Today’s episode has a wealth of information you won’t want to miss! Dr. Kendra Ohora is a Licensed Clinical Marriage & Family Therapist and also a VBAC mom. From being told she would never have children to currently expecting her third baby boy, Kendra shares how prioritizing her mental health helped her through some really tough years. 

Kendra’s first birth was a planned breech home birth with an empowering labor. But when baby was not descending after hours of pushing, she felt at peace transferring to the hospital. Unfortunately, Kendra’s hospital experience was traumatic and resulted in a C-section under anesthesia. 

Through processing and healing, Kendra was able to prepare for and achieve the home birth she hoped for the first time with her second baby who was born only 14 months after her first. 

Tia, a VBAC doula from the Chicago area, joins Meagan as her cohost today and finishes the episode with the top three pieces of advice that she gives to all of her clients. 

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Full Transcript under Episode Details 

03:24 Review of the Week

06:07 Kendra’s professional background

09:00 Kendra’s surprise pregnancy

10:54 First birth

13:14 Surrendering

16:15 Surprise baby number two

21:00 Kendra’s VBAC

29:30 Processing births

33:31 Erin’s e-courses

36:16 Benefits of therapy

41:39 Short interval between pregnancies

45:51 Tia’s top three tips

48:54 Hire a great support team 

51:38 Prepare your mind

Meagan: Hello, hello. We have another amazing episode for you guys today and guess what? We did this a couple of weeks ago and I thought it would be fun to do it again. We have a co-host with us today. It’s not Julie, but it is Tia. Hello, Tia. 

Tia: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. 

Meagan: Absolutely. Tia is amazing and she is actually one of our VBAC certified doulas. I want to turn the time a little bit over to you and tell us where can people find you. What is your business name? All of that. 

Tia: Yeah. I am in the Chicagoland area so I serve a wide radius about an hour from my hometown of Mount Prospect. My business is Chicagoland Birth and Baby. Most people can find me on my website. It is Chicagolandbirthandbaby.com or they can email me at chibirthandbaby@gmail.com. Yeah. I would love for people to reach out to me if they are in my area. 

Meagan: Awesome. We will make sure to have her link and everything also in the show notes. You can easily find her. If you’re in her area looking for a doula, definitely give her a call.

Okay, you guys. We have a guest today. I mean, you are all special. Every guest is so special, but Dr. Kendra Ohora is with us today. She is a VBAC mom and then she also offers something very special that I think connects or can connect a lot with our audience because we go through a lot of stuff as VBAC moms and C-section moms and all of this. She actually owns a wellness company and she is a mental health and wellness practice in Hartford County. 

Kendra: Mhmm. 

Meagan: Awesome, okay, in Maryland. She specializes in couples therapy and perinatal mental health. In her brief years as a mom, she has learned to love and appreciate slowing down which I know we all need to do in life, all things neutral, and lots of time outdoors. Her VBAC journey is one of her most proud moments as a woman and a mom. 

I am excited for her to come to talk about her VBAC story but then also a little bit more of what she offers because I do. Like I said, I think it applies very well to our community. 

03:24 Review of the Week

Meagan: But of course, we have a Review of the Week so I’m going to turn the time back over to Tia really quickly and then we’ll dive right in. 

Tia: Yeah. I have a review from dmiller21395 from September 18, 2023. The subject is, “Empowering and Motivating.” This is from Apple Podcasts. It says, “I just had my successful VBA2C and would love to thank The VBAC Link Podcast for motivating, educating, and uplifting my spirit to help prepare myself for my VBA2C. I listened to The VBAC Link Podcast on my drives to work and while cleaning around the house. Each birth story brought so many emotions back to me relating to other mamas relating to birth trauma from our prior births and how deeply we dream of a VBAC. I recommend this podcast to anyone who wishes for a VBAC and also to any pregnant moms who just would love to hear birth stories and to educate themselves more on birth facts.” 

Meagan: Aww, thank you for that review. That was amazing. Once in a while, we will have a review that talks about recommending it to all VBAC moms or clients or anyone wanting to know their options for birth after Cesarean, but I really do love it when people also recognize that this podcast can help those first-time parents too. 

I mean, our Cesarean rate is astronomically high and it’s an issue. I think one of the ways that we can help here in our small community, but also very big community is to help educate those first-time moms about their options and why Cesareans are happening and what is being done out there and said out there that may be causing the whole root problem of the Cesarean rise. 

So I love that she pointed that out. 

06:07 Kendra’s professional background

Meagan: Okay, cute Kendra. Thank you so much for joining us today. 

Kendra: Thanks for having me. 

Meagan: I want to turn the time over to you. I’m excited to hear more about your stories and your journey and what you do every day. I also hope that we can talk a little bit about your e-courses, specifically two of them– the birth trauma and the rebirth. I love that title by the way. 

Kendra: Perfect, thank you. 

I feel like my story intertwines with mental health in a really important way because of my business but it also is like every step of my professional journey has just been a couple steps ahead of my personal journey and prepared me in a really beautiful and important way. 

I’ll probably start there because that’s maybe where it makes the most sense. I got into private practice years ago, maybe 8 or 9 years ago and I actually had quite a few clients who came to me who had infertility as a part of their story. That wasn’t something that was specific to my training in grad school. It was a lot of couples’ work, so I kind of got a crash course on the emotional heaviness and loss associated with an infertility journey. 

