I got pregnant with my first son in the summer of '03, and I wanted everything to be natural. I had a birth plan two pages long and I wanted everything to be perfect. I wanted to give birth at home on the four-square-mile island of Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. However, midwives don't deliver firstborns at home here, and the midwife I wanted to attend the birth was away in California.

I was so upset by this and tried desperately to fly a midwife from the states and help out. Unfortunately, nothing worked out and I ended up with a doctor who had absolutely no faith in my giving birth naturally. I ended up having a Cesarean section, but I was so in love with my son that it was hard to see past that.

A couple months later, I got upset about the whole thing because I was only three days overdue and I felt that if the doctor had let nature take its course and not induce me that things would have gone better.

I got pregnant again a year later, and wanted things to be different. The midwife on St. Thomas had returned, and I was determined to have things go differently. Even though I'd planned a homebirth, I still had to go through the hospital system because homebirths are taboo down here.

So I woke up at 5 a.m. on January 29, 2006, and I had been having a couple contractions. They weren't anything serious, but I knew that this was the day. I went to the hospital at 11:30 a.m. and I was 3 centimeters dilated. This arrogant doctor was very intrusive when he checked me and I bled. He told me that if I wanted to have the baby today he could make it happen. I told him that I wanted to wait because I didn't want to be admitted to the hospital.

As soon as I left the building, I got a contraction that made it difficult to walk. My sister, her girlfriend and her daughter took me to get some chai and then we went home. At 3 p.m. the contractions started getting heavy and close together. We called the midwife, and I was so fortunate to have these strong women around me. I wasn't scared at all because I had done all the reading on VBACs and I knew how much safer it was to go that route than to have a scheduled C-section.

The girls would heat up rice in a sock and rub it on my back. Let me tell you, this is what saved me during labor – it was a godsend! I was so elated that I was finally given the opportunity to birth the way I knew was the right way.

The midwife got there around 3:30 p.m., and we moved to the tub where I relaxed for a while. When I got out, the contractions were even worse. I felt good about them, though, because after they passed I'd have a rest in between and it would feel as if I weren't even in labor.

Around 6:50 p.m. I felt a pop and when I got up I felt water rushing down. I was fully dilated and ready to push. Naya Kai Callwood was born 20 minutes later and he weighed 8 pounds – 2 ounces lighter than my first boy.

I was so happy! I did it, and the feeling was indescribable. So many people had told me that it wasn't possible and I had proven them all wrong, but most of all, I had proven to myself that my body was capable.

I would encourage any woman who has doubts about VBACs to do the reading, eat well, exercise, take care of yourself and most of all, have faith because your body can do it.