S1 Ep3: VBA3C Birth Story with Shannon Whitlock, a VBAC Doula at Moonstone Rose Birth

April: You’re listening to the VBAC Hub podcast and I’m your host April Austin. I’m a doula and antenatal teacher, VBAC mum and the founder of the VBAC Hub CIC. This podcast is here to dig into the messy, complicated and deeply human side of birth after Caesarean. We’re going to talk about the evidence, the guidelines, share birth stories, give context and talk about the realities of navigating the maternity system. We’ll be having respectful conversations, discussing all of the nuances and hopefully having a bit of companionship along the way. If you’re ready to get informed and feel less alone in this journey, you’re in the right place. Make sure you follow along so you never miss an episode.

Hello my loves and welcome back to the VBAC Hub podcast. Today we have got another birth story episode with Shannon. So Shannon, tell us a little bit about yourself, the work that you do and about your family life as well.

Shannon: Okay, so I’m Shannon and I have four children. I’ve had three previous caesareans and then my last was my VBAC after three c-sections. We homeschool all of them and yeah, we live in Cambridge. I became a doula in June 2024, so a little over a year now. Primarily my focus is VBACs — obviously that’s my special interest — but I’ve been lucky enough over the last year to support planned c-sections, home births, a VBAC, and yeah, I think that’s enough of an intro.

April: Wow, that sounds incredible, and all of those births you’ve been able to support over the last year — that’s wonderful. So I always like to start off with a little bit of a too long, don’t read version of your previous births. You’ve had three caesareans before. Can you tell us a little bit about those experiences and how they came about?

Shannon: Yes, so my first baby — I was 19 when I had him. I was very naive. I just assumed that a baby would be born, no preparation was needed. I got to 41 weeks, induction was spoken about and I agreed. It was the classic cascade of interventions — induction, epidural, got to 10 centimetres, I think they only let me push for about half an hour, and then I was just wheeled off to theatre. I don’t know much about the reasons why. But yeah, he was born. I have quite large babies — I should preface this — he was nine pounds thirteen. My husband’s six foot though, so I’ll blame him for that because I’m about five five. So yeah, that was that. It was straightforward, nothing particularly bad.
My second — I put in the work to have a home birth after caesarean, and then I got to 36 weeks and panicked and changed it to a planned c-section. We don’t have family nearby, they’re about an hour away, and I just panicked that support wouldn’t get there in time. So I booked the c-section. It turns out he needed to come out early anyway because he had a heart murmur, which cleared up by six weeks so he’s fine now. But yeah, he needed to come out, so again it was fairly straightforward and I don’t really have any negativity around that.
And then my third — she was born April 2020, and we all know what happened then. That was quite traumatic. I can talk about it now; I think training to be a doula and the work I’ve been doing since has helped me come to terms with it, but for a long time I couldn’t talk about it without crying.
She was again overdue, and I went to a growth scan not long after my due date — everything was fine. They left me for a week, I went back a week later, and the consultant, who I was told was very supportive of VBACs, took one look at my placenta on the screen, told me it was calcified, told me it was failing and that I needed to come in the next day. Because of COVID measures I was on my own, I didn’t have my husband with me. I was very vulnerable and it was just go, go, go after that. I didn’t have time to research. I only researched placenta calcification about three months after she was born, because I knew what she told me wasn’t right — but in the moment I just didn’t have the strength. So yeah, she was born. My husband only stayed with us for an hour after she was born and then he had to go, and it was awful. They told me — not in theatre but in recovery — that my temperature was raised, which obviously it will be after a c-section. They told me I had COVID and would need to be isolated from my baby for three days. But no, I didn’t have COVID, and we went home 26 hours later. Yeah, it was not a good experience. I think I spent the first week after she was born just crying because it was horrendous.