At that point in my story, my husband and I weren’t trying to have kids. It just wasn’t a piece of the puzzle yet. I just worked alongside of them, supported them, and learned a ton from them. I opened my own business and did that for a year or two– that’s Erin. The e-courses are actually done by Erin Newton. She is our expert perinatal mental health specialist and she supervises all of the clinicians at my practice. She is fantastic. 

When I brought her on, she had a generic skill set but really wanted to specialize in the perinatal realm. This was right when I got my infertility diagnosis. We had been trying for a couple of years. I had learned when to get some medical testing and all of that done. They said, “Essentially with your age and also with a couple other factors, we don’t think likely that you’re going to have children.” 

It was right at the beginning of COVID in February 2020 and I just remember being taken aback in a way I’ve never experienced before. Complete and total grief over something I didn’t know how to grieve despite my profession, despite my team and all of that. It was weird. It was a weird season of just not even being sure. What do you do with this loss that has not even happened yet? It’s this thing that you can’t reconcile or make sense of.

I sat with it for a while. My husband and I actually ended up doing some other things professionally to keep ourselves busy if you will, to find new energy and excitement, so we bought a home to renovate, a vacation property to renovate. My husband is in construction. That really took a lot of our time and excitement. 

09:00 Kendra’s surprise pregnancy

Kendra: I eventually wrote a blog. I decided, “Okay. I can share my story with the world.” I wrote this blog “13 Truths About Infertility”. It was essentially a quick summary– not quick, a very long blog– a summary of my journey with infertility and seeing it through my husband’s eyes and seeing it firsthand in my own experience. Something in me was like, “This is not the full story yet. There is more to come.” The clients that I had worked with, this connection that I had with Erin, her desire to share the birth trauma recovery with the world, and all of these factors just felt like there was more in this story. 

Eventually, in January 2021, I found out that I was pregnant with my first son and it was a complete and total surprise. It was just such a faith moment for us that we actually found out at our beach house that we were renovating. It was really serendipitous. I don’t know. It was magical if you will. I have it on video. It was really just super sweet. 

At the time, I really didn’t know anyone who was doing home births, VBAC wasn’t part of my journey yet, so I just thought, “Man, I never thought I was going to be a mom. I need to do everything I can to make this the most sacred journey possible. The most empowering, and important. I want healthy kids. I want emotionally healthy–” and all of that. 

I took a lot of care and energy in the pregnancy to read the resources on having a vaginal birth and all of the things that would help me and lead to success in that route as naturally as possible is what I wanted, the least intervention possible. I read all of the stories and listened to the podcast episodes. I just felt on top of the world like, “I’m going to do this. This is it. I can do this. My body can do this. I’ve done hard things. I’ve overcome hard things. I absolutely can do this.” 

10:54 First labor

Kendra: Towards the end of my pregnancy, maybe at 26 weeks, I ended up getting COVID and found out my first was breech. 

Meagan: Were you planning a home birth? 

Kendra: Yes, in Maryland. Mhmm. My provider– in Maryland, there are different levels or statuses of midwives typical to lots of states. My provider was an LPM, a licensed profession midwife who was comfortable with attending a breech but was not legally allowed to attend a breech. 

Around maybe 32 weeks enters the whole equation of, what do we do about the fact that this is not legal? In my particular area, there really were not a lot of LNMs, licensed nurse midwives, to oversee my case. She had called a couple of people and they essentially declined. They were like, “It’s too late in the pregnancy. We don’t know much about this case. We’re not willing to attend it. 

We found somebody out of state who was supportive, explained the whole breech process, and felt very comfortable doing it. My dream of home birth was slightly altered to, “Okay, now I have to labor at a birth center, but I’ll still be able to do it vaginally. I’ll still be able to do all of the things.” That was the most empowering, beautiful birth or labor experience ever. I felt so, “I am woman, hear me roar.” I just felt in my element. I felt power. I felt energy and excitement. I labored so long, for 24 hours. My water broke and all of the things. My sisters were there. I labored all over this birth center– outside, inside, different rooms, and it was just amazing. 

At the end of the day, I pushed for 3 hours and my little guy just wouldn’t drop. They were like, “He’s engaged. You’re dilated. All good stuff,” but he just wasn’t coming out. There was a surrender for me. There was this– I knew the stats. I knew the most common reason women transfer is exhaustion and I certainly was tired, but my stamina for this, “I have to do this” was so strong. 

My midwife was great. She just looked at me and was just like, “Kendra, I think you could keep pushing for hours and hours, but I don’t think your baby’s going to come out and I think we need to consider going to the hospital.” 

13:14 Surrendering

Kendra: It was a really painful surrender for me, but I just felt at ease too like, “Okay. Yeah. You’re right. He’s not going to come out.” There wasn’t a part of me that thought I could have made it happen if I pushed longer. It just felt like this was what had to happen. 

The unfortunate part is everything up until that point– the pregnancy, the labor, was perfect. Exactly what I wanted and then we transferred to the hospital and because I was out-of-state and I wasn’t established with a provider at this hospital, their reaction was like, “This is an emergency. This woman needs to go on the table in seconds.” I was just like, “I’ve been laboring for hours. I’ve been doing hip sways. I’ve been working through my contractions. I’m good. I can walk back to the room.” 

