She especially enjoys getting to know her families, meeting their unique needs, and sharing evidence-based care information. Marcie has worked with unmedicated, medicated, C-section, family friendly C-Section, and VBAC labors, Her postpartum experience includes working with families of first children to families of 10. She has worked with mothers who have experienced postpartum depression and illness following birth. Her goal is to empower mothers in their own mothering wisdom.

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