April: Wow, so quite varied experiences. I think a lot of people can relate to your first experience — I’ve also had an induction from a first that just ended in a c-section. I think that is such a common story. What I find really interesting — and I picked up on this — is that you say you got scared and booked a section, but then your baby needed to be born anyway because of the heart murmur. I’m always really fascinated by the instincts that we have, where sometimes we can feel like, oh, maybe I’m just scared and I’m doing this, but actually there’s another driving force behind us going, do you know what, I really need to do this. And we can be really judgmental of ourselves.
So after you’d had your third baby, what was the process when you found out you were pregnant again? Did you always plan to have a VBAC or was it something that developed throughout the pregnancy?
Shannon: I’d always planned to have a VBAC. There’s a 99.9% chance she is our last, and I knew that if I didn’t attempt it, I wouldn’t get that opportunity again. I think the preparation probably started when I found out I was pregnant. We weren’t going to have a fourth, just because of the birth experience I’d had with my third — it was too much for us both to go through. So I kind of locked all of that trauma away in a little box in the back of my mind, thinking I would never have to deal with it. And then we’ve always said we wanted four children, my third was about two and a half, we spoke about it, and yeah — when I found out I was pregnant, I was like, oh, now I have to actually deal with what happened.
So I think the preparation started there, kind of facing what had happened and why it happened, and not blaming myself. I mean, COVID had a massive part to play anyway. But I also think that even had COVID not been a factor, they still would have tried to coerce me into that c-section. Like I said, I have big babies — she was nine pounds four, my third — and she was born at 41 plus five, which coincidentally happened to be the hospital’s cutoff for overdue. So yeah.
I don’t think I did a lot of physical preparation for my VBAC. It was a lot of mental. I poured myself into statistics — which if you know me personally is so funny, because I’m not a statistics person at all; I am not a doula who can come to you with statistics or research, it falls out of my head. But yeah — statistics, podcasts, books, birth stories, Facebook groups. I was living, breathing, eating VBAC content so that I felt I was in the best possible place mentally.
April: That’s amazing. So with that start of preparation, did you debrief your previous experience with anybody?
Shannon: So I actually had the same community midwife with my fourth as I’d had with my third, so she already knew my history. But at my booking-in appointment she wasn’t available, and it was another midwife who was awful. Because I wanted a home birth again — I didn’t want to go into hospital, they had completely ruined any trust I had in them from my third — she was just like, at eight weeks pregnant, coming out with, “Why would you have a home birth? I don’t care that you’re only nine minutes from the hospital, anything could happen. Shoulder dystocia” — you know, all of the things they’re going to throw at you.
But the one positive I did get out of that appointment was she referred me to the Birth Choices Clinic at my local hospital, where I had about three or four meetings over the course of my pregnancy with the consultant midwife. We didn’t see eye to eye all the time, but I will give her credit because having her name against mine and my birth plans definitely helped me get the birth I got in the end.
But it was never really mentioned by anyone that I needed a debrief — it was just very much a passing comment, like “I think you’d benefit from this.” And I think it wasn’t so much for my benefit in understanding what happened previously; it was more a chance for them to try to convince me that I needed to be in hospital and should agree to this, this, this and this. But I think it kind of backfired on them in the end.
April: That’s really interesting, because I think when people are offered debriefs, a lot of the time they’re within the institution where they already gave birth — where the trauma sits within us — and very often we’re not told that we can go and do those things privately with independent midwives, that there are sometimes even independent obstetricians you can see, or doulas to just talk about the experience. It’s not offered up as an option.
So after your booking appointment — which I’ll be honest doesn’t sound very evidence-based or supportive of birth rights in general — you were still able to have the same community midwife. What was the rest of the pregnancy like? Did you meet with a consultant?
