Met the OB!

Finally, on Monday we met the OB. I brought My Beloved along… he is very supportive of coming to appointments with me and likes to be a part of the whole thing. It was interesting, and we both walked away not knowing what to think of her. She took out my cesarean birth plan that I’d given the NP during my previous visit and said, "So am I to understand that you wish to have a repeat cesarean?" and I said, "Absolutely not, I just wanted to make it clear, the terms by which I will allow a cesarean to occur." We discussed my plan, and she had a few items which she could not fully concede to, but overall it was amicable. Then she decided to tell me all about a woman, not her patient, who wanted a VBAC and birthed the child fine but then ruptured and required a hysterectomy. She was very pointed in telling me this story, and referred to it a few more times before the appointment concluded. I asked her, "What is your level of confidence in VBAC?" and she said, "Well, if this were 15 years ago, we all were insisting upon it. But in this day and age of lawsuits, ‘they’re’ discouraging us". So I then asked, "But take out the legal issues. Do you have confidence in it?" Her answer was, "I’ll support whatever you want to do, and if it turns out we need to give you a hysterectomy afterwards, I’m ok with that." What am I supposed to do with this information? It was almost a back-handed threat... And then, she later balanced the story with another one where her own patient was planning a VBAC, got tired at 8cm and baby wasn't coming down, asked for a c/s, sat up to be prepped for the epidural, baby dropped, Mom dilated and baby was born within an hour. Maybe I should have made it clear that I wasn’t looking for any promises, just her feelings. Still not sure I’m keeping this one. But I am fairly certain that we will be going to use the illegal midwife. Had a very nice conversation with her last week, and I’m going to meet her at my next ICAN meeting. Hopefully, all will go well.