MY HBAC STORY
Updated: May 1
When I was younger I had this idea that I would birth my children with an epidural as early as possible. When I got pregnant, it became obvious that I was going to give birth at home with midwives. But I have no clue where that thought came from since I had never met anyone who had given birth at home, nor met anyone who had had a midwife or a doula. I just remember feeling that it was essential. In my core, it felt instinctive.
I started my pregnancy in France, because I was supporting the end-of-life of my dad, and things are very different there compared to Quebec. When I told my midwife that I wanted a homebirth she challenged me, trying to convince me to have a midwife hospital birth. Which threw me! Also when I told her I was going to have a doula, she told me she would have to meet them first and “approve”. And I was like, "No, that's the point of having a doula. I choose my doula, and you don't have a say”. The point is that they are here to support me and help me advocate for myself.
When I arrived in Quebec around week 23, I never got this type of resistance.
For my first, I actually saw my doula in a dream.... and when I met her, I knew it was her. So I cancelled all my other calls. My mom was present as well, also as my birth photographer.
My midwife at the time misinformed me which led me to believe that after 41 weeks I couldn’t birth at home but rather at the birth center. So at 40.6 I asked my acupuncturist to induce me.
With my doula eyes, I now have another “reading” of my first birth, of course, and I regret having done that, because the misinformation pushed me to take action on my pregnancy rather than wait, when I could have been pregnant another week, which I didn’t mind at all.
I started having contractions at 4:00 AM with contractions 4-5 minutes apart right away. They were not painful, but in a steady pattern. I was in touch with my midwife and my doula, and I went on with my life during the day while my partner was prepping the apartment (inflating the birth pool, plastic covers on the couches etc). My younger brother was here supporting me as well, doing hip pressure and making sure my bath was warm.
Around 10:00 PM I'm really hurting right now, I have this excruciating back labor the whole time, I need support from someone that actually knows what they're doing ahaha So we called our doula, and then we called the midwife. She assessed me at 4.5 cm. And so we just kind of labored, for a couple of hours in my birth pool. Around maybe 2:00 AM I was like, "Okay, I wanna know where I am at cause I am exhausted". So my midwife then assesses me at 8cm.
And now, you know, with my doula eyes I'm like, "Yeah, 8cm, great… but… what's the station? The effacement? The position ?” But this is not information that my midwife shared with me at the time. And I didn't ask them, even though I was very educated.
My midwife seemed happy with the progress, so I thought in my head “In three hours, I'm hoping I'm gonna be 10 centimeters and my baby might be born by sunrise."
So about three hours later, I ask to be checked again and my midwife’s face says it all : I am 4cm. The midwife doesn’t seem to understand how that could happen. She says she has never seen that before, so we are transferring.
We are now driving to the hospital, I take the epidural and then the heart starts to get wonky.
Seven people barge in, stand around my bed: "We need to go into an emergency C-section, the heart of your baby is repeatedly tanking to 48”.
I look at them and I ask everyone to leave the room and give me 10 minutes to think about it. Which they were obviously very concerned about.
At that moment, I was very alone… My midwife was gone, my doula was gone, my partner was on his way back from picking up some stuff. Only my mom was by my side… But my most memorable moment of my birth I think is these 10 minutes when I was crying. My mom was not really sold on the home birth thing and I was expecting her to say something in the lines of "Oh, you know, what matters is that your baby's okay". But she didn't. She just cried with me. And I felt so seen in my pain and my grief that it really, really helped me process.
When the staff came back I told them I would only agree if they agreed to a lotus baby. The OB said yes, and I was rolled into the OR.
My baby was born at 11:17am on February 13th 2020 (my dad’s birthday) with a perfect APGAR. A very small baby (1st percentile), with some meconium and a short cord.
When I was pregnant I felt like I knew her for millions of years, but unfortunately, when I met her in the OR, I didn't feel anything. I saw her, and I didn't recognize her. And it took a really long time for me to feel like she was my child and not me caring for someone else's child.
I gave birth three weeks before COVID, so we got very little support and my breastfeeding journey was hell. I was very lucky to benefit from 60 littles of donations from other parents using Human Milk 4 Human Babies. It saved my breastfeeding journey that lasted 6 years.
I then trained to become a doula three months postpartum. I started supporting families when my daughter was six months. And of course I knew I wanted a second child someday, and that it would be a HBAC.