Shannon: So I refused consultant care until 37 weeks, and that was just one appointment. Weirdly, it was in a bay with a curtain pulled around me — not an office, not a room — which didn’t really give me much privacy to genuinely talk about my concerns. One thing I did find interesting about that consultant appointment, which gave me insight into how the whole team at that hospital viewed me, was the consultant asking whether I’d be open to a c-section if mine or my baby’s life were in danger. Obviously I said yes, of course. And she looked me dead in the eye and said, “Oh, that’s surprising.” And I was like — what? She said, “Because I’ve been told that you were dead set against a c-section.” And I said, yes, as a standard procedure. But if mine and my baby’s life are in danger, of course I’m going to agree to it. So I left that appointment, she was happy with my plan — again, it backfired on them completely.
Up until that point I had meetings with just my community midwife, who again was not the most supportive. She was fine, but there were comments here and there that left me feeling a bit deflated. Shoulder dystocia came up a lot throughout my entire pregnancy. I know I keep saying it, but big babies — because they will generally equate big babies to an increased risk of shoulder dystocia. So she was coming at me with facts about shoulder dystocia and transfer times from my house to hospital. She was okay, but she could have been better.
I also had to attend all of my appointments on my own, without anyone with me — which I think is one of the most important bits of advice I could give anyone: if you can, take someone into those appointments with you, because they can blindside you at any point. Which happened to me at 36 weeks — I thought I was just going along to a routine check-up, urine and blood pressure and feel of the bump, everything fine. And I walked in and the head of community midwifery was also in the room. No warning, nothing pre-planned. My community midwife basically just sat there while the head of community midwifery took over the appointment, and it was a lot of scare-mongering.
I was still planning a home birth at this point and there were so many things she told me. I was in that room for about half an hour. It was basically: shoulder dystocia, transfer time, I would bleed out, my baby would bleed out, if I went into hospital and refused a routine cannula and then I bled out they wouldn’t have time to get one in and again I would die. She actually asked me to bring my husband to the next meeting because she basically accused me of lying to him about what would happen if anything bad happened. She told me I would traumatise her home birth team if anything bad happened. And yeah, that appointment was not a good one. I left in tears. I came home to my husband and cried. And then I got angry.
I sent what would equate to a three-page email to my community midwife saying, forward this to the head of community midwifery because I’m not happy about what happened. She apologised and said she didn’t know it was happening. But I’m like, you did though, didn’t you? You just didn’t want to tell me because she’s essentially your boss.
So yeah, that left me completely — I don’t even know the word. Unless you’ve gone through a VBAC or gone through the preparation for one, it’s hard to understand how it feels to have the professionals tell you that what you’re planning for is wrong, even when you know it’s right and that you can do it. It’s disheartening, and more than that. And as I left the room, my midwife looked at me and said, “Oh, I can’t wait for you to have this baby.” But it wasn’t in a you’re-going-to-have-a-baby way — it was, I can’t wait for you to have this baby so that you’re out of our hair and we can move on to the next one.
April: There is so much to unpack but it’s so familiar, and I think it is really important to share these experiences so thank you for being so stark and honest about what you were experiencing. I’ve always said that I don’t believe women and birthing people make risky decisions. And having a consultant say to you, “Oh, I was told you were dead set against caesareans” — I mean, have some critical thinking. You are a medical professional. Of course I don’t want a caesarean just as a standard because I’ve had previous caesareans — but of course, if it was medically necessary, I’m not going to refuse. I can hear your frustration and it’s triggering my own, because I had exactly the same conversations when I was going for even just my first VBAC.
So you’ve gone through all of those appointments — well done to you for being able to go through that, for that level of resilience, to take all of that on and still move forward and go, do you know what, this still feels right for me. In terms of planning a home birth, how was that process? Did you have an opportunity to meet the home birth team beforehand?
Shannon: We don’t have a dedicated home birth team where I live in Cambridgeshire, so it’s very much a case of if there’s someone available, they’ll come out. As a matter of fact, my community midwife said during COVID that she couldn’t attend home births because she was diabetic — and then she said, “Oh, I’m glad, because I don’t like home births anyway.” I suppose that kind of set the tone for how she was with me throughout my appointments.
