Episode 284 Kara's VBA2C With Unexpected Twists

Kara joins us today from the Los Angeles area sharing her VBA2C story! Kara’s first birth was a scary and chaotic emergency Cesarean. Though her second planned Cesarean went smoothly, Kara did not love how her birth felt like such a medical procedure.

After experiencing a miscarriage during her third pregnancy, Kara experienced heartache and grief, but also shares how she gained a deep reverence for her body throughout the process. She just knew that her body was capable of having a vaginal birth. 

Kara pulled out all of the stops with her VBA2C prep. She built a birth team she felt great about. She prepared physically. She processed past fears and trauma.

Though her birth had some intense twists, Kara was able to achieve the VBA2C she fought so hard for. She took the leap of faith, trusted her body, and saw what it could do.

Kara’s Website

Needed Website

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

02:45 Review of the Week 

05:09 Kara’s first pregnancy 

08:17 Kara’s second pregnancy and planned Cesarean

10:57 Miscarriage

16:45 Fourth pregnancy and VBA2C prep

22:30 Beginning of labor

25:08 Thoughts about the hospital system

28:49 Breaking waters

32:28 Pushing, hemorrhaging, and the NICU

Megan: Hello, hello Women of Strength. It is Meagan and we have got a VBAC after two C-sections story. Of course, I love VBA2C stories because I’m a VBAC after two C-sections mama. Her name is Kara and she is amazing. I’m just going to read your bio because you are just amazing. 

It says, “She is an award-winning creative marketer and mother of three. She is in LA.” If you have been listening for a little bit, she actually was on the show quite a few months ago at this point of being aired with her OB. 

Kara: Oh yes, with Dr. Brock. Oh my gosh, when I was pregnant. I don’t know why I forgot about that, but we interviewed my practitioner, Dr. Barry Brock, together who is a very VBAC-supportive provider. That was a really fun conversation. I think I was 4 or 5 months pregnant at that point. 

Meagan: Yeah. We really wanted to ask him some questions about VBAC. He was with you along your journey and he was so gracious to come on and talk with us. So yeah. 

She has worked on so many amazing things, some of your favorite things I’m sure like Netflix, Stranger Things, which is definitely one of my favorites, Patrone Tequila, and some of your favorite women’s apparel brands at Target which is also my favorite store. 

She started her own brand consulting agency, Always Friday, in 2019, and after the birth of her first daughter, Hadley, she experienced an emergency C-section with her and then a planned C-section, and then a miscarriage, and then went on to have a VBAC after two C-section story. We are going to hear all of the stories today. Thank you, Kara, for being here. 

Kara: Yes. I’m so excited to be here. I love this community and I don’t think that I could have gotten to a place where I was having a VBAC without your podcast, without finding The VBAC Link Facebook group and just hearing other women really give me the encouragement to not do a third C-section. I am really happy. I’m just about three months postpartum now, so forgive me if I make no sense. Yeah. I’m just grateful for your guidance, your expertise, and all of the things that you pour your heart into as an expert on all things VBAC. 

Meagan: Aw. 

Kara: Thank you for that. 

Meagan: Well, thank you so much. I’m so excited to hear this story because I haven’t even heard the full story. I just have this little blurb right here on my form, so I’m really excited to dive into it. 

02:45 Review of the Week 

Meagan: We do have a review of the week and I put Kara on the spot you guys because she actually took Needed during her pregnancy and first, I’m obsessed with Needed and love and trust Needed. You took it throughout pregnancy and I would just love to hear your review on Needed today. 

Kara: Yes. I have obviously looked at all of these different types of prenatals and I ended up going with Needed and loved it. I did their prenatal multi and at first, I was like, “This is a little wild.” It’s eight capsules which felt aggressive, but it actually was so much of the nutrients that I needed. I broke it up to four in the morning and four towards the evening. 

