As I mentioned earlier, here is my birth story from the birth of my wonderful son, Jaiden. I just wanted to clarify that I was using Hypnobirthing and not the method that I currently teach: Hypnobabies. (I wanted to use Hypnobabies but there were no instructors in the area which is why I am now a Hypnobabies teacher.) I wrote this shortly after he was born. Many of the things in this story are not accurate (like how active labor usually lasts from 12-14 hours. There is no “usually” in birth and for the midwife to tell me this at that time, was inaccurate to say the least.) I didn’t know that at the time so we made the best decision we could at the time. If I could do it again, I would not have that birth again but I will never regret the way things happened. I truly believe that all babies are born in the way that is the best for the whole family and my son’s birth was no exception. Enjoy!
My birth story
I started have contractions on Friday morning (3/24/06). By Friday afternoon I realized that they were coming pretty regularly so we went about our day but I starting timing them. Friday night about midnight we (me, Anna, and my mom decided that it was time to go to the hospital. My contractions were still about 5 min apart and I knew we were going a little too soon but the midwife said to go ahead and I wanted to get to the hospital to “settle in”. I just wanted to keep everything low key and calm. So we all loaded in the car including Toby (our dog) and headed over to Deb and Kendall house to pick up Martina and drop off Toby. When we got to the hospital, I was about 3.5 cm dilated so we waited and we did our hypnobirthing (relaxing in bed) and we walked and sometime on Saturday afternoon, the midwife checked me again and wow, I was 4 cm. So we waited and we did our hypnobirthing and we walked and we waited some more. At some point the midwife suggested that I take a bath because I was having a lot of pain in my back. The bath must have worked because my contractions got a lot easier to handle. (We were doing some good relaxing.) 🙂 My sister got there about 3 or 4:00 and I am so glad she decided to come. I think it was at about 6:00 p.m. on Saturday night that the midwife came in again to check me. I think I was a little over 4 cm but not much so we discussed our option. She said that I still wasn’t in “active labor” and that it was totally up to me as to what to do. Her only concern was that I was going to get too tired because this could go on for a while longer but she knew we wanted to go naturally and she totally supported that. I asked her how long “active labor” usually lasted for first time moms and she said about 12-14 hours. Anna and I talked about it and we decided that we were ready to have a baby so they broke my water, started me on pitocin and gave me an epidural. (My water had already broken a bit but not completely which was probably why things were going so slow.) My sister was wonderful. She suggested that they give me “a little something” for pain now until they came to give me the epidural. They did and I don’t think I’ve slept that well in a long time. I didn’t feel a thing for a good 2 hours. After that I could feel the lower part of my legs and I could move a bit but I didn’t feel any pain. The midwife came back in at about 10:00 p.m. and I was 8-9cm. (I think we were all relieved. My sister said she didn’t want to hear anything except that I was fully dilated. The midwife jokingly said “Well… what if I said she’s 8-9…) She said to call her when things started to “feel different”. I don’t think it was half an hour later when things started feeling different. My sister went to get the midwife and by the time she got back into the room, I needed to push. The midwife didn’t even have time to get her gown on and 45 min later, we had a beautiful baby boy. He was born as 12:12 am on Sunday (his due date by the way) at 8 lbs. 14 oz. I think he when into a bit of distress at the very end so I didn’t get to see him much before they took him to check him out. (I think the only distress was that my blood pressure and temp went up but he was fine.) But after they got me stitched up and him situated, I nursed him and he latched right on. It was really one of the most amazing experiences in my life. No matter what anyone tells you, words will never come close to that amazing experience.