But as I got closer to my due date, I think they kind of realised they could continue to work against me but that I was going to do it anyway. So they gave me the bare minimum at that point. My community midwife then recommended that I meet with the head of midwifery at the hospital — and she actually came to my house, which was interesting. So she came to my house, we talked through everything with my community midwife and we set out a home birth plan: things like I have a dog so what we’d do with him, where the children would go, who would be there, transfer to hospital. They put me on a kind of red list so that if they got a call with my address we’d be a priority transfer to hospital — just things like that. And I think that appointment gave me a bit more hope that things were going to go the way I wanted.
I was about 37 weeks when she came out. The only negative I had at that appointment was that she recommended I have weekly sweeps from 38 weeks. That definitely gave me some conflict — if that’s even a word — because I had the head of midwifery agreeing with my plans for a home birth but also recommending sweeps. One side of my brain was saying she’s obviously recommending that because she wants you to have the home birth, but then the logical side was saying, no, she doesn’t want you to have the home birth, she’s just agreeing with you to shut you up for another three weeks. Don’t do it.
I ended up booking an hour chat with a local doula, just to have someone outside of and unbiased by the system to talk me through it. And in the end I decided against the weekly sweeps because they wouldn’t have been beneficial.
April: No — as a doula myself I’m like, where’s the evidence base for that? I find it fascinating that sweeps are a form of induction, yet we’re quite happy to keep trying to push this baby out as quickly as we can, while being terrified of allowing physiology to do its own thing.
What I like about that meeting with the head of midwifery is that it was in your home, on your turf. I think that’s really powerful. To anyone listening who is planning a VBAC — you can actually ask to have these appointments at home. You don’t always have to go into the hospital or the clinic. And I love that you booked that call with the doula just to get that independent voice outside of what the system was doing.
So you’ve got to 37 weeks, we’re getting close now to your baby arriving. Tell us a little bit about the weeks leading up to labour starting.
Shannon: I remember getting to 37 weeks and actually thinking it was going to go on for longer than it did. My first and third had come overdue — 41 plus three and 41 plus five, I think — and my second had obviously been brought out early because of his murmur. So I was expecting it to go on longer and wasn’t feeling like she was going to come on or before her due date. We were having appointments and making plans for after the due date — 40 weeks, 41 weeks, and then we’ll talk about anything else. I’d said at every point throughout my pregnancy that I didn’t want to talk about any interference until I reached 42 weeks. And even that was putting fear into them — they were like, oh my god, 42 weeks, we don’t know what’s going to happen! But I was very firm. I would not book in a c-section date. Sweeps weren’t going to happen — I’d had two with my third and she still ended up in a c-section, so no. There was even talk about using the Foley balloon — which in 2023 at my hospital wasn’t common — but they were going to bring that out for me, so gold star treatment over here.
I did make a compromise with the consultant midwife as I got closer, that I would use the birth centre if a midwife wasn’t available for the home birth. That was my compromise. And I met with the consultant midwife and we went around one of the rooms — it wasn’t home, but it was fine. At my hospital there’s only one birth pool, and there’s a joining door from the birth centre into the labour ward, so the bed is in the labour ward and the birthing pool is in the birth centre. They were happy with that because I was close enough to theatre if anything went wrong, but I was still going to be in the space I wanted.
I remember getting to 38 weeks, and as a doula now I know that 38 weeks is on-call time — it could happen at any point — and you look, don’t you, for any sign when you wipe, any cramp — is this it? I remember watching Glastonbury that year — I think it was the weekend before she was born. My husband is very into music; I think Queens of the Stone Age and Arctic Monkeys were playing. We were just sat watching it and for some reason I burst into tears. It was about four days before she was born, and he looked at me and said, “Why are you crying?” And I just went, “I don’t know if I’m making the right decision. What if she dies? What if I bleed out? What if all of these things?” And it just came over me at once. Looking back, I know that can be a sign that labour is coming — that massive wave of emotion — but at the time I just thought I was having a moment, pregnancy hormones. How we gaslight ourselves.