They were like, “No, you need to be in a wheelchair.” Again, long story short, a lot of bad things happened at the hospital. The standard of care was not ideal. Baby made it out safely and everything was okay, but my husband’s experience, the treatment of the baby, and all of that was not ideal and left essentially birth trauma for all of us, but I still felt that empowered energy of the labor that I don’t think it really registered to me right away that there was trauma involved. 

They declined my birth plan. They declined my desire not to be under general anesthesia. They really insisted that it was an emergency. I was like, “He’s not. I’m fine. He’s fine. All the heart rates and everything are good.” 

We ended up going through that process and because he was our little miracle baby, we were just still on top of the world. We came home from the hospital. We were new parents and were just soaking it all in. So much to my surprise, a few months later, I found out I was pregnant with my second. I was just like, “Holy smokes. How do you go from infertility diagnosis to two kids back to back? What have I gotten myself into?”

Kendra: Again, I was just like, “I’ve got to have this home birth. I’ve got to have this redemptive experience, this vaginal birth,” so that’s when I started studying the VBAC piece in particular and learning that lots of women do this, I can do this. That same energy I carried into the first one, I can do this. 

This go around, I would say, my studying looked different. My surrender looked different. I just felt more ease and peace, but also had this backround fear like, “What if I have to have another C-section? What if I have to land in the hospital again?” I was especially concerned for my husband and what he witnessed as well. 

You know, we are busy new parents and preparing for another baby and I just would say at the time, it didn’t feel like I had as much attention on the pregnancy as I did the first go around. 

16:15 Surprise baby number two

Kendra: So then leading into number two, my baby boy number two and his story, my water broke again which I know is pretty rare to have your water break so the fact that it broke twice is interesting. 

Meagan: They say it’s 10%. 

Kendra: Right?

Meagan: This is what they told me twice at the hospital. My water does the same dang thing. I’m three for three– water breaks first. 

Kendra: Two for two, yep. 

Meagan: That’s funny, okay. 

Kendra: Interesting. 

Meagan: Yeah. 

Kendra: I was kind of surprised myself because I was preparing for something to look different and it really didn’t. It looked similar. It broke early in the morning. My due date was Christmas Day and I very much didn’t want a Christmas baby, so I was actually over. It was New Year’s Eve. It was New Year’s Eve when my water broke. I was like, “I can have a holiday baby. I just don’t want a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day baby.” 

This labor was much shorter. It was 9 hours in length and at home. It was home and it was so perfect. I had a birth photographer and all of the same people there– my husband, my mom, my mother-in-law came, my sister, and my doula. I mean, it was just really perfect in the setting, in the setup, in the confidence that I felt going into it, but as soon as the active labor hit, I was like, “I don’t know if I can do this,” because all of the fear that the ending wouldn’t be what I wanted was there. 

Even though everyone could tell you that you have to release the fear because labor can get stalled and all of the things, I don’t think I could. It just felt like I had to work with the fear and work through the fear.

I remember 10 minutes into active labor saying to my doula, “I don’t know if I can do this,” and in my head also knowing, “You don’t have an option. You’re not going to surrender and go to the hospital and have another C-section. You have to give yourself the chance. You have to fight for it.” 

It felt like the only way out was through and because I had experienced labor before but never experienced baby dropping or what it felt like to have baby engaged, it just was new. And with each new thing, there was this simultaneous trusting my body and feeling nervous for my body all at once. 

I labored in a variety of positions. I labored in a birthing tub. I declined all of the checks. In hindsight, given the fact that I was so afraid, I can tell that I also just had this instinctual knowing. “I can do this. It’s going to happen. I know where my body’s at.” My mom, in particular, really loves to know and be in the know. She wanted to support me and be able to give me that encouragement and hope. She was right by my side, “Are you sure you don’t want them to check?” I was like, “No. I know it is happening. I know he is coming.” It just was a matter of how long did I think I could hold on. Did I think I could hold out? 

My husband and I this go around did a lot of couples’ therapy to process the birth trauma, to process through what he experienced and what he saw in the hospital. I just feel emotional naming that. This time, he was just such a support. He was so present and active. I’m so glad I have it on video because I get to see it now and see his support of my body, his support of the space, filling the birth tub with more hot water, holding my hand, and even right at the end as I was pushing baby out, I was on my bed on all fours and he was just right there waiting for baby. 

To me, it just was a lot of growth for both of us that he came to the other side too. It wasn’t just my journey. It was our journey. The fact that he could stand there, sit there, and be ready for the baby to come out and trust that process after everything he saw, the fact that he trusted me, that just feels like such a gift because I hear so many of my friends and I’m delicate because of the intersection of the mental health and my own journey. I’m delicate with how much I push or how much I say, but some of my own friends tell me their husbands are not supportive. Their husbands want x, y, and z. It’s really discouraging to think the woman doesn’t have a right to her own body or her own plan. 

I just felt like he knew I could do it. That felt huge. So huge for me. 

21:00 Kendra’s VBAC

Kendra: Yeah, after 9 hours of labor and maybe an hour and a half of pushing if I’m remembering, I did not have, “I am woman, hear me roar” energy. I had a lot of instinctual, fear-based, “I can do it, but I’m scared out of my mind” energy. I think that’s okay. Sometimes that’s what it is. Sometimes it’s not the beautiful thing I wanted right away. Sometimes you just accept what it is, but man, the ending. 

