This beautiful couple took hypnobirthing when she was around 20 weeks…as she said, she wanted to prepare for as natural a birth as possible but knew that she and her partner needed some information and some tools before birth
Her pregnancy was not without complications…her baby thought that 28 weeks might be a good time to arrive but then thankfully decided to stay put! And as she neared the end of her pregnancy there were concerns that her baby was measuring small and so an induction was mentioned and considered. I met with them to come up with a hypnobirthing plan should an induction be required but at their next scan, their baby was the perfect size.
Their beautiful baby boy was born at almost 41 weeks…born into the most supportive environment and into such a loving family.
After having to use many of their hypnobirthing decision making strategies during pregnancy, they were prepared to advocate for themselves when she required some assistance to birth her placenta.
They emerged from birth feeling proud, empowered, and so in love with their son!
Here is their story!
He was born at 5:32pm on Saturday the 3rd of November. He arrived at 40+6.
The hospital had rung on the Friday to book us in for an induction on Sunday (which I was devastated about and rung my partner at work sobbing uncontrollably…in hindsight I’d say 80 percent of that response was due to labor hormones beginning).
At roughly 3:00am Saturday morning I woke up with pressure in my stomach and back, which I had had for the previous 5 weeks, so I ignored it and went back to sleep. By about 4:30am the pressure had become significant enough that I didn’t want to lay down. My partner woke up at 5:00am and I suggested to him hopefully that perhaps I was in labor. He suggested we time when the pressure came and went…sure enough they were coming 5 minutes apart and lasting at least one minute. We laboured in the room for a couple of hours, listening to Hypnobirthing Australia tracks and trying to contain our excitement that our little one had begun his journey to us.
At roughly 7:30am my partner ran me a bath which was delightful, until all of a sudden it wasn’t and I felt a big desire to get to the hospital. We showered, said see you soon to the dogs, and headed off to the Mater.
We arrived at the Mater at roughly 9:30am and were seen by about 9:45am, the initial cervical check suggested we were fully effaced but “only” 2 centimetres dilated. We were then offered to go home or to go to a ward, we asked to go to a ward. Within an hour of being on the ward the contractions had gotten stronger and stronger, I was now unable to be still, pacing the room endlessly. My partner gently reminded me to breathe and would sway with me through each contraction. We tried a TENS machine at this point but unfortunately it didn’t provide the relief we had hoped it would. We were told we would be checked again at 2:00pm. However by 11:00am the ward nurse initiated getting us to birth suite as we were progressing quickly.
Once down in the birth suite, my partner took the lead and pushed the bed aside and begun assembling our birth environment, while I took up residence on a birth ball in the shower. He soon joined me and used hot water on my back. We were joined by a midwife who immediately understood who we were and the birth we wanted. She was on our team. This lovely midwife stated there was a room with a birth pool available if we would like to use it. We had not wanted a water birth, so the midwife suggested we use the pool for labour and if we wanted to birth out of the water she would facilitate this. Once in the birth pool, I immediately knew we would be having a water birth. The water provided incredible pain relief and allowed for active birthing without getting tired.
A calm silence filled my body and mind and I could only focus on the power of what my body was doing. Uttering next to no sounds or words until his arrival. I overheard the midwife explaining to the student midwife that in “these types of births we take a step back, we let the mum and dad do it…they know what they’re doing, there is nothing more we can do.”This gave me great confidence in us as a team and in all that we had learnt. In my moments of doubt, my partner was there knowing all the right things to do and say, holding my hand, encouraging me, reminding me that I was strong, and that we were so close to meeting the newest love of our lives. At 3:30pm my water broke and pushing begun roughly an hour later. After an hour of self prompted pushing, his head was out and I was reminded gently by the midwife to be slow and gentle and that in a matter of minutes she would be passing him between my legs for us to bring out of the water.
At 5:32pm our baby boy was in my arms. My partner wrapped his arms around me and we basked in our oxytocin glow. Everything was perfect.
We had elected for a natural placenta delivery, but my placenta had other ideas, refusing to budge for over an hour. We were alerted that the next step would be theatre, for an epidural and surgery to remove my placenta. What!? Following what we learnt in hypnobirthing we asked for more time and for other options. After a abdominal massage, a shot of Syntocinon, and a bit of manipulation the placenta was delivered. Pfew, back to our happy bubble.
I had greatly under estimated the power of labor and how much it would challenge me but am so grateful and so proud of the birth we were able to achieve together and gift our son.
Thank you so much Caitlin for all of your knowledge and support. Your hypnobirthing classes enabled the natural birth I had always wanted (even though I don’t think I really ever knew what I meant by that until doing the classes).
If you are interested in learning more about the Hypnobirthing Australia program and booking into a class, you can find more information here!