So that was very much a weekend of mixed emotions. There was the meltdown, but I enjoyed just being with my husband, watching something he loves. It was very much an oxytocin bubble — the other three were in bed, it was very hot, we had all the windows open, it was dark and we were just watching Glastonbury.
Two days before I went into labour, I was sat in a car garage because my car needed brake pads and discs, and I’m the only driver in my house so I had to take it. I sat in the reception for about two hours, and I remember them telling me how much it was going to cost — I was about to hand over my card and they told me it was about £150 more than they’d quoted me on the phone. I stood my ground, and I think all of my anger at the system came out at that poor mechanic. In the end he gave me the price they’d quoted. So I got my car back.
And then that was it — no more preparation to be done. We’d bought a new car seat about a week before she was born because we’d got our old one out of the loft and there was a tiny bit of mould on it. We’d cleaned the next-to-me, the car now had brake pads and discs, and we were set and ready for her to make her appearance whenever she wanted to.
April: Amazing! I love that you floored that mechanic — that pent-up emotion. I’ve said on other birth stories before that wave of just, am I making the right decision, and that outburst — it’s so familiar, because you’re put under so much pressure throughout your whole pregnancy and I think it is that last release of your body going, I’m going to let go, we’re going to do this, but I just need to get this energy out of me.
So you’re all ready, you’re all prepared — tell us your birth story.
Shannon: Okay, so she decided to come at 39 plus five, which was interesting to me because I was fully expecting to make it to my due date and beyond. It was seven o’clock in the morning. I’m hypermobile, so all of my joints are extra bendy anyway, and it’s completely normal for me to wake up with aches and pains from sleeping funny. I woke up that morning, sat up in bed and was like, hmm, that’s a new feeling. I didn’t really think anything of it.
My husband — I don’t know whether he sensed something was going to happen — literally handed me the clippers and said, “Can you cut my hair?” It’s half seven in the morning. So I cut his hair, and there were still these twinges and niggles but I didn’t think anything of it. Went downstairs, did breakfast. I’ve actually got a picture of my third eating her breakfast on the sofa that morning — I took it to send to my husband, and I remember thinking after taking it, this could be it. Something could be happening, because the pains hadn’t died off. They were very much in the background, but they were there.
My husband works from home a lot and was upstairs, and I made it through until about lunchtime before I said to him, “I’m going to have a bath to see if this is just aches and pains or if it’s going to carry on — because if it’s labour it’ll carry on, but if it’s not it’ll ease off.” An Amazon delivery came while I was waiting — AdBlue for the car, quite a heavy one. I had my bath and I think I only managed about half an hour before I had to get out. I got dressed and said to him, “It hasn’t eased off — I think this might be it.” So he told work he probably wouldn’t be in for the afternoon.
Then the postman came with the new car base for the car seat, and I had to answer the door to him mid-contraction. The poor man must have wondered what was going on — he just handed me this box and I was just like, yeah. Didn’t say anything. He was normally a really nice postman and we’d usually have a good conversation, but that day I just couldn’t muster anything.
I ended up — my husband said it was a couple of hours, though I didn’t think it was that long — on my hands and knees on the floor in the living room. The other three were playing outside. I think it was about two o’clock in the afternoon when he decided he needed to call my mum, who was going to drive over to look after the other three regardless of whether I had the baby at home or needed to transfer in. So we called her and then he called the hospital and said I was down for a home birth. They took my name — and as soon as they heard it, the midwife on the phone said, “Oh, hold on a moment.” Another midwife came to the phone and told him the home birth service wasn’t running.