The ending was everything I needed to heal. It was everything that I had hoped for and prayed for. I pushed so hard. It was so painful, so painful, and in my head, I was just like, I had watched videos of women– this might be TMI in some cases, but I’m so used to it in the mental health world. I watched women who orgasmed during labor and women who enjoyed labor. I was just like, “I just want the ideal, pain-free labor,” and it was not. It was not pain-free, but it was perfect. It was so perfect. 

The baby did have shoulder dystocia, so the midwife had to come in, intervene, and pull him out. That was scary for 30 seconds, but probably less scary for me because I was just focused on getting baby out and couldn’t see because I was on all fours. I couldn’t see him, but I knew my mom, my mother-in-law, my husband, and my other son were all behind me. They could see baby halfway out essentially, so I think it was probably more alarming for them than it was for me. 

But yeah, it was pretty crazy at the end. It happened so quickly and then my favorite picture is this one where they hand him to me and you can see it in my face. I’m so overwhelmed with– I did it. I did it and I literally say out loud, “This feels so redemptive.” I knew it was what I needed and what my body needed to heal. 

Meagan: Those pictures, just the rawness, the rawness, and the face, and the emotions, sometimes there are tears on the face, oh. It just gives me chills thinking about it. I have one of those photos too that my friend was able to snap of me. Oh, they’re just so beautiful. I was ugly crying and I was screaming, “I did it” too, but it tells the whole story right there. It tells everything right there in one image. 

You mentioned that you were so happy that you had it on video and that was one of my biggest regrets is not having someone there specifically to video it. I wish I could see my VBAC from the other side. 

Kendra: Yeah, sure. I’ve watched it a handful of times and I don’t get through it without crying. It is so special to me. 

Meagan: I’m sure. I’m sure. Yeah. It’s just so special to have so hold onto that for sure. 

24:07 Uniting with your birth partner

Meagan: There were so many things you had brought up that you said. You grew together and this was your journey. I loved that you pointed that out because I think sometimes as VBAC moms, we’re really hyper-focused on VBAC and this, and sometimes, it can look or even sound like the “me” show. It’s me, me, me, me. It’s all about me and what I want. It’s very, very, very important, but I love that you can say that you grew together. You processed together and that’s so important because my husband too. I didn’t realize until he made the statement that I’m sure everybody has heard before about the zipper. He made a very not-so-nice statement and I was like, “Whoa. You have trauma.” 

I didn’t even know that until he had said that statement and we had to work through that. He had to trust me also and I love that you said that. He trusted me. There are a lot of people out there who feel so strongly that they should be at home or at a birth center or that they don’t want an epidural or they do want an epidural. 

There are always things that us moms, Women of Strength, have and then sometimes the husbands aren’t totally on board. We don’t ever want to just tell them that their feelings don’t matter, but I think it’s important to note that that’s when we should talk about the feelings and why those thoughts or why those things that are being said are so negative, right? Why not a home birth or why not a vaginal birth in general? I see it on the forums. People are like, “I want a VBAC so badly, but my husband is not supportive of it.”

It’s like, wait, wait, what? Wait a second. My husband wasn’t super on board. That’s why he said the thing about the zipper. He was like, “I don’t understand.” I’m like, “I know and you probably won’t ever understand my desire to give birth vaginally, but this is why.” We talked about those things, so have those tough conversations along the way, or if something is pulling you in another direction, don’t fear saying that out loud because someone– it doesn’t even have to be a partner or a husband. It can be a mom or whoever. Someone is saying something and you don’t want them to be mad or you don’t want them to disagree with you so you go the other direction when your heart is pulling you in one direction for a reason. 

Kendra: Yeah, absolutely. And you do get as a VBAC mom or a home birth mom, you get a lot of facial expressions from people. 

Meagan: Yeah you do. 

Kendra: Or comments from people. It can be tough to navigate and to have this appropriate boundary or bubble where you say, “No. This is my story. This is my journey. I’ve got to do what’s good for me and baby.” Yeah. It’s hard. It’s hard to navigate that. I definitely grieve and understand and lament with the moms who don’t have supportive partners. 

We are actually pregnant with boy number three. 

Meagan: Oh my gosh, yay!

Kendra: I know. It’s crazy. It’s been back to back to back. I think in some ways, getting pregnant with number two pushed both of us to say, “We have to heal this fast.” I don’t love that mindset, but we have to address it. If you don’t have a number two or three if you don’t have a quick timeline between them, then it’s reasonable that some people just say, “Well, it’s done. The hospital did what it did or the story didn’t unfold the way I wanted it too. At least it’s over and now I can just focus on my healthy baby” and that kind of mindset that people have. Some people don’t ever come back to what they experienced or how bad it was. 

That’s why I fold in the mental health piece because if it really wasn’t for Erin and her knowledge, her understanding of birth trauma, her own story– she had three kids before I ever even had one– I don’t think I would have known as intimately how important this work is. Now, the fact that the practice has this whole branch and this whole subset of serving moms and serving families and serving couples, we have packages for women and families and couples to work on while they’re pregnant so they can start to prepare, much like a doula provides childbirth education, a lot of people overlook the importance of as a couple, what does it look like to get on the same page? As a woman, what does it look like to really prepare your heart and your mind and your body for this?

