Dear sweet Aubryn,

You are just over two months old now and the absolute light of my life! We have spent the last two months cuddling, nursing, and getting to know and love each other more and more each day. I could not imagine a more perfect little girl to join our family - your Brothers, Daddy, and I are so blessed.

This is the story of how you entered the world.

We are thrilled to share this fabulous VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) birth story. Thanks to Jessica for allowing us to share. We hope you love it as much as we do!

Click here to visit Jessica's blog and read her story. 

Before starting this birth story, I feel the need to mention my 1st and 2nd births.  They are the beginning of my journey and very much affected how I gave birth to my 3rd child.  My first came a couple weeks early with my water breaking in the middle of the night.  I went to the hospital before contractions started and after walking around a bit, they started me on Pitocin.  It took the whole day for contractions to get strong, and after 2 hours of strong contractions, an epidural and a cervical check resulting in little progress, the OB recommended a cesarean.  Besides asking if we could wait, I didn’t know enough to fight this recommendation, so my first baby came to me via an unplanned, and what I have come to realize, an unnecessary cesarean.  The reasoning was “failure to progress,” or maybe we could call it “failure to wait.”

Note: Previous birth was a planned c-section because of a breech baby.

At 39 weeks of pregnancy, pressure waves arrived in the middle of the night about 10 minutes apart.  I thought “this is it” but after I got up and ate, they stopped.  I went to my 39 week exam a few hours later.  

Juniper’s Birth Story

I had been experiencing frequent braxton hicks for a couple weeks before the birth. Even though I had them most of my pregnancy they were starting to become more frequent at night making me believe that “tonight was the night.” They never turned into anything and left me unable to fall asleep for hours.

My guess date came and went which didn’t surprise me all that much, but when the 41 week mark came and went I started getting impatient. I loved being pregnant but was mentally and physically ready to meet this new little one.

Aksel’s Birth Story – March 3, 2012

The weeks leading up to Aksel’s birth I began doing a lot to prepare my body/baby for our birthing time.  I spent all of my time focused on getting baby into a good position so as not to have a repeat OP baby like Brevick (or another C-section!)  I bounced/rocked on my birth ball, did lots of spinning-babies exercises (rebozo, pelvic rocks, side lying release), ate tons of fresh pineapple, had tons of “hubby time”, and of course practiced my affirmations and Hypnobabies cues.