In my opinion, I believe the home birth service was running, but because they knew who I was, they just said it wasn’t. At that point I had another meltdown, because I think I was too far gone and had left it too long — I didn’t have the strength to fight it. I could have stayed at home, I could have refused to go in, but I was so far into it that I just panicked that again things were going wrong, that I was going to end up with a c-section because I was going into hospital.
So yeah, my mum came and ended up driving us to the hospital. I remember her and my husband trying to get me up off the floor and I just wasn’t moving. They thought I was going to end up having the baby in the kitchen, which wouldn’t have been a problem, but they wanted to get me to the hospital. I sat in the car — don’t remember much of that journey.
Got to the hospital. It’s quite a long way from the entrance to the labour ward, and there are quite a lot of people — thinking about it now that’s literally my worst nightmare, having a load of people staring at you — but at the time I was just like, whatever, I’m having a baby, leave me alone. Made it to the labour ward, but we’d gone into the triage bit first where they assess you. It was very clearly obvious I was in labour, but they needed to do an examination. I had been dead set against these, but I think I was also in denial that it was happening, and I agreed to one — and that was the only one I agreed to. I was four centimetres. So they put me in a wheelchair and we went to the labour ward.
They put me in the room with the birth pool attached, so that was fine. The only problem was that at the time my hospital was fitting the gas and air vents, and they’d fitted them in the room with the bed but not in the room with the pool — so if I wanted to use the pool I couldn’t have gas and air. I had the gas and air first over the bed, threw up once, that was it, and then it was my best friend for the rest of the labour. Then my husband asked if I wanted to try the pool, because he knew that if I was in hospital I’d want it. I said yes. He said I was in there for about an hour, hour and a half, but to me it didn’t feel that long. It’s not that I didn’t like the pool — it’s that I liked the gas more. Had I been able to have both, I think that would have been the perfect combination and she would have been born in water. But I got back out and went onto the bed.
I’d also said no to a routine cannula — I’m needle-phobic, which I know sounds odd with both sides of my nose pierced and tattoos all up my arm, but it’s a different pain. So I was not having a cannula unless they needed one. I also said no to continuous monitoring — they would check in with a Doppler, and that was my limit.
As I was progressing further in labour and baby was moving down, they couldn’t find her with the Doppler and wanted to bring in a scan machine, since I’d said no to continuous monitoring. They brought it in, but it was too painful for me to move — I was on my side and they wanted me on my back, and being on my back was too painful. I think it took about half an hour with these people standing at my bedside waiting to scan me just to roll over. Anyway, they found her and said she was so low down that that’s why they couldn’t find her — which, as we said, a bit of critical thinking would have been helpful there.
At that point, the consultant from my third pregnancy — the one who told me my placenta was calcified, who I had completely refused to see throughout my fourth pregnancy — walked into the room. She apparently completely ignored my husband, looked at me while I was labouring and said, “How long are you going to labour for?” And I said, “As long as it’s safe for me and my baby.” She didn’t like that. And she left and I didn’t see her again, which is fine. I think it’s still on my notes now that I don’t want to see her.
So they found her, everything was fine — and we didn’t know what we were having, by the way. At this point she was just baby. Consultant left, and I think two new midwives came on — one of them was a student midwife. She was lovely. I loved her, and the other one was lovely as well. I was really lucky that even though I ended up on the labour ward, I had supportive midwives who didn’t try and push anything. They stayed back. They didn’t interfere with what I wanted. I really wanted labour to start on its own and I really wanted to experience that intimate moment with me and my husband labouring without interference — and I got both of those things.
Then I remember going onto all fours on the bed, and my waters broke. I remember going, “Oh no, something’s happened.” And they were like, “Oh, it’s just your waters.” I was like, “But it keeps coming.” There was a lot of water. And they said, “No, it’s fine, it’s just your waters, just let it happen.” And then I rolled over onto my back — my husband said, “Are you sure you want to be on your back? You said throughout your pregnancy you didn’t want to give birth on your back, it’s the least optimal position.” I said, “No, it’s where I’m comfortable. I’m fine.” And then I don’t remember anything — which, as a doula now, I know is clearly the resting stage. I think I actually fell asleep.
