I had my 1st surge at 6am on Monday 5th October. Before waking Lee I wanted to check it wasn’t a false alarm and so I timed the frequency for an hour. At 7am I woke Lee and told him he wasn’t going into work today. We were so excited that very soon we were going to meet our baby girl.
We had porridge and tea in bed as I breathed through my surges.
As it was raining outside, we couldn’t go for a walk so we decided to catch up on a few programmes whilst sat on my yoga ball. By 1pm I could only concentrate on my surges as they were much more frequent and much more intense. We turned the TV off, closed the curtains, lit the candles and played the Rainbow Relaxation CD. I breathed through each surge calmly, smelling my Clary Sage cloth.
After a couple of hours I got into a warm bath and Lee did the light touch massage which really helped to relax me.
By 4:30pm we were at the hospital and only 2cm dilated. We were sent home.
I got back in the bath, the warm water felt amazing.
By 9pm we were back at the hospital, I was 3cm dilated and my cervix had thinned a lot so we were allowed to stay. We got the CD player set up and dimmed the lights.
The 1st midwife was loud and quite rude so Lee spoke to her outside of the room and luckily she allowed a student midwife to look after us. The student midwife was excited to experience a Hypnobirth and was very calming and kind. We were so thankful to have her looking after us. Every time she needed to check my blood pressure or the baby’s heartbeat, she would whisper to Lee so that Lee could ask me. She really respected our birth plan.
At 12am we slept for a few hours (in between surges) and by 5am I was 8cm dilated and couldn’t wait to get in the pool. I absolutely loved being in the warm water.
At approx. 11am I started to feel the overwhelming urge to bear down, Lee reminded me to visualise the ‘J’ which really helped. At 1:17pm Susie swam into the world and into my arms. She was instantly calm and enjoyed being cuddled in the water.
Lee was right by me the whole time, whispering words of encouragement and placing cool flannels on the back of my neck. He used the birth companion anchor a few times and the light touch massage really helped, he also read a few scripts that we had written out beforehand. The midwives couldn’t believe that we were cuddling throughout the labour. The surge breathing was great and kept me really relaxed. The CD was on repeat for the whole time, I bet the midwives were fed up with hearing it!!
The student midwife stayed for an extra 5 hours on top of her 12 hour shift so she could experience it with us. A couple of hours after the birth, one of the midwives visited Susie and I on the ward to let me know how she was now a believer in Hypnobirthing and said that at times she couldn’t even tell I was having a surge.
The one bit of advice I must give is……..cover the clock! We were supposed to but didn’t. I found myself looking at it every few hours and working out how long I had been labouring for, this gave me negative thoughts and made me doubt how much longer I could do it for. If I hadn’t have seen the time I would never have known it was as long as it was.
It was a long birth but it was so beautiful. I can honestly say I undoubtedly believe it would have been a completely different story if we hadn’t have practised Hypnobirthing.
Hypnobirthing gave us the calm and relaxed pregnancy we wanted and has made Susie a very content little baby. Without it we would have had a very different experience.
THANK YOU LIZ!!!