Kate’s Hypnobabies Home Birth
“The midwife wanted to check me even though I felt that my body was going to push soon so I was pretty confident I’d be fully dilated. She said I had an anterior cervical lip but that it wouldn’t get in the way and encouraged me to just follow my body’s cues.”
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After about a week of prodromal birthing waves (Hypnobabies term for contractions) and waiting very impatiently for her to arrive, I started having some cramping that felt a bit different than what I had been experiencing on June 3rd (40+4) at around dinner time.
I didn’t bother timing them for a long time because I was so used to having waves. Especially in the evening. We went to bed and tried to get our son to sleep for a long while. Once he fell asleep, I had a few stronger waves and told my husband I was 80% sure tonight was the night.
We watched TV until about 11 pm then I told my husband he should try to catch a couple of hours of sleep while he could. I wasn’t able to lay down through waves anymore, so I sat in the glider in our room and started listening to Hypnobabies tracks.
At about 1 am I decided to start timing waves and they were pretty random at 7 mins apart to 5 minutes apart and a few 1-2 minutes apart all lasting about a minute. At this point Hypnobabies was totally carrying me through and I was able to relax my body and focus on dilating and urging on stronger waves to get this baby out.
At 2 am my husband heard me vocalizing through a wave and woke up. I almost told him to try to catch another hour of rest because I thought I was handling it all pretty well on my own but then remembered that we had to move cars and set up the whole birth room so I told him to get going. This is when things got really intense.
As soon as I left the ritual of the glider and moved downstairs (still listening to Hypnobabies but was pretty distracted telling Kees what needed doing) my waves got very strong and without Kees available to help me work through them I was kind of just trying to find any comfortable position without much success.
I told my husband to call his mom who lives an hour away and I called the midwives (who didn’t call me back for like 25 minutes) and told them to come ASAP. At this point I had basically no break between huge waves that were kind of crashing down on me. I was still able to relax my body to allow progress but emotionally I was NOT happy.
I told my husband to prioritize the birthing pool because it offered the hope of some relief. At this point my dad woke up and was helping my husband with set up and my mom went to go lay down with our son.
The birthing pool took FOREVER to get to the right temperature, ultimately it never really was. But I got in anyway and held the hose pumping hot water out on my lower back. I felt waves strongly in my back, wrapping around my abdomen, and then down into my legs. They were really intense.
I felt my legs start shaking and I puked a bunch and knew I was in transformation (Hypnobabies term for transition). I was just trying to relax and wait until the midwives got there.
They showed up at about 310 am and were really rushing around. They told me to get out of the tub since pushing and birthing in the water wasn’t allowed because of COVID-19. I wasn’t happy to get out but truthfully the tub wasn’t helping much anyway, and I knew that the temperature wasn’t right for baby.
Once I was out, I struggled to find a comfortable position and was really having a hard time through waves. I kept thinking “the only way out is through”. I was beyond the point of trying to use hypno-anesthesia or anything like that, so I just tried to relax my body to let it progress and be done with it. I regret not keeping my tracks going but I lost my headphones at some point, asked my husband to put my track on out loud but couldn’t really focus on it with no break between waves.
The midwife wanted to check me even though I felt that my body was going to push soon so I was pretty confident I’d be fully dilated. She said I had an anterior cervical lip but that it wouldn’t get in the way and encouraged me to just follow my body’s cues.
I knelt on the single mattress we had in there and leaned into my husband with my arms around his shoulders and my body started pushing. Fetal ejection reflex felt super weird. With my son the midwife coached me, so it was way different. I hated the feeling but tried to just lean into it and get our baby out. My waters broke during my first big push. It felt like a lot of big pushes but apparently, I only pushed for about 15 minutes. She felt pretty big to me but there wasn’t too much discomfort from her coming out. They passed her through my legs and my husband helped me to lie down with her.
My entire body shook for over an hour from adrenaline. I had a first-degree tear but not bad enough for stitches. They gave me the Pitocin shot because it was such a fast birth and I really didn’t want to end up in hospital. I birthed her placenta which was no problem and they clamped and cut her cord once it stopped pulsing.
I definitely credit Hypnobabies with getting me as far in to my birthing time as I was before needing more support. If I didn’t have to move locations and been so rushed, I think it would have helped even more with the discomfort I felt during the last bit of her birth. Even when I wasn’t actively listening, the practice of relaxing my entire body that I got from Hypnobabies helped immensely.
Evren Oak was born at 340am at 8lbs8oz and 21inches long. It was a fast and furious birth and I can’t say that I loved it but it’s how she needed to come and I’m just glad everyone made it out healthy.