Tia: Yeah. 

Kendra: God forbid, it doesn’t unfold the way you want, the fact that there are women out there who have certification and who have training in birth trauma and can help you heal– people like Erin who know intimately the research. They know what healing looks like. It’s so useful and it’s such an important and growing field for women. We get more and more calls where people are excited to do the birth work. They are excited to heal from their trauma and of course, there are the people who have horrific stories where it’s hard. It’s hard, traumatic work, but really important that they heal for themselves and for their children. 

We see the spectrum, but it’s cool that it’s a field now and that there are books, there are resources, and there are e-courses from people who know what they are doing. 

29:30 Processing births

Meagan: Yeah, and to your point, you were forced to process this really fast which was really good, but sometimes if we don’t process, sometimes if we wait as well for the processing, we forget what we needed to process. Does this make sense? We forget those details and then sometimes, not always, but sometimes they creep into our next birth. 

Kendra: Yeah. 

Meagan: We may trigger. We may start having thoughts and be like, “Oh my gosh,” because we put it off. It’s easy to do. It’s so easy to put off. “I’ll think about that later. I now have to transition and learn how to feed a baby. I now have to transition and learn how to get out of a car after a C-section, what weight I can hold and what week I am,” and whatever. I want to drop the message out there. You don’t have to wait until you’re pregnant to start processing your past pregnancy and birth. It’s often done. We want to forget sometimes. Sometimes, it’s like, “I don’t want to think about that ever again.” Maybe it was so traumatic, but it can be so important because you never know when it can creep in. 

Kendra: Yeah. Your body and your cues– it’s not just during the pregnancy and labor that we need to channel that intuitive sense. Even just the other day, I was getting a massage and I had to lay on my side because I’m pregnant. When I was side-lying, I remembered for the first time laboring in that position. It was coming back to my body while I was getting the massage and I was like, “Oh, dang. I forgot how badly that hurt.” I was feeling the feels again and I knew I needed to deal with it. I needed to feel it and heal it in my body in order to feel ready for a new baby. 

So it’s important that we deal with what shows up, that intuitive semantic sense as it arises and not just save that for pregnancy. We know. It shows up everywhere. It shows up in our sex. It shows up in our connections. These thoughts and these feelings don’t go away just because the labor and delivery are over. Tia, you were speaking to something too, sorry. 

Tia: I was just saying that’s one of the most challenging aspects of being a VBAC-certified doula. The first education document I send out to my family says, “I highly recommend you work with a person who specializes in perinatal mental health as a standard.” Even if you don’t think you need to process through a past birth, it cannot hurt. It can only help. 

I have a lot of families who don’t have a lot of time they think they will have time later and they get into their birth experiences and I see these triggers pop up. For every single person I work with, that looks so different that I can never fully prepare as a doula on how to help each and every person, but it is. It can be a position that we decide to labor in or something someone says, or the look on their husband’s face or just so many different things, so yeah. I really resonated with you saying that certain things trigger you and the importance of really working through that trauma especially going into another birth because you may think that you don’t have trauma to work through and then once you are in labor with that next baby, that is a really inopportune time to find out that you suddenly do have triggers. 

You’re dealing with that component and a lot of my VBAC clients also for whatever reason want to go unmedicated. That’s their goal to try to mitigate any extra potential slowing down labor or risk so they are dealing with that trying to be in a good mental space that is already difficult when you are having an unmedicated birth, but then that added trauma or triggers they didn’t expect to experience that they are. I think I agree that it’s just such an important part of preparing. 

Meagan: Mhmm, absolutely. 

33:31 Erin’s e-courses

Meagan: Kendra, can you tell us a little bit more about the course and kind of when it would be suggested for someone to take if they– or if it would even be suggested to take like what Tia was saying, even if you don’t think you have birth trauma or you don’t think you have a poor experience by all means. Can you talk to us about that? When would you take it? Would you suggest it? All of that. 

Kendra: Yeah, well first, I would highly recommend having Erin on the podcast. She’s the one who knows all of the ins and outs of this world. 

Meagan: We need to make that happen. 

Kendra: She would be happy to be a guest expert. Her first course, Rebirth, really is designed for women to rewrite their stories so she works through that and walks through that through the modules. They are all available online– or I shouldn’t say they are all available. You can get a preview of the e-course to see if it is a good fit. Erin also provides consultations so she would be happy to chat with someone about, is this a good course for me? 

Ultimately, it is getting at those people who have lost control through their birth and delivery story, and control and loss of control often is a sign that birth trauma could be at play. So when we consider that, if a woman can pause and reflect on her story and see, “Were there times when I wanted X and that right, that choice or that desire was taken away from me?” That could be a good indicator that Erin’s course would be a good fit. 

However, I am not the one who is an expert in birth trauma. There are nuances to the course that is a lot of good statistics and information so there are some psychoeducational components. There is an interactive video where you get to learn from Erin and then there are a ton of different exercises in journaling, writing prompts, sorting through the emotions, and I believe you write your birth story three times and process it three different ways to get to the other side. 

Meagan: Yes. 

Kendra: Then it’s your story. She has a couple of other different things folded in. You can get a mug that you can purchase. You can get a journal. She also has additional support that she can provide so you can purchase the course and some sessions if that feels like you’d rather have that rather than learn at your own pace if you really want that time in front of her. She’s licensed in Pennsylvania and Maryland so she can see people clinically through Telehealth in those states. 

