Brielle Brasil is a mama’s coach, breathwork facilitator, and somatic trauma resolution therapist. She shares her two birth stories as a foreigner living in the Dominican Republic.
Brielle’s first birth was an unexpected, traumatic C-section. After putting in the work to heal, Brielle felt ready to explore birth options that she thought were unattainable. She was creative and intuitive throughout the entire process.
Julie and Brielle also dive deeper into how trauma is stored in the body, how somatic trauma resolution can help, and why it’s important not to try to heal trauma on your own.
How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents
Full Transcript under Episode Details
Julie: All right, Women of Strength. You are listening to The VBAC Link Podcast. This is Julie and I am here with a very special guest today, Brielle. I am really excited to hear her stories. She gave birth in the Dominican Republic twice, both her C-section and her VBAC. We were just talking about that because my previous guest who I just recorded with in episode 370 also lived in the Dominican Republic. She had her babies back in the States. She flew back to the States.
It was just such a coincidence. I am mind-blown. What are the chances?
Brielle: So wild.
Julie: I know. Brielle had both of her babies there. I’m so excited to hear about her stories and her experience, but before we do that, I am going to read a Review of the Week that Meagan texted me this morning if I can find it in all of our text messages.
Okay, here it is. This review is on Apple Podcasts from janaerachelle. She says, “I am so happy I found this incredible podcast. After having two prior C-sections, I was convinced I would have to have another C-section for my birth this November. I feel empowered, educated, and hopeful I can do this. Thank you for all of the true facts in a safe space where we can all talk about our birth trauma in a space where we don’t sound ‘crazy’ for doing something that God created our bodies to do.”
I love that so much. I think that the birth world is so interesting in lots of different ways and lots of different things. It can be incredibly wild to desire something that can be considered outside of the box. I’m glad that VBAC is becoming more and more common and that we are talking about it more. Sometimes, when I’m so deep in this VBAC world, it can be easy to forget that some people think it is the wildest thing ever.
Brielle: Yeah. Absolutely. People in the Dominican Republic for sure fall into that box of, “What? You can actually have a baby vaginally after having a C-section?” People didn’t know that was an option.
Julie: Yeah. People just don’t know.
All right, let’s get to it. I am so excited to hear your stories. I am really on the edge of my seat right now. Before I have you get into those, I’m just going to introduce you a little bit. This is Brielle. She is a Mama’s Coach, breathwork facilitator, and somatic trauma resolution therapist. She helps postpartum and pregnant women heal from their previous birth trauma, forgive themslves, their bodies, their babies, and their previous team so they can go into their next birth confident, free, and in tune with their motherly intuition fully trusting themselves, their bodies, their babies, and birth.
I have lots to say about this, but I’m going to wait until the end because I don’t want to start going off on too many tangents too soon. But I’m excited. I want to hear more. We will definitely talk about that after the birth stories, and I’m super excited.
She lives in Virginia, and we are both commiserating about how things are shifting to the chilly side of the weather today, but I am going to sit here cozy in my blanket while I am listening to Brielle’s stories giving birth in the Dominican Republic. Go ahead, Brielle. Take it away, and I am excited to hear.
Brielle: Awesome. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on here. It’s such an honor, and it feels really surreal because I listened to this podcast a ton during my second pregnancy.
Yes. I am not Dominican. I am American, and I was a foreigner having both of my babies in a foreign country. As you mentioned about the woman you recorded with earlier, most foreigners who are in the Dominican Republic don’t have their babies in the Dominican Republic. I was part of an international community, and my husband was an international teacher. It was just assumed that if you are not Dominican, you are going to go back to wherever your home country was to give birth.
Right after that, the fact that I was deciding both pregnancies to give birth there because the most important person for me to have at my birth was my husband and the only way to have him at my birth, because it wasn’t a summer baby and he was a teacher. It was an April baby, and then a May baby the next time. The only way to have him there was to have our babies i the Dominican Republic.
