Episode Details

Aubrey shares her three birth stories that tell of resilience, healing, trust, and miracles. She has had a vaginal birth, a crash Cesarean, and a VBAC– all of which presented cholestasis. 

Aubrey’s first birth was a long but routine induction. Her second birth was a traumatic whirlwind including a complete placental abruption, general anesthesia, and her baby miraculously surviving 15 minutes without oxygen. 

Though her third pregnancy had many complications, the open and honest relationship Aubrey had with her provider is what ultimately led to her TOLAC and successful VBAC at 37 weeks and 6 days after another medically necessary induction. 

Aubrey is proof that no two births are the same, and miracles happen even when circumstances threaten to say otherwise. 

**Aubrey also wanted to mention that after her VBAC, she was readmitted to the hospital for postpartum preeclampsia. She had a headache every day, decided to eventually buy a blood pressure machine, and it was through the roof. She took herself to L&D, and they put her on magnesium. Aubrey had no idea it was even possible to get it postpartum and wanted to share!

Managing Cholestasis Symptoms

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

Meagan: Hello, everybody. It is almost Christmas, and I am so excited to bring another story your way. This is a VBAC story from a mama who is from Louisiana. She had quite a few roadblocks within her pregnancies that could have easily stopped her from having a VBAC, but she really established a good relationship with her provider even though her provider wasn’t actually as gung-ho or excited about the VBAC specifically because she was nervous, together they communicated their feelings and understood where each other were, and came up with a plan to ultimately have a VBAC.

I just respect that so much. It’s important to know. We talk about providers all of the time. Providers are so important, and they make such a big impact on our outcome, but this provider, even though she wasn’t really comfortable with VBAC, she truly believed in our guest, Aubrey, today. You’ll have to hear it from her own words. It’s awesome to hear how everything unfolded. 

We also have a topic today that maybe isn’t shared a ton. It’s called ICP or cholestasis that we are talking about. It is a liver condition that can occur during pregnancy and cause a range of symptoms. A lot of the times, it is baby being born that is the thing to end cholestasis. We are going to talk a little bit more about that, but I wanted to go over some of the symptoms. 

We’ve got dark urine, pale or light gray stools, and she’ll talk about this. That is definitely something that is not normal in pregnancy, so if you are seeing that, that is a reason to contact your provider. Nausea, she described some other symptoms there. Decreased appetite, pain in the abdomen, or jaundice. These are some things to look out for. 

Now, there is a website called icpcare.org. We’re going to make sure to attach that in the show notes, so if you have had cholestasis before or you want to learn more about cholestasis and how to manage the symptoms, and what types of things like healthy diet, they have so many amazing resources on their website. They even have recipes and different types of healthy fats and grains and legumes and things that we can focus on. We know that all of the time in pregnancy, really what we are putting into our body is so important. 

Definitely check out icpcare.org if you want to learn more about ICP and managing symptom