And then it was almost like I was in that labour land where everything seems really far away and covered in cotton wool and fuzzy — and then I snapped to it, and I was so conscious, and I was like, something’s happening, it hurts. They lifted the blanket and the student midwife said, “Oh, there’s your baby’s head.” The pain I was feeling was her crowning. They didn’t have anything ready because they didn’t realise it was going to happen that quickly. And it was that student midwife who caught my VBAC after three c-sections. She was born, and my husband told me she was a girl — which is amazing because we have two boys, and now I have two girls.
I never get upset talking about her birth. It’s always my third.
It was lovely because I did what they told me I couldn’t do. And I think that was more my driving force throughout my pregnancy — I just wanted to stick up a massive middle finger to everyone who said I couldn’t do it.
April: I feel that. That is what a lot of this is about for so many of us who have had babies. Like, we’re not making stupid or risky decisions. We just want you to trust us and our bodies, to treat us with respect, and to actually respect our human rights. And your story was filled with so much having to fight and push and hold on with resilience. I got emotional with that moment too — that student midwife caught a baby born after three previous caesareans. How is that going to change how they view pregnancies and supporting women and birthing people who’ve had previous c-sections? Because the caesarean rate is on the rise. There are so many of us now going back into these births and we just want people to believe in us.
So you’ve had your daughter, you’re in that wonderful oxytocin bubble. What was it like — you’ve had three caesareans before, and now you’re holding your baby. What was that immediate aftermath, that recovery, like? Standing up for the first time when you’re not having to hold yourself together because of a scar — talk us through that experience.
Shannon: I mean, I think the one thing I didn’t particularly prefer either way was the placenta. With a c-section I didn’t even see it — it was just whisked away. I had on my birth plan that I wanted to see it and keep it in sight, and I’ve actually got a picture of it — my kids asked me something about the umbilical cord the other day and I could show them this picture. It’s just a picture of my youngest’s placenta.
I’d wanted a physiological third stage, but I was bleeding quite a lot and they asked if I’d agree to the injection. I said yes. So the placenta was born — that was a strange feeling. It feels like a jellyfish is just… it’s bizarre. So the placenta came out, they examined me and I had two second degree tears. They weren’t sure if my bleeding was caused by a haemorrhage or by the tears. They estimated I lost about 1.2 litres. At that point a cannula was fitted — again, something they told me couldn’t be done if I refused a routine one, that my veins would be too small if I was bleeding. Well, they fitted one. A consultant came in and repaired one of the tears, which was a mistake — I wish he’d done both, because one was a labial tear and weeing for about three days afterwards was hell on earth. I think I only managed to pee in the shower with the water running over me.
So he repaired that and then we were just left to it. She was born at quarter past ten at night. I had to remain on the drip — paracetamol for the tears — and I think that ended at 3am. My husband was asleep, but I think I was too hyped up on adrenaline to sleep. I was watching Criminal Minds on my phone while holding this baby and just wondering what had happened, because it had gone how I wanted it to go — which is not a feeling I was familiar with.
When the drip finished at 3am, I woke up my husband and said, “Can you press the buzzer? I want to go and have a shower.” Which again wouldn’t have happened with a c-section — you would have still been bed-bound. Standing up was strange. I think I had lost all feeling in my legs; it was a similar feeling to after a c-section, but it didn’t last as long. My legs felt like they weren’t attached to my body, or they felt really heavy — but by the time I’d made it from the bed to the shower they were working fine. I could shower on my own. I didn’t have to have my husband there — after my c-sections he had to help me in and out of the bath for about a week. I could just shower on my own. It was great. I got into my pyjamas by myself, not bed-bathed and put into one of the gowns they put you in.
