She was nearly halfway through her third pregnancy when she decided it was time to switch doctors.

Shaula Heida delivered her two other children by cesarean, although her goal was to have a vaginal birth. Now pregnant with her third child, she wanted an opportunity to deliver her baby without surgery.

“I felt like they were using scare tactics,” Heida says of her providers at a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. “They were not giving me options, they were telling me what was going to happen. They made me feel like I was signing a death sentence for me and my baby if I did not have surgery.”

“They were measuring my uterine scar to see if it was at risk of separating,” Heida continues. “They kept moving my delivery date up. The last thing they told me is that I may need to deliver at 35 weeks and they were going to give me steroids to help the baby’s lungs develop.”

That’s when Heida found Karen Carlson, MD.

“I was reading reviews on Facebook,” she remembers. “She was highly recommended. Actually, the entire staff was recommended for VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). I just wanted to go full term. I was scared to have my baby at 35 weeks.”

She made an appointment for her and her husband, Jason, to meet Dr. Carlson.

“We walked out of there with our jaws on the floor,” Heida recalls. “She had such a different opinion. She put all my choices on the table and was really shocked my provider wanted to deliver at 35 weeks, based on tests that were not evidence-based. She reassured me that if there were complications, Nebraska Medical Center had all these expert teams to respond.”

That weekend, Heida says Dr. Carlson mailed her a packet of information from medical journals and underlined the information she had shared.

“I wasn’t even her patient at the time,” she says. “She even called me on her day off to see if I had any questions. It was pretty incredible. I had no doubt in my mind I had to switch my care.”

Throughout the remainder of her pregnancy, she saw Dr. Carlson on her scheduled visits and was always reassured. Dr. Carlson allowed her to go one week past her due date before telling Heida it was time.

One of the most concerning unknowns of Heida’s case was the presence of scar tissue and if that would complicate a vaginal delivery. There was no way to know until the delivery.

“Dr. Carlson never wavered,” she says. “She was always thinking one step ahead.”

She was induced at 7 a.m. on Nov. 10, 2018. After eight hours of labor and at six centimeters dialated, Heida opted for an epidural.

“My doula told me sometimes an epidural relaxes you enough to encourage dilation,” she says.

Heida says Dr. Carlson’s shift ended at 6 p.m., but she was not leaving.

 

“She told me ‘I’m staying. I’m going to make sure you have the support you need. All the cards are stacked against us. This has to be a textbook delivery.’”

Her son, Elisha, was born just before midnight.

“It was the perfect delivery,” she says. “The whole team was pretty surprised.”

Heida is so grateful for the opportunity to have a vaginal delivery.

“I had never had a contraction. I had never experienced labor. I wanted that experience,” she says. “I also knew it would be safer and better for my baby. With my first baby, I don’t remember holding him for the first time. I was so drugged up from the pain for the first four or five days. I didn’t want that again.”

Heida offers high praise for the nursing staff, too.

“They were amazing.”

Now that her son, Elisha, has celebrated his first birthday, Heida enjoys thinking back to the experience and wants others to hear her story.

“I had never received care like that before in my life.”