Homebirth After Cesarean Story: From a 29-Week NICU Stay to a Birth at Home

Can you have a homebirth after a cesarean?

Yes, many women do, and it's usually called an HBAC — homebirth after cesarean. Whether it's available to you depends on your own history, on finding a provider willing and able to attend, and on the laws where you live. In Arkansas, a previous cesarean is listed among the conditions that preclude licensed lay midwifery care altogether (17 CAR § 47-304(e)).

 Julia Moore did it in a state where she couldn't hire one.

 This is her story, and it's a two-birth story: a cesarean at twenty nine weeks followed by months in the NICU, and then, two years later, a baby born at home. She's a birth videographer and a new doula in Northwest Arkansas, which means she had watched about a dozen women labor before she ever had a labor of her own.

Julia's two births, side by side

The pregnancy that ended the plan at seventeen weeks

Julia was a homebirth woman before she was a mother. She researched it in college, gave a Ted-style talk on it as a communications major, grew up with a mother who had natural births and a sister-in-law who had four homebirths. The plan wasn't a hope. It was settled.

 At seventeen weeks she started bleeding heavily. The ER's conclusion was that her placenta was leaking, which meant more ultrasounds, more monitoring, and a daughter who measured small every time she came up on the screen.

 Around twenty four weeks Julia noticed fluid and assumed it was nothing. At her twenty five week scan they told her she had hardly any left and sent her straight to labor and delivery.

 She stayed a month. Steroid shots. Bed rest. Monitoring day and night. And in the middle of it she finished a full course load from the hospital bed, filming TikToks for a social media class in front of the one wall in her room that didn't look like a hospital.

 At twenty nine weeks she went into spontaneous labor. Her daughter was frank breech, small, and had almost no fluid to move in, so Julia had known for weeks that a cesarean was coming. She got about a minute of eye contact before her daughter went to the NICU team.

 Then a NICU doctor came to tell her they couldn't get a tube down. Her daughter had been born with esophageal atresia — her esophagus wasn't connected to her stomach. Surgeries followed, and months in the NICU, and a feeding tube she still has. She is, in Julia's words, a miracle, and she's thriving.

The six months Julia couldn't look at birth

For about half a year afterward she couldn't touch any of it. No birth books, no birth content, accounts unfollowed by the handful, because everyone's experience looked nothing like hers.

 Then it came back. She picked up a camera, posted in a Facebook group asking if anyone would let her film, and arrived at a stranger's home so late that the baby came seven minutes later with only Julia and the husband there. That year she filmed about twelve births. Halfway through she stopped wanting to be a fly on the wall and started a doula mentorship.

 So by the time she was pregnant again, Julia had witnessed more labor than most mothers ever will, and had never once had one.

Building an HBAC team without a midwife

In Arkansas, Julia learned, she couldn't hire a midwife to attend her. The state's rules for Licensed Lay Midwives — the practitioners who attend homebirths there — list a previous cesarean among the conditions that preclude midwifery care outright, meaning the client has to be transferred to a physician or CNM. So she built the rest of the team herself: a doula at six weeks who became a genuine friend across the whole pregnancy, midwives she could bring labs and questions to, a birth support person, a photographer, and an OB practice for co-care in case anything changed.

 The OB relationship is where it got hard. Her first appointment was cold enough that Julia walked out feeling like a ticking time bomb. An ultrasound came back reading placenta previa, and she carried that for about a month before maternal fetal medicine told her it had never been previa — just a small subchorionic hemorrhage. Her due date moved up nine days. Her fundal heights started coming back different depending on who measured, sometimes centimeters apart on the same day.

 When she was told she'd need another ultrasound to stay low risk enough to keep her VBAC, Julia stopped. She researched, she talked with her husband, she prayed, and she sent an email ending care.

 What she felt afterward was relief.

An all-day labor, and the first labor of her life

It started at ten at night, minutes after she prayed and told her baby they were ready whenever he was. Ten to twelve minutes apart, all night, while she breathed through them alone in a spare bedroom. Her mother's flight landed the hour after labor began.

 Her doula arrived in the morning and Julia's whole body settled. She was shown how to feel where her baby sat in her own pelvis, so she could track his descent herself as the day went. Lunges. The toilet. The shower. The tub. Her husband in front of her, her doula behind her, and she needed both.