Meagan: Awesome. Yeah, I just pulled up the website and was reading a little bit more about her and why her and just yeah. I think we are going to have to do a spinoff and talk about those courses more based off of your episode and your journey and your connection because it really is so important. 

36:16 Benefits of therapy

Meagan: Then can you also talk to us about, okay. I don’t mean this to sound rude at all, but sometimes, our lovely partners and men specifically– I’m trying not to single them out, but I’m singling them out. They have a hard time with the thought of therapy or counseling especially couples’ therapy. It can just be a hard thing. I think that’s because of what the world has done. 

But would could be signs that maybe our partners might benefit from some help or some talking or that maybe relationship-wise especially from a birth and like you said, what he went through, what you went through, what are some signs and how could we potentially start there to get some help?

Kendra: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a good question. The science part is tricky because unsurprisingly my bias is that everyone should benefit from therapy. Everyone could use therapy so I really promote through what I write and speak on through my practice that therapy should be viewed more as a wellness service. It should be viewed as something that we are doing our whole life rather than waiting until something gets bad. It’s a little weird that we have pediatricians who check in on your child’s health wellness-wise and when they are sick all through their young adult years and childhood, but we never consider the benefit of mental health in that. 

So I think you know your partner best and if you’re with a man and you feel like there are some things that are showing up, then I would trust that first off and I would invite the conversation in the way that you know is best for your partner. 

Some partners, I think, appeal to the logic of it all. Some are more in the feeling realm. Sometimes, you can appeal to someone when there has been a conflict and that conflict is enough of a situation to say, “This matters.” Sometimes, it can just be more like a supportive conversation. You want this to go well. You want our family to be healthy. I know you care about us. I know you care about me. This is something, I think, that could help. Just like you would pitch, “Let’s have a doula,” you would pitch, “Let’s have a midwife”, you would pitch this, right? You’re pitching the same thing. 

You know, recently, someone actually said to me, “We really don’t need to feel guilt or shame for having passion in how we pitch.” It’s not something we need to feel negatively about. If you feel passionate about something, it’s okay to pitch it to your partner. I would invite that. Signs could be a disgruntled connection with a child, maybe some energy there that doesn’t seem at ease. It could be anger, it could be shutting down of emotion, but to be honest, these are things we see culturally regardless of whether birth trauma is part of the equation or not. 

Again, I think Erin would be better suited to answer what are the signs that a man has experienced secondary birth trauma or birth trauma from the experience, but from a couples’ perspective, I mean, I think couples benefit from check-ins all the time so I encourage people to do a yearly check-in with a provider. Sometimes I notice from men, that provides a little bit more of a safety net mentality in their head if they don’t love conflict, if they don’t love processing their emotions, then what’s the bottom line? What do they need to be doing in order to avoid more blowups and avoid more emotional breakdowns? It’s like, well check in on your partnerships. That’s the basic thing. Having a third party helps with that, it creates so much more ease in the conversation and flow in the process. 

One angle could be presenting it that way of, “Let’s just do a check-in. Let’s let a provider look us over and say, ‘Your marriage looks great. Come back to me in a year mentality,’” or there could be an actual hiccup and that hiccup could be enough of a catalyst to say, “Hey, we experienced something pretty intense together. Would you be willing to consider going?” If we go and they say, “You guys actually seem pretty adaptable. You seem like you are conquering this thing well,” then fine. That’s best-case scenario.

But if you’re not, wouldn’t we want to be as connected and healthy as a couple as possible? If your partner, your husband is like, “Nope, don’t care. Don’t want to be healthy,” then we have a different beast to conquer and to tackle. I think you spoke to it. Our culture unfortunately is just turning the corner now in its view of mental health. We have a lot of work to do in how we present it and I actually just had a friend tell me recently that her husband listened to a podcast that was all about how therapy is bad. I was like, “Oh man. It’s like one step forward, two steps back.”

So you know, give and take, right? I’m not going to be able to convince everyone. While in grad school, we do learn techniques or strategies for how to help someone see the benefit of therapy, to be honest, people see what they want to see and if someone sits across from me and they don’t see the value of this space, then I feel that. I know that and all I can do is try to present as calmly as possible why I think a supportive environment would help in their healing, but the rest is a little bit of surrendering to the greater powers if you will, surrendering to God that hopefully that marriage will get the healing and support it needs at some point if not in therapy. 

41:39 Short interval between pregnancies

Meagan: Okay, and then also last but not least before we let this amazing episode go, I wanted to touch on something that I noticed you said earlier within talking about your second. That is the short interval. You said that you got pregnant super surprisingly four months after having your first son so that means you had that 14.5 month gap which is a really big thing. Did anyone ever say anything to you about that? How was that aspect of it? 

​​So I had mentioned that my provider was an LPM so I knew going into the second one, I wasn’t going to be able to work with her because in Maryland, she doesn’t have a right to do VBACs even though she feels comfortable and she works across state lines with some Amish communities and things like that and does VBACs, I knew that she wouldn’t. 

She actually ended up getting me an LNM on my case so kind of like a backup midwife if you will who was technically the primary but there in case of an emergency and in that journey, they had actually, some of the midwives in my community caught wind of my story and I think the mental health intersection and my business and wanted me to come advocate. 

