Another one of my moms gave birth on March 4th and had a wonderful experience! Here is her story:
“I started having contractions around 33 weeks. I was dilated to a 2 & 80% effaced at my appointment that week. I was put on bed rest and given shots to help baby’s lungs develop plus put on meds to slow down any contractions. During my weeks on bed rest I continued to have contractions pretty much hourly. Not painful ones but very tight & uncomfortable. I would always try to stop, close my eyes & take long deep slow breaths. This helped immensely. At my 36 week appointment I was 4cm dilated and 90% effaced. It became a mental battle not to let myself worry every second about when I would deliver. Thanks to your advice, I told my body & baby that we needed to stay pregnant until March. I didn’t want to deliver any sooner than 2 weeks early. Mentally I tried really hard to only think about delivering a healthy baby in march instead of letting every scary scenario play out as an alternative.
At 38 weeks, my contractions began to come closer and closer. That night they were 3-4 minutes apart. Spencer and I timed them for an hour to make sure they were consistent. After an hour we left for the hospital. It was nice to already be pre-registered & to know some of the nurses at Timpanogos Hospital. When we arrived we asked for the natural birthing room but it was occupied. Actually, every room was full! The staff had to call in extra nurses and place people in rooms on the second floor. Everyone wanted to have a baby that night! So we ended up in a different room than planned…but the nurse was so nice! She brought in a birthing ball and she seemed to know a lot about hypnobirthing. She really wanted to help us have a good experience.
When they checked me at the hospital I was 5cm dilated. I spent the next hour walking around the room & was soon 6cm dilated. At this point labor was pretty much the same as the last month of my life except that the contractions were closer together. I was breathing through them but I felt nothing but very strong tightening & some back pain. Until about 3am Spencer and I were watching Full House and Family Matters on the tv without sound. It may be funny, but this was the best thing about the process. All the memories of these two shows are positive and it was a terrific distraction.
By 6am my doctor came to check in. We found out he had a meeting he couldn’t miss from 7-8am but other than that he would be available all morning to deliver my baby. At this point I had been at 8cm for 3 or 4 hours. I got really nervous another doctor would have to step in. I have known my doctor for years and years and it was important to me that he deliver my baby. Suddenly it was like my body hit pause. My contractions almost stopped completely. The meeting ran longer than expected and he came back to check on me at 9am. I was still stuck at 8cm. I had been very active in walking around the room and lightly bouncing on the exercise ball. I guess my baby wanted my doctor too and stopped things for him 🙂 It was funny because the nurses were so busy with all the other expectant mothers that they really left us alone a lot! Not that I’m complaining! Sometimes a few hours would go by with no nurses and I loved it because then I wasn’t hooked up to the monitoring machine.
When my doctor came back he said he could break my water if I wanted. We decided yes, since we had spent the last 5 or 6 hours with no change. After my water broke everything changed really fast. I had been so calm and good at breathing and relaxing before, but I had no idea how quickly intense it could become. I started to panic and freak out. I would grab and squeeze Spencer’s arm as hard as I could. I couldn’t regain my focus and Spencer seemed to also panic seeing me in so much pain. After 45 minutes I felt the urge to push and my doctor came back. He was incredible! He could see I wasn’t doing well and he did exactly what I needed. He told me to look at him and start at the top of my head and relax my eyebrows, then my nose, then my mouth…and so on. He got me right back on track to regaining control of my body. He talked me through the last 10 minutes of contractions until I said I needed to push. He checked that I was complete and started helping to stretch out the opening. He said it really looked like I might tear and recommended an episiotomy. At this point, I kinda didn’t care what happened. I tried to breathe her down but the urge to push was strong and the nurses (who had somehow made their way into the room unnoticed) were all coaching me otherwise. I think Spencer was also incredibly overwhelmed at this point. I ended up pushing –but definitely with way less force than I could have. After 3 or 4 pushes she was out!
She had a ton of fluid in her lungs and they ended up rushing her out right away. Spencer was able to go with her and they were both gone for an hour. Then finally I got to meet my little girl! After that, everything went very smoothly. We stayed that night and were able to go home the following day.
We named her Darcy. She was born on March 4th at 10:12 am. She weighed 7lbs 4oz and was 19 in long. (I had to send a picture!) My recovery the last 3+ weeks has been pretty good overall. Darcy is doing very well also, and we love her more than we could imagine!
Ok wow, that was kind of the long version! There are things that we would do differently next time around and things that went almost perfect. We are both SO SO glad we took your class and felt so much more prepared and less scared and nervous about the whole process. I don’t think I could have done it naturally without all the information and techniques we learned.”
I especially love how Allison used the techniques in HypnoBirthing to keep from having her baby too early. The mind is so powerful, and it really shows in a situation like this. Also, Allison talked about “pushing” rather than “breathing down.” I feel that there is a continuum and some women will be more on the “pushing” side while others will be more on the “breathing down” side. She followed her body’s urges, and that is the most important thing. When women are not numbed up from the waist down, they can actually feel exactly what their body needs them to do at this stage to gently birth their baby. It’s amazing. Well done, Allison!
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