 Her water broke while she leaned over her husband. Pushing sensations started and went on for hours, with contractions that never bunched up the way the stories said they would. Her baby was right there and stayed right there. Her birth support did an internal release. Her doula noticed she was holding one big breath between pushes and suggested quicker ones, and that was what moved him.

 She crowned for about nine minutes, with her photographer flipping the camera around to show her how close he was. Then his head was out, and Julia held it and breathed for thirty seconds before she pushed the rest of him onto her chest and said hi, hi, hi.

The postpartum she didn't get the first time

Three weeks out, Julia described something that looks nothing like her first. Her mother came for a week, then her in-laws. Community brought food. Her husband was home. She stayed in bed.

 And she's nursing, which she had mourned deeply with her daughter, who was tube-fed from the start. Her own mother was a La Leche League lactation specialist for fourteen years, so Julia grew up on it, and she'd let doubts creep in beforehand. She calls it healing.

 When people bring up the hard parts of postpartum, she says she's mostly thinking about everything she's getting this time.

Listen to the full episode here: Julia's Birth Stories

Watch the full episode here: Julia's Birth Stories

FAQ

Does a difficult or high-risk first pregnancy mean the next one will be high risk too?

Not automatically. Some conditions recur or carry forward, and some belong to one pregnancy and one baby. Julia's first involved bleeding, low fluid, a preterm cesarean, and a congenital condition; her second was uncomplicated. Only your own history, reviewed with a provider you trust, can tell you what applies to you.

Can you have an HBAC without a midwife?

Some women do, usually because no licensed provider in their state is permitted to attend a planned homebirth after cesarean. Julia gave birth at home supported by a doula, a birth support person, and her husband. This is her account of what she chose, not a recommendation or a how-to — that decision belongs to you and a provider you trust.

What is the success rate for a homebirth after cesarean?

In the largest US dataset on planned home birth, 1,054 women with a prior cesarean planned an HBAC and 87% had a vaginal birth, with 94% of those completed at home (Cheyney et al., 2014). For VBAC attempts generally, NICHD puts success among appropriate candidates at about 75%. Both numbers describe groups, not individuals.

 The 87% comes from a self-selected, low-risk, midwife-led group, so it isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, and it isn't a prediction about any particular woman. You should also know the mainstream position: ACOG recommends a trial of labor after cesarean take place at a facility able to perform an emergency cesarean, and considers home birth contraindicated for it. That's the guidance, stated plainly. You get to choose your own risk tolerance and where you feel safest.

How accurate are fundal height measurements and growth ultrasounds?

Both carry real margins of error. The accepted margin between an ultrasound weight estimate and actual birth weight is about 15%, and in one review of 1,785 scans done at 37–40 weeks, only 86% landed within even that (Obstetrics & Gynecology, 2020). Fundal height is measured by hand, and two people measuring the same woman on the same day can get different numbers — exactly what happened to Julia. These are screening tools, not verdicts.

Is a long pushing stage normal?

Pushing stages vary enormously, and length alone doesn't tell you much. Julia felt pushing sensations for around three hours and crowned for about nine minutes, with her baby's heart rate steady nearly the whole way. A position change, a different breathing pattern, or hands-on support often shifts a baby who has stalled. How mother and baby are doing matters more than the clock.

Can you breastfeed a second baby if you couldn't breastfeed your first?

Often, yes. A NICU stay, a tube-fed baby, early separation, or a supply that never established doesn't determine the next time, because so much of early breastfeeding depends on the circumstances right after birth. Julia couldn't nurse her daughter at all and has nursed her son from the start. Early support from an IBCLC makes a real difference either way.

Find Julia. Julia films births in Northwest Arkansas and shares her work at @juliamoorebirthfilms on Instagram.

If you're preparing after a birth that didn't go the way you planned, The Peaceful Birth Reset is free and was made for exactly that: a guided relaxation and a tapping practice for meeting fear instead of fighting it. → myhappyhomebirth.com/birthreset

About the author. Katelyn Fusco is a homebirth mother of 3. She has hosted the Happy Homebirth podcast since 2019, with more than two million downloads, and created Whole Mother Homebirth.

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This article shares one mother's personal experience and is offered as encouragement and education, not medical advice. Anything about your body or your baby belongs in conversation with your own care provider.