By the morning, the head of midwifery — the one who had come to my house — popped her head in and said, “Oh my god, congratulations, I knew you could do it.” And I was like, did you though? Because that wasn’t really the vibe I was getting. She said, “Oh, when we all saw your name on the system and that you were in labour, we were all wondering what would happen.” And I was like, whatever.
Then she left, and I think we were on our way home by 11am — only 12 hours after she was born. Which again wouldn’t have happened with a c-section. And I was walking to the park with my other three, with baby in a carrier, two days after we came home from hospital. There were so many moments like that after her birth that made me appreciate what I had been through with c-sections, because there are so many things you just can’t do. I remember crawling up the stairs on my hands and knees because I couldn’t stand upright. Just being able to shower, go to the toilet, carry my baby without needing help — with my first three, after each section, the older children would go to my husband for things because I couldn’t move. Whereas this time I was able to go and make some lunch without needing his help. There were lots of moments like that which gave me a new perspective on what a c-section is actually like.
Because we’ve all heard it — “at least you didn’t have to push a baby out,” the easy way out. But unless you’ve been through a c-section, there’s no way to appreciate the gravity of what happens before, during and after. It doesn’t just stop as soon as you’re stitched up. There’s a reason why there’s a six-week recovery — and that’s the minimum.
April: Yeah. That recovery goes on for such a long time as your body adjusts, and with each caesarean your scar is different. And I got emotional when you said “I could carry my baby” — because yeah, you can carry your baby. You can roll over in the night to feed them. You’re not having to rely on someone, not constantly remembering to take pain relief. C-section is not the easy way out at all. It comes with such a long recovery, and society is just like, you’ve had a baby, get on with it. And it’s like — no. This is why physiology is so important and why being able to have births where we feel in control and trusted to make our own decisions matters so much. Because the care isn’t there afterwards to actually take care of us — if there was more support, more midwives able to come home, then maybe that recovery wouldn’t feel as hard. But it’s just, off you go, you’ve got three kids now. And if that had been a fourth caesarean, that’s a whole different level of recovery.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I feel really privileged that you’ve shared it and that it’s going to be out there for others to listen to and gain perspective from — and for how open and honest you’ve been. It’s always such a privilege, so thank you so much.
Just before we finish today, I always ask people: what’s one thing, if you could say to somebody preparing for a VBAC now, what’s one thing that you’d say is really important?
Shannon: I think for me it’s probably not something they could be doing, but something I haven’t mentioned yet — and that is that I had quite a big comedown after I’d had her. My pregnancy had been so hyper-focused on the birth and achieving what I wanted and making sure the system didn’t get to me the way they wanted to, that after I’d had her and got what I wanted, I thought I would be on cloud nine, that everything would be amazing and all my previous trauma would be healed. And it wasn’t like that.
I think understanding that having a VBAC will help heal some parts of you — but it’s not going to heal everything, and there will still be work to do. And if you do have a comedown after you’ve had your baby, that’s absolutely fine. It’s just nothing I had heard talked about or even prepared for. So I think that’s probably the one thing I would advise all pregnant people to be aware of — yeah, it can come with massive highs, but you can also have a dip, which I suppose is normal for having a baby anyway, but I just think there was an extra level of that with the VBAC preparation.
April: The extra layer of the previous stories. Yeah, I really relate to that. Thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you so much, Shannon. Let us know where we can find you on socials.
Shannon: You can find me at moonstonerosebirth on Instagram, or I have a website by the same name as well.
April: Amazing, we’ll have all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on today — it has been a pleasure to talk to you.
Shannon: And to you, thank you.
April: Thanks for listening to the VBAC Hub podcast. If this episode stirred something in you today, share it with someone who might need to hear it too. You can find more conversations, resources and updates over on our socials — just search The VBAC Hub. And if you’d like to support our crowdfunder, you’ll find links to that in our show notes. Remember that you deserve dignity, respect and autonomy always, and I’ll see you in the next episode.