I actually got to write up my story and go to Annapolis and support a bill that didn’t get passed which is still so crazy to me. It has been 10 years in the making. They’ve been trying to get LPMs the right to do VBACs and one of the factors in the legislative effort is that doctors suggest that that short interval is not safe for a woman to continue to have the natural birth. 

So you know, it was just a headache after having that first pregnancy and having to go across state lines to find a supportive provider for the breech and then another pregnancy where they’re essentially saying, “You don’t get to pick your provider. You don’t get to pick the person you feel safest or most comfortable with. You have to go the route.” In Maryland, there’s actually not a lot of hospitals that will allow you to do vaginal even in the hospital and they’re pushing the C-section from the get-go because of the short interval piece.

I’m glad we circled back to that because it’s just crazy to speak to legislators, to speak to Annapolis, to share my story, and to be sitting there— I was holding my baby. He was maybe 6 weeks old so I’m baby wearing him and speaking my story and I’m like, “This is actually insane. I’m a woman who actually doesn’t even get to pick my provider.”

It’s so scary and alarming that in some states, this is the predicament that we are in, but hopefully as women continue to speak and continue to share how important it is that they have rights to their providers, rights to their environment of that, and all of that, we’ll see some movement eventually. 

Meagan: Yes. I was going to say, speak up. That is what we need is speak up, speak up, speak up. Yes, they’ve got some evidence out there showing that less than 18 months or whatever, even some providers say 24 months is less ideal, but people are doing it. They are doing it safely. Mom and baby are okay so speak up so you can get your provider. Speak up so we can make that movement and see that change. Thank you so much and also, congrats for doing that. That’s a really emotional time— 6 weeks. Holy cow. Thank you for doing that and speaking up. 

Kendra: That felt healing too. The VBAC felt healing, but it also felt healing to be like, “I need to have a voice in this equation because I want to choose my provider for my next baby and ironically, the bill didn’t get passed and I’m on to the next baby and still had to pick a different provider. I’m in the same predicament.” So yeah, keep speaking up. I agree. Thank you. 

Meagan: Awesome. I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, your story, your beautiful story, and your redemptive birth, and I’m definitely going to reach out to Erin to do a spinoff. 

Kendra: Sure, sure. 

Meagan: Hopefully she’ll accept the invitation and we’ll have her on in another episode. 

45:51 Tia’s top three tips

Meagan: Then I wanted to turn the time over to Tia really quickly before we wrap up because we have talked a lot about, in this whole forum, we talk about how to support VBAC and how to love. She’s a doula and I wanted to know one of the top three ways that she— her advice, her love, what do you provide for your doulas and what do you suggest? 

Tia: Yeah, absolutely. There are three key things that I think super benefit any mom, really any mom who is embarking on this journey of pregnancy and birth but particularly for my moms who are wanting a VBAC. I always say that the number one thing— I should say to hire a doula but that’s not in my top three because I feel like there are three things that people can really focus on outside of that. 

The first one is getting a supportive provider. Hands down, if there is nothing else that you do during this process, the most important thing is getting a supportive provider. So we talk a lot about what are red flags. What are green flags? I make it abundantly clear that the best doula in the world cannot save you from a poor provider or an unsupportive provider. There is nothing we can do. 

We can help you advocate and we can educate, but that’s all to try to hopefully lead you to identify if you are with an unsupportive provider and then how to support you in finding a provider that really jives with you, supports your birth vision that you feel safe with. Feeling safe is so incredibly important in this process especially if you maybe don’t trust your body all the way. 

I have a lot of VBAC clients who are like, “I want to trust my body. Everyone says that our bodies are made to birth, but the first time, it didn’t happen. I have a hard time trusting my body because I feel like it let me down the first time.” So feeling safe with a provider, feeling heard by a provider, and having someone who is genuinely on your team who loves VBAC, who loves birth, that isn’t going to be a roadblock or an obstacle is so incredibly important. We always tell— I work with a partner. Her name is Lisa. 

We tell our clients, “We can in the worst case scenario help you advocate and advocate semi on your behalf,” but we never speak for our clients. Do you really want to be fighting on your birth day? Do you want that to be part of your birth story that “I had to spend time fighting or pushing back trying to ask for the basic care or respect that I deserve”? 

My number one tip is to hire a supportive provider. Being bold in firing a provider that is not for you. You can say, “This relationship is not working for me,” and find someone else. You can focus less on hurting feelings and focus more on what you need during this time, absolutely. 

48:54 Hire a great support team 

Tia: My second tip– and this is honestly great for this episode with Kendra is hiring a great support team and that includes doulas, but having that really good, strong adjacent support in addition to a supportive provider is really important so we talk about getting a mental health professional queued up and that’s for any of our moms, second-time moms, first-time moms, VBAC moms. I’m always like, “If you run into a problem, you don’t want to be a new patient. You don’t want to be 6 weeks postpartum feeling like you experienced birth trauma, the world is now crashing down and we are trying to find a provider in this fog when I know” because everyone in my house sees a mental health provider because I feel like it’s a super important wellness thing, but it takes a while to get in. 

You don’t want to be fighting insurance and finding providers. Maybe the first one is not a good fit and doing all of that when you are carrying the weight of the world because you need help now. I’m like, the worst case scenario is you’ll feel like it was one unnecessary visit post-birth and that you got to process this amazing birth story, and who doesn’t like talking about an amazing birth story? 

