Vicki's Story- 9 lbs., 15 oz.- Home

9 lbs., 15 oz.

HBAC (Followed by five more HBACs!)

My story isn’t so much a birth story as a story of many births.  After having three uneventful hospital births, I found I was pregnant for a fourth time – with twins.  These little babies were perfectly content to be breech right up to the end and so it was determined that a cesarean was the only way to birth them.   I was allowed to go into labor on my own, so that is good.  The c-section was less than wonderful.  I could not hold the babies for at least 4 hours after the birth and spent two of those hours all by myself in recovery.  I wish I had recovered.  Instead I was left with a horrible infection in my incision which turned into toxic shock syndrome.  I almost died and breastfeeding was impossible.  I could not nurse due to the meds I was on and when I finally could nurse, I had nothing.  I made it work, though, and once my supply came I was able to nurse them for a full year until they weaned themselves.

 
Now for the beautiful part of the story.  I became pregnant with number 6 and *knew* that I wanted better.  I decided to birth at home with midwife.  It was the most peaceful and calm experience.  Our daughter was 9lb. and 15 oz. but didn’t cause one bit of a problem coming out.  Her birth was healing for me in so many ways.  The c-section left me feeling violated and angry.  For some reason, her calm birth seemed to wash all of that away.  Now I feel a passion to protect other women from that same thing, but I no longer feel pain for myself.  I have since gone on to have 5 more born at home – all wonderful safe births.  (Even though I heard that I was the talk of the OB nurses at the local hospital with the last one.   They thought I would surely die! LOL  Funny thing is, I did almost die after giving birth once….. in their very own OB ward after my section!)