I’ll just start off with the first birth. I went into it very fearful having a baby abroad where the language spoken is not my first language. Spanish is not my first language. It was fearful solely for the fact that I was doing it in a foreign country not even really realizing the fears that I had around birth itself until later.
I found a doula, and I really liked her. I didn’t know much about the OB/GYNs there. She had recommended a couple of them to me and the one that she had used for her births which were all Cesareans, but she said he was a great doctor and he spoke English fluently. I went to him. I stuck with him.
Right away, I didn’t feel anything initially wrong. He was very knowledgeable. He was up to date on what seemed like a lot of research. But then as things would progress, he would start to question me asking questions to him which was odd, but at the same time, I was like, “Well, he’s fluent in English. I feel comfortable in that regard. My doula recommended him.” It was my first time doing this, I was just going to stick with him.
Then at about 37-38 weeks pregnant, I started to get the real red flags. Red flags as in him starting to talk about induction already and I’m only 37-38 weeks pregnant. At that point, I just felt like, “Well, okay.” It was clear to me that these were red flags, but I also felt like I didn’t have another option. I felt like at that point I was too far along. It was too late in the game. I had seen him my whole pregnancy. I just needed to stay with him.
I had prodromal labor for about a week. During that week, this was weeks 39-40. During that week, I went into that office every other day. It was a lot. We were just a little bit obsessive over the time and the clock and everything. I went in several times. I got three membrane sweeps which were all pretty painful. We were trying to “get things to start naturally” and as natural as possible. I know membrane sweeps aren’t really, but we were trying to help things along because I was having that prodromal labor. I would have contractions for hours, and they would stop for hours.
Also, my husband and I were trying to have things happen naturally as well, so we were having a lot of sex that last week around the clock. Somewhere, I think, from probably the amount of sex we were having and making sure to go to the bathroom right after, I ended up getting a UTI. I think it was the day before my due date when I started to get sick. I started to get a fever. I started to get a high fever. My husband was like, “We need to go into the doctor.” I didn’t want to because I was fearful of knowing what he was going to say. At that point, I didn’t feel like I trusted him because of the red flags that were coming up.
I begged my husband, “Let’s not go. Let’s see if it goes away.” We waited 24 hours, and it didn’t. He was like, “I don’t feel comfortable.” I was like, “I get it. Okay, we’ll go.” We went in. Of course, they checked the baby’s heart rate which was a little bit high. I just felt pretty much like shit. The fever kept coming and going. Because I had the contractions going on and off, he was like, “We need to get labor underway.” They didn’t know yet it was a UTI. They were like, “We need to test and see why you’re sick and run labs.” He was like, “I recommend that you go to the hospital and get induced. We will run all of the tests.”
He was afraid I had COVID actually, but it wasn’t that. He was like, “We just need to run the tests, get you induced, and get this thing going on because that shouldn’t be happening.” I didn’t know anything about prodromal labor or any of that. I was scared. I was in a foreign country. I just wanted my baby to be healthy. I was like, “Okay, yeah. Let’s go.”
We all went. I got induced that morning. Looking back on it and having done the healing work I did, I can see that I just wasn’t ready. My body wasn’t fully ready yet. My baby wasn’t ready yet. It was just a rushed timing scenario because I got induced that morning. They did the test. They found that I had a UTI, so they were treating me with antibiotics while pumping me with Pitocin.
On and off all day long, my fever would go away, then it would come back, then it would go away, and then it would come back. I would pick up contractions and be in labor. That was hard to deal with when I was sick. I felt zero energy hardly at that point being sick. That was at 9:00 in the morning. I got induced. It went on and off all day. The contractions were doing the same thing all day. They would pick up for a few hours, then they would stop for a long while.
What was interesting, I noticed, is that every time my doctor would come into the room to check me, my contractions would completely stop around him. Looking back, I can tell I didn’t feel safe with him. I just had past trauma with males. I shouldn’
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