Rachel’s Empowering, Intimate Hypnobabies birth
“I am so grateful for the experience of this hypno-birth. I wish I could go back and have my 3 other babies this way. It was the most empowering and intimate experience I have ever had. I will cherish this moment for the rest of my life.”
This was my 4th and last baby. With my others I had epidurals. I had always wanted to do a waterbirth, but with my first I was young and just did what my Dr’s and everyone around me told me to. For my 2nd and 3rd, it was illegal to do water births at hospitals, (someplace my husband really wanted me to birth at). For my 4th a hospital about 45 minutes away was doing a study on water births and luckily my insurance accepted the hospital, doctor’s and waterbirth. A friend on Facebook posted about her Hypnobabies experience and I was hooked. I switched to a midwife group and signed up for the study. I sadly did not prepare as well as I could/should have, but what I was able to do/practice and listen to helped immeasurably.
2/23/20 at 12 am I was admitted to the hospital. The room that had the birthing tub was being used by another mom, so I was put in a room that had a tub with hopes that I would be able to move to the birthing tub in the future. My pressure waves (Hypnobabies term for contractions) were getting stronger but were still about 5-7 minutes apart. I was able to get into the tub and spend my birthing time (Hypnobabies term for labor) in the water off and on. I sat on a birthing ball while my husband and nurse rubbed my back, I walked around a bit and had a midnight dinner. I tried to get some rest but was unable to get much. After a few hours I was moved to the birthing tub.
I listened to my Easy First Stage track (Hypnobabies main birthing time track) and Birthing Day Affirmations track and was in a good hypnosis state while in the tub. Touching my husband helped ground me and keep my switch off. After a while my phone stopped playing the tracks(for some odd reason), I had the Midwife come in to check on me and an intense pressure wave all at once and I was knocked out of hypnosis and I was never ever able to get back in to hypnosis(I had pressure waves every 5-10 seconds and couldn’t get on top of them and forgot to put the tracks back on).
An hour or so later I had become too exhausted and didn’t think I would make it. I had made a wrong choice in letting the midwife assistant check me and tell me I was only 7.5 cm after 8 hours in birthing time. I chose to get an epidural and hobbled out of the tub to the bed. Within those 5 minutes and according to my husband I was a cm away from being administered with the epidural when I stood up and yelled “I’m pooping!” I quickly realized that it was in fact not poop, but my baby and with the help of the midwife assistant I caught my beautiful baby boy!
I am so grateful for the experience of this hypno-birth. I wish I could go back and have my 3 other babies this way. It was the most empowering and intimate experience I have ever had. I will cherish this moment for the rest of my life. I’m also so grateful my SIL was able to take the pictures as I ended up needing my husband to ground more than I had anticipated. Even though I lost hypnosis at the end I am still grateful for my experience and it ended with a funny story to tell.