I felt the most energized during this pregnancy. I felt the strongest. I obviously did all of the things, drank all of the tea, had the protein, the dates, and all of that, and my baby was much– I mean, I don’t know if this is correlated or not, but my baby was almost a pound and a half bigger than my previous biggest baby and I felt the strongest, the healthiest that I’ve ever felt during any of my pregnancies. 

I wish I would have taken it with the other two, but you live and you learn, so yeah. I highly recommend that to all of my friends and I always send people the link for the Needed vitamins whenever I can. 

Meagan: Yes. I believe it so much too. It’s interesting that you said you have felt the most energy during this pregnancy because I feel like once you have one, two, and three– once we have more kids, during those pregnancies, they are more exhausting because we are not just able to rest and relax. 

Kara: They are. 

Meagan: We are being mom, right? So I love hearing that. 

05:09 Kara’s first pregnancy 

Meagan: Okay, let’s get into your stories. 

Kara: Let’s do it. Cool. I’m excited. 

Meagan: Perfect. Let’s talk about Hadley’s birth. 

Kara: Yes. I got pregnant pretty easily and had a healthy pregnancy. I think maybe had this false sense of confidence that my delivery would match my pregnancy. I did not do a lot of prep work. I went into maybe how everyone does to some degree, what you don’t know you don’t know kind of thing. 

I went into labor naturally. I was a little bit overdue and ended up sort of with the classic cascade of interventions. That was challenging. They broke my water and just set off a bunch of other things that then her heart rate went up, sort of the classic stories you hear, and they rushed me into an emergency C-section which was really scary. It felt like a true emergency like Grey’s anatomy style just being rushed down the halls, with no time for really conversation. I finally asked for my operating notes and it was a class 2 which I guess if it’s a class 1, you guys talk about it. If it’s a class 3, you or the baby didn’t make it. 

It was really scary and honestly, I was terrified after. I think it took three weeks for my shoulders to come down from that C-section. I’ve said this before, but the only way I could describe it was it felt like a car crash and I wasn’t sure if my passenger made it. It was quiet in the room. I didn’t hear a baby crying. Nobody was really talking. I just remember tears streaming down my face while I was on the operating table completely unsure if my baby had made it. 

Luckily, she’s healthy and fine, but I don’t think that took away from the birth trauma that I experienced with that first baby. 

Meagan: Yeah. That just gave me the chills when you described it like that. How scary. 

Kara: It was so scary. I’ve never seen my husband look so afraid before. I’ve never seen him pray out loud before. So yeah. It was just one of those things where I wasn’t mentally prepared for that. I was not up to date on how many women have C-sections and what you can do to prevent it. I guess in this Instagram world that we live in, you see your friends pregnant and they are cradling their bump and then the next square you see in their feed is a baby announcing its name and weight. You never get to hear unless you ask people how you got from point A to point B, right? 

That was very just this naivety that you go into the hospital and you come out with a baby and you’re fine. I don’t know why I didn’t maybe do a better job researching all of the options. 

That was baby number one. 

08:17 Kara’s second pregnancy and planned Cesarean

Kara: Baby number two– I got pregnant about a year later. Again, quickly and easily thank God and all of that. It was the middle of COVID. It was 2020. I found out I was pregnant in March 2020 so it was sort of the peak of absolute fear and scare tactics to a degree. 

I kept trying to wrap my head around going into labor again naturally and I just couldn’t get there. I would have borderline panic attacks every time I would think about it. The word birth trauma wasn’t a word or a phrase in my vocabulary so I just thought you kind of toughen up and figure it out. I just really couldn’t get there. 

COVID every day, a new study came out basically saying that pregnant women are going to die. 

Meagan: Yeah. Lots of scary stuff was coming out. 

Kara: I opted for a planned C-section. That just seemed like the logical thing to do at that point. My husband couldn’t come to any of the appointments. I couldn’t have anyone else in the room. I was delivering with a mask on. It was all of these things that just took away from what is a natural birth experience so to speak and all of the things that you need. It eliminated a lot of that and made it this very sterile process that resulted in a great, planned C-section. 

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