Episode Details

Julia knew something was off during her first pregnancy and birth experience. She knew she didn’t feel right about consenting to a Cesarean, but it wasn’t until she started diving into research that she realized how much her care lacked informed consent. She discovered options that should have been offered to her that never were.

Julia’s research led her to choosing the midwifery model of care in a home birth setting. She felt in control of her experience and free to birth the way she felt she needed to. 

Meagan and Julia discuss stats on uterine rupture, stillbirth, continuous fetal monitoring, induction, due dates, and how our birthing culture can highly influence what we think is safe versus what scientific evidence actually tells us. 

Evidence-Based Birth: The Evidence on Due Dates

The Business of Being Born

Needed Website

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

Meagan: Hello. Women of Strength I am so excited for today's guest. Our friend, Julia, is from Texas. She is a wife and a stay-at-home mother living in, it Spring, Texas, Julia?

Julia: Spring, Texas.

Meagan: Close to Houston, yes, with her two sons. And she has had a Cesarean and then an HBAC. We get a lot of questions in our inbox every day, but a really common question is dates. "Hey, I'm 40 weeks. My doctor is telling me I had to have my baby by tomorrow or even approaching 39 weeks." 

People are being told they have to have their babies or really bad things will happen. And Julia's story is proof that you don't have to have a baby by 40 weeks or 41 weeks, would you say? Almost 42 weeks is what you were. So we are excited to hear this story. And I know if you are one that goes past your due date and you're getting that pressure, you're definitely gonna wanna listen. 

Julia: Thank you so much for having me, Meagan, I'm really, really happy to be here.

Meagan: I'm so happy that you are here. I would just love to have you share your stories.

Julia: Okay, so my firstborn, he came during the height of the COVID pandemic. It was August 2020.

I just saw my OB who I had been seeing for regular gynecology visits. And from the very first appointment, it just, I just kind of got an off feeling. She had seen a small subchorionic hematoma on my ultrasound at my very first appointment at eight weeks. And she just told me, "Don't Google this. It's going to scare you." She basically just said, "Just enjoy being pregnant now because when you come back next week, you may not be." 

So as a first-time mom, it was obviously pretty upsetting and caused a lot of anxiety. When I went back for my next appointment, she just kind of shrugged it off after she saw the ultrasound. She just said, "It cleared up on its own." There really wasn't any explanation of how it resolved.

But that being said, that start to my prenatal care kind of set the tone for the rest of that pregnancy and birth. From then on there was just a lot of fear-mongering going on, and a lot of problems were brought up that really never turned out to be an issue. 

Around 20 weeks at the anatomy scan, they saw that my son was in the bottom 10th percentile.

She had said that she