Kendra: So well said. 

Tia: Yeah. If that’s not the case though, you’re queued up now with someone to be prepared to help you that you’ve built this semi-relationship with. I feel like it’s super important to have mental health, and a good IBCLC if your goal is to breastfeed because again, finding that three days home from the hospital and my baby’s not eating is a difficult time to find an IBCLC who works with your insurance, that has an opening that can come to you in your area. 

Meagan: That can also affect us even more mentally. 

Tia: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Be really proactive about having your village or your team queued up and ready to go. We also find this with massage therapists, chiropractors, and pelvic floor PT— I have a whole list. I’m like, “I know it seems like a lot. It seems like I’m asking you to spend so much of your time on this,” but I just want people to have the best pregnancy and a really supported, happy postpartum that they can. I feel like all of these providers, especially my VBAC moms play a key role with scar tissue and baby positioning and your pelvic floor, you are connected with it because it can get off even after a C-section. 

I hear a lot, “I had a C-section. I didn’t have a vaginal birth. Why do I need pelvic floor therapy?” We’re going to have a whole conversation about this, but that really goes into that. Building an amazing support team and how important that is. 

51:38 Prepare your mind

Tia: Lastly, it’s preparing your mind. Everybody thinks that hiring a doula is so helpful for pain relief and encouragement and suggesting positions to you, but when I mean with people for planning their birth in their prenatals, we talk about, “I can suggest all of the positions in the world and you can do lunges every day and be physically strong, but if you do not prep to be mentally prepared to go through birth whether that’s a VBAC, unmedicated delivery, or any type of delivery,” people tend to panic when they feel that intense sensation. It isn’t a sensation that you can prepare for if you haven’t felt it before so if you have not prepared or planned a way to stay mindful and relaxed and grounded and confident and you start to panic, that really ramps up your discomfort and it’s so hard to get out of that cycle once you’re in it. 

I’m like, yes. Do the lunges. Do the prenatal yoga. Have your body in a good place, but if you only could pick one, I would say to train your mind. Sit down and figure out what makes you feel good emotionally, what makes your body relax, what makes you feel safe and throw yourself into that because that is going to be so valuable to you in labor. 

Yeah. That is essentially what I talk about with all of my families in a very condensed version of my top three tips. 

Kendra: Those are great. 

Meagan: Those are so great. So, so great. When you talk about building your birth team, a provider and a doula really aren’t just those two things. It reminded me when you were saying that when we plan our weddings, we hire caterers and photographers and florists and videographers and whatever. We hire all of the people. We hire the whole team, everything. But then sometimes, not even just sometimes, a lot of the time when we are having these babies, we don’t really put it as a priority like we would at a wedding. We don’t look at that when it is– I don’t want to say weddings aren’t important. They are amazing. This is what starts a lot of the journeys, but this is a really big day. 

You having your baby is a really big day and you go through a lot mentally and physically. It’s all connected so you deserve to create that powerhouse team, to see a mental therapist and work on your mental health, to do a chiropractor, the pelvic floor therapist, massage, the nutritionist even. Get the good nutrients. Get the good things that you need and be set up and not have to look back and be like, “I wish I did” or “I wish I knew”. It’s so important. Yeah. You might not need every single part of it along the way but you might not know that you need that in the future. It’s there. It’s ready for you and you’re anchored in.

Kendra: It’s like you don’t know what you don’t know. I added chiropractic care to my second pregnancy because I really wanted to support as much opening in my body as possible so I didn’t have another breech. But this go around, I’ve added the pelvic floor at the recommendation of my midwife and I had this, “Everybody pees a little after they’ve had a couple of babies. It’s fine, right?” but she was like, “No. You can heal that.” 

So when I went and saw the pelvic floor therapist the first time, she was like, “When did this begin?” I was thinking. I was thinking. I was like, “I was at a Taylor Swift concert and I tried jumping up and down and it all came out.” I was gone. I was gone. I was there last week and doing the exercises and I felt this surge of emotion on the way home. I’m like, “Kendra, you know this. You know that when you work in the pelvic region, when you work in the hip region, there are emotional memories stored in that part of your body.” Pelvic floor therapy isn’t just about enhancing your pelvic floor. It’s that whole list of encompassing care, so I’m so glad you spoke to that Tia. 

Tia: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it really clicks for people when I say it’s a mantra. Treat your birth like it’s your wedding. You’re entitled to be a diva, bridezilla, or whatever. In the equation of your birth, you will remember two days in your life or maybe three. Graduating from college, your wedding day, and the day you give birth. They will live in your brain. 

Because it’s been so medicalized, I feel like we just give birth over. We’re like, “It’s just this thing that happens to us” but you don’t realize the emotion and the memory and the feeling you will carry with you just like your wedding day forever. Be the person who treats it like your wedding. When I say that, they’re like, “Oh my gosh. Of course. Why am I not doing this?”

Meagan: Yes. Exactly though. Do it. Women of Strength, you deserve it. Put yourself in that line of being first. It’s okay. It’s okay. I love that you’re like the birth-zilla. What do we need to be? I don’t know what we need to be, but you deserve it, and oh my gosh. Great tips. Amazing story. Possible spin-off here. All of the good things happening today here on The VBAC Link Podcast. 

Closing

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