When I became pregnant 3 years later, I supported 23 hospital births during my pregnancy, until I was 37 weeks. Seeing birth after birth, violence and epidurals - it really played with my brain and I started to doubt my capacity to birth naturally. With my first pregnancy, I had zero doubts, and now I was a doula, I knew it was absolutely possible and yet having all those doubts. My son also felt like a complete stranger, growing inside of me. Which made me question "How am I gonna birth with someone that I don't know at all ?” It was very challenging for me.
I had two doulas for my second birth. I asked my mentor who has been a doula for 35 years and who I knew would support me whatever happened. And a dear doula-friend of mine who I deeply trusted with my eldest.
I knew I was gonna be put against a lot of walls in my pregnancy because I knew that I was an “issue” in the system. First of all, having a VBAC at home is not their favourite thing. Second of all, I have a scared cervix. I also refused to do the GD test. And I never let my midwife check the position of the baby (because if my baby had been breech I would have lost midwife support).
We had a very honest conversation and I told her I didn't want to put her in a situation where she wasn’t comfortable. I wanted to respect her boundaries. And also respect my freedom.
And she was super badass and totally trusted me and herself.
So here comes the D-day, September 13th 2023, my daughter wakes me up at 7:00 AM to breastfeed and I start feeling crampy. I am letting my partner and doula know that I am having some feelings, but I am also really gaslighting myself, because the first time, my labor was about 30 hours, so in my mind, it's gonna last forever !
My PTSD is whispering in my ear : "This labor is gonna last 50 hours, it's gonna be all back labor, it's gonna suck, and you will end up in the theatre" So I'm kind of using the denial technique to get through the day. Editing birth photos, playing in the alley with my kid, breathing through contractions pretending it’s nothing serious ahhaa
Until about 4:00 PM when things started to be quite intense. So my partner told me we should call the doula. But I didn’t want to my poor doula friends to be here for 30 hours ahhah My partner brought me back to reality, told me things seemed to be progressing and that our doula would be happy to come. Around 7:00PM I'm crying, in my bath, my doula arrives and I basically vomit all my fears : "I don't wanna go to the hospital. I have back labour like last time, she must be posterior. My contractions seem to be about 40 seconds long, I'm never gonna give birth”. The story is repeating itself in my mind.
While walking to the pool, my daughter says : “mama, there is blood on the floor”
My doula and I look, and then we just rejoiced together ! This sign gave me all the strength I needed… My cervix was opening !
So I am getting in the birth pool, my second doula arrives to support with our eldest who is completely freaked out of my screaming.
It’s all hands on deck due to my back labour. My partner shakes my bum as hard as he can. My doula is regulating my nervous system.
I am ommmmming so intensly… And I am seeing the faces of all the people birthing at the same time as me, one after another, in my mind. And together, we are birthing humanity.
My doula asks me : "Are you pushing?". And since I wasn’t I just answered “no” but my body was indeed pushing. I put my fingers into my vagina and felt something. Still in denial I then told my doula I was sure it was my cervix that was completely closed ahaha But nope, it was a head.
We then called my midwife, who arrived when I was crowning. She knew that I wanted zero talk, zero checks, zero monitoring. So she just went to a the corner about 10 feet from me, she looked and smiled, and just silently started taking notes.
My baby's head comes out, and my first thought is: "Is this a head or bum?" Because I don't know if he's breech or not ! And while touching, I remember vividly feeling his little ear. It was such an endearing feeling.
And then my baby just flew out of my body in a beautiful ejection reflex.
My partner was in the tub with me. I looked at him in the water, and slowly pulled him out of the water : "I did it! I did it! Oh my God", I cried.
And I just can't believe it.
"Thank you for healing me." I said to my son while holding him, kissing him, crying, feeling so proud of this empowering HBAC.
I birthed my placenta flawlessly, I took a shower and then laid on my couch with my baby at the breast, the placenta attached to him. And I said “Now I want champagne for everyone, raspberries and chocolate”. And we all celebrated this badass birth.
My baby was born at 10:52PM and slept until morning, as well as my partner and our eldest. And while they all slept peacefully for the whole night, I couldn’t close an eye.
I did it.
And it was glorious.
About me : I'm Barbara from Montreal. I am a queer neurospicy parent of two kids. I'm a birth doula & photographer, and I co-founded the doula training called La Relève (advocating for inclusive and anti-oppressive reproductive justice). I'm also on the board of the Québec Association of Doulas. So I do a lot of political activist work for birthing people and doulas. My doulas : Lesley Everest from Motherwit Doula Care and Iliana Marino (who filmed)
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