Hi Katharine,
Sorry this took me so long to get to you. I wanted to get it right and well life just kept getting in the way….
Just want to say thank you for doing the work that you do and for all the support you gave me during my pregnancy. Hypnobirthing has had the most significant impact on my life outside of my children. I feel the positive effects resonate long after labour and delivery! The concept is so simple and yet the impact is profound. I gave birth to a 10 lbs 4 oz, baby girl at home in 2.5 hours, with little to no pain and most amazing of all I didn’t tear!! I put that all down to the hypnobirthing. First stage of labour I did on my own sitting on my sofa. My husband and midwife were getting the pool ready and making sure my hypnobirthing cd continued to play. I felt uncomfortable but no pain. When I started to transition I made my way into the pool. My only mistake in all of this was I didn’t eat a thing. I had some water but couldn’t get any food down. So by the time I got in the water I was so tired I lost my focus and I felt pain for the first time. I couldn’t relax bc I was so tired. Rather than going with the waves they were just crashing into me. having said that baby was born 20minutes after I got into the pool so my labour didn’t slow down….
below is exactly how things went…
As you know I was open but totally unsure how the hypnobirthing would play out once labour started. The entire concept was too simple for me to get my head around. And this is my third child where I had both my boys at home with an independent midwife. My two previous births were amazing, but they were painful and intense. So I was open but just could imagine it… But I carried on night after night listening to the DVD’s. I practiced my breathing during the day and hoped for the best.
Well on the 12th of Feb ( my EDD) at 10.34pm I was sitting eating dinner with my husband and mum watching Graham Norton (funny program) and felt a sort of shift. Hard to explain what the shift was but I just knew labour was coming. I quietly went up to my sitting room, which was set up as our birthing room, and I started to prepare the room. I shut the shutters, turned on the CD etc. I was excited but really tried not to get my adrenaline going.
Then once I felt my first real surge I stopped, breathed through it and was surprised just how calm I was. With my other two children as soon as the surges started the pain would easily overwhelm me and even though I would try to go with it I was really just holding on til it passed. Not this time. I went to get my husband and we sat together and breathed through some more surges. I made my self comfortable on the sofa and continued to labour while my husband filled the pool and called the midwife.
Now because this was our third and final child we really tried to include all the elements of birth that we always wanted, pool, we wanted to film it, we had a plasma screen tv with an aquarium scene on it and of course the hypnobirthing music as well. In retrospect that was a bit much….because my poor husband was like a production manager going around making sure all the elements were right. In the meantime I was sat on the sofa very still and very quietly labouring.
My midwife arrived and couldn’t believe how calm the scene was. She delivered my other two boys so was prepared for something else all together.
I was consumed by my labour at this time really flowing to and fro with my surges. They weren’t painful just uncomfortable and only at the end when after two hours I was fully dilated and in transition. I could physically feel myself opening up, very strange feeling.
Now by this stage I hadn’t really eaten anything or had a drink. I was exhausted. I should have taken time to up my energy but with the surges one after the other I just couldn’t stop. So when I got into the pool and needed to focus on breathing baby down and out I just couldn’t, I had to push. Which I did for twenty minutes and she was born.
She would have been born quicker if for two things, my youngest son wouldn’t go to sleep. He kept coming in and was worried about me so once he was sleep I could really focus and let go. Second was during delivery the cord was around her neck once (not tightly as my midwife had been monitoring her heart beat the entire time and she was fine) and every time I pushed with the surge the cord would then pull her back in so once midwife could get cord off she was born with the next surge.
My waters didn’t break until the very end and my midwife said the baby’s position for birth was perfect.
Elianna Stella Lucia, was born at 12.54am on the 13th of Feb. She weighed 4.7 kilos or 10 lbs 4 oz., and 56 cm long.
I also feel that the hypnobirthing had a residual positive effect after baby was born, which i didn’t expect. I felt so amazing afterwards, so positive and happy. Not high on adrenaline just really happy. I didn’t suffer from the ups and downs from the adrenaline rushes either. Just felt really balanced and really content.
Thanks to hypnobirthing I was able to finally have the birth experience I wanted. I can’t say enough times how powerful and truly amazing hypnobirthing is… I wasn’t sure how it would work and now feel hypnobirthing should be mandatory antenatal training for all women.
Thank you again for giving me the tools I needed to have the birth I always wanted, I am forever in your debt!!
All the best,
Julie
