Doctor | Baby Dickey

Panel addresses cesarean and VBAC issues

VBACs (vaginal birth after cesarean, pronounced vee-back) are more difficult to achieve than you’d think. Where I live, there are 3 hospitals and only 1 allows VBACs (ironically, it happens to be the hospital where I was cut open). Within that hospital, there is only ONE clinic of doctors who will perform VBACs. Keep in mind I [...]

2-week-old newborn baby

Lil boy Ryan is 2 weeks old today!

The first 2 weeks with Ryan flew by, especially because we spent 3.5 days in the hospital. Up until a few days ago, I thought this was the easiest thing ever (minus recovery/breastfeeding)… Ryan had been an angel! I forgot to knock on wood or something because the [...]

Your questions about c-sections & labor

I received a few questions by email and post comments about labor and c-sections… I thought I’d try to be helpful to everyone and answer them here:

Question: Did I practice any pain management techniques? Do I think they’d be helpful?
Answer: We decided to do the Bradley Method (husband-coached childbirth). But we didn’t take a class, [...]

Birth Story: pitocin to c-section

After writing the pitocin post yesterday, I cried for awhile. Just one of those nights. I talked about it for awhile on twitter (actually, I more just read what other people had to say and didn’t do much talking). Two things I noticed:

1) An incredible amount of people have a similar story. Why is it [...]

Birth Story: epidural to pitocin

The reasons I think I ended up getting pitocin (when I went in not wanting it AT ALL):

1) when you’re asked 4 times if it can be given to you, each time wears you down

2) I was told I should be dilating 1 cm every hour, on average, but that I was “stuck” at 5 [...]