First Baby, Donovan’s Hypnobabies Birth

First Baby, Donovan’s Hypnobabies Birth

My pressure waves started early Thursday morning, June 12th (not sure what time as I didn’t look at the clock when they woke me up) but I finally got up after one woke me up at 6:40am. I had another one 10 min later so I decided to try and time them. Starting at 7am I started timing them and I had 4 in a row at just under 10 min apart. They stayed between 10 – 20 min apart for most of the day. I started listening to my Hypnobabies script Easy Stage One on repeat.

Between 5 – 6pm they started to get more intense and they seemed more frequent. I asked my husband to time them for me and they were coming about 6 – 7 min apart and lasting about 30 – 45 sec. I continued to breathe through them and listen to my Hypnobabies scripts the entire time. I alternated between Easy Comfortable Childbirth and Easy Stage One. 

At about 9pm when the pressure waves were about 4-5 min apart for an hour I asked my husband to call my mom to have her come down (she lives down the street from me). When the pressure waves were consistently 3-4 min apart and lasting close to a minute we decided to head to the hospital. I took a 15 min shower first while my mom hovered over me and my husband got everything out to the car.

We arrived at the hospital at 9:30pm on Thursday, June 12th. I was taken to a triage room and put on the fetal monitor, my vitals were taken, and a cervical exam showed I was 6-7 cm dilated. The triage
nurse was surprised at this because she said I was doing so well.

A different doctor was on-call for my OB’s group so they called him to get labor orders (I also knew this doctor very well and was quite happy that he was on-call). The triage nurse told me that I was being
moved to a L&D room and they would keep the monitor straps on me and hook me up when I got to my room. I asked her if I could have intermittent monitoring so that I could walk around if I wanted to
and she said she would call the doctor to ask. The doctor insisted on continuous fetal monitoring, but I wasn’t required to stay in bed, I just couldn’t go past the wire length.

I was then taken to my L&D room and introduced to my nurse. I was GBS positive so I already knew that I had to have antibiotics but I had requested a hep lock only so another nurse came in to put the hep lock in. I had to have two bags of antibiotics and was able to move around at the bedside while this was being dripped. During this time I was sitting on the glider in the room and was listening to my
scripts. My husband and mom were with me and were awesome in helping me stay relaxed and reminding me to take sips of water to stay hydrated. As soon as my antibiotic was done I was disconnected from the IV.

My husband gave my nurse my birth plan and to my surprise she read it very thoroughly and clarified a few things with me. He also gave her the brownies I had made and she was surprised at this and said no one has ever given them anything like that before. She seemed very appreciative of that.

I continued breathing and relaxing through my pressure waves and when they started getting much more intense I found that standing leaning against the counter and swaying my hips back and forth really helped me through them. I felt better able to relax my birthing muscles with my abdomen kind of “hanging” out in front of me.

At 11:45pm I was standing at the counter in the room when I had a pressure wave and along with it a huge urge to push and I did push some and had a big gush of fluid. I told my husband and my mom and said to get the nurse because I felt like I had to push. My husband said that my triage nurse who first checked me when I arrived at the hospital overheard him tell my nurse this and he said she whispered to another nurse, “that was fast.” My nurse came in and had me get in bed to check me. I had another pressure wave with an urge to push, and I did, and had another gush of fluid. She said I was about 9 cm dilated and they were calling Dr. Wiseman and I should not push until the last lip of my cervix was out of the way. The most difficult part for me was having pushing pressure waves with that incredibly strong urge to push and being told not to.

This was the point that I lost focus because it was so difficult to not push. My husband and mom jumped in to help talk me through trying to relax and not push so I would dilate that last bit. The nurse wanted to check me again during a pressure wave to see if I dilated. She checked me and I did dilate to 10cm and was given the go ahead to push. The doctor was still not there yet. I tried to push in- between pressure waves to help stretch my perineum without the force of a pressure wave behind it and I did fairly well with this. I used the “breathing baby down” technique of pushing and was very vocal with the use of “ahhhh” to get through this part.

My nurse was getting very nervous because she said she could see hair and the doctor was still not there. Another nurse in the room assured her that he would be there any second. He came in shortly after that and they got everything ready and wanted me to turn onto my back and put my feet in stirrups but I was more comfortable lying on my side with my leg up so I stayed in that position. My husband and another nurse were holding my top leg up while I pushed. The doctor was wonderful at helping to guide my pushing so that I wouldn’t tear. The pushing part actually felt wonderful and not at all uncomfortable. When he was crowning I felt very, very tight and stretched but I wouldn’t call it painful. This was very interesting to me since my biggest fear that I had was the pain of crowning and of tearing.

I started pushing at about 11:55pm and my beautiful Hypnobaby was born at 12:15am on Friday, June 13th. He was 8 lbs. 4 oz. and 20 in. long. My husband didn’t want to cut the cord (he’s always a little
queasy around blood and stuff and was holding himself together pretty well for what he saw), but the doctor kind of pushed the scissors into his hands and said, “come on daddy” and showed him where to cut and he did. A few more pushes and my placenta came out and was intact. I did end up having a small tear that the doctor was debating about even stitching but he did do one stitch as a precaution because it was bleeding a bit.

The only drugs I had for this birth were the 2 bags of antibiotics when I first arrived at the hospital and 2 Tylenol tablets after I was in post-partum to help with some soreness. I refused the routine Pitocin that is given after delivery because when I asked if there was a reason I needed it the nurse didn’t have one and she said that I was fine. Total time from active birthing time to delivery was about 6-7 hours and this is my first baby. Total pushing time was about 20 minutes.

This birth was such a wonderful, intense and incredible experience and I am so thankful to the Hypnobabies program for allowing me and my husband to have a birthing experience the way God intended for women to have.

Originally posted on September 16, 2008