Aven Lucas's Birth Story

The birth of my first baby, Kellan, was a pretty typical hospital birth. Although I began labor naturally, once I got to the hospital and accepted the epidural, the famous “cascade of intervention” began. I still ended up with a vaginal delivery (despite a few mentions of a c-section when I stalled out at 7cm for 4 hours.) After the birth, I was happy with how things went, but later, as I became more educated and aware of my birthing options and aware of how things could have been, I decided I wanted to approach the birth of my second child a different way.

About halfway through my second pregnancy, I decided to use the Hypnobabies home study course to prepare myself for a natural, unmedicated childbirth. I wrote up a “rough” birth plan and approached my doctor with it. He agreed with most of it, but there were a few things he did not agree with such as delayed cord clamping (he didn’t agree that he could delay AND place baby on my stomach right away) and refusing the Pitocin shot after birth (I hemorrhaged after delivery with my first baby, so he wanted to administer it just in case.) I decided to continue with him despite disagreeing on those points, but continued to research and hit up my AMAZING doula friends for advice. (A big thank you to my doula friend Nikki (In the Atlanta area? Check out her doula page here!)  for sitting down with me and helping me finalize everything!)

On Thursday, two days before my 11/17/12 EDD, I had my last prenatal appointment and my doctor mentioned wanting to schedule an induction date 10 days after my EDD. This upset me a LOT because, although I’d agreed to cervical checks, I wasn’t letting him tell me how far dilated/effaced I was. I didn’t want to worry about numbers that don’t mean much and was feeling pretty confident that I would give birth in my own time, when my baby was ready. He had asked me several times if I wanted him to try to get things moving (via membrane sweep), but it was important to me to let my body do what it was meant to do as naturally as possible, so I declined every time. When he mentioned induction, it immediately  began to rattle me and shake my confidence in my own body. Looking back, that is so crazy because I’d already done it once, of course my body knew what it was doing! I told him I was not going to discuss the possibility of induction until my EDD had passed. I told him that I trusted my baby to come when he was ready and my body to know what to do when he was time, why didn't he? He said he would call me on the following Monday and give me time to think it over. I was prepared to tell him that I would not consider induction until December 1, when I would be 42 weeks pregnant. (ACOG even says you're not "overdue" until after 42 weeks anyway!)