Since my husband wasn't able to attend your classes with me, I worked a lot on explaining the philosophies to him and had him read the scripts to me a few times a week. I made him familiarize himself with hospital jargon and memorize my birth preferences so that he could be my advocate and make sure nothing happened to me without my consent. He was so unbelievably supportive.

 

I prepared my body and my mind with the breathing exercises, the scripts (the fawn visualization is my favorite), affirmations, eating dates, drinking raspberry leaf tea, and lots of stretches and walks. I was super stressed during this time and thought that I hadn't been preparing myself as much as I should, but when the day came I was still able to recall all my practice and remain very calm. 

 

When my water broke I was 5 days before my due date, so it was definitely a surprise. It was about 2:30 in the morning and everything took off from there. Me and Josh (my husband) gathered everything we needed and hung around the house for about 2 hours before going to the hospital. I wasn't sure if I needed to go yet because my surges didn't feel that intense to me, but they were very close together. The only negative part of my experience was the triage nurse when we arrived at the hospital. She was just very rude and didn't believe that i was having contractions as close together as I said I was because I was still very calm and not saying I was in pain, just that they were becoming much more intense and pressure was increasing. I could tell I was advancing and had to send my husband out to get the nurse, who had just left us in the triage area for a long time. She seemed inconvenienced to have to get the doctor to come check how dilated I was and I was 7 cm. They then rushed me to labor and delivery. All of the nurses and staff in labor and delivery were wonderful and very accomodating, thankfully. We were able to run our diffuser and listen to a relaxing soundtrack on our speaker. I labored switching back and forth from side to side and on my knees leaned over the back of the bed with a pillow. The staff left us alone for the most part and I only had intermittent monitoring of the baby's heart rate.

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Since this was my first baby every sensation was new for me. So there was the small element of fear creeping in the back of my brain, but I was able to calm myself with deepening and picturing myself with my baby finally here. Josh was constantly reassuring me and giving me water after every surge. The craziest feeling was when my body started to bear down without my help. I didn't hear the nurses when they told my husband that if I felt ready to push he should call for them. So I sat with those very intense surges for some time and not taking full advantage of that natural expulsive reflex because I thought I wasn't supposed to start bearing down yet. I didn't have the words to describe what the sensation was until afterwards I thought it must have been the natural expulsive reflex. I couldn't ignore it anymore and told Josh to get the nurses because I really felt like I should start bearing down. They only checked my dilation twice. Once in triage and once I asked Josh to get the nurses. We told the doctor I didn't want to know how far dilated I was unless I was ready to go. I was 10 cm at that point and baby Nathan was well on his way. They were once again surprised since I was still remaining calm and not able to describe my surges in a way using a pain scale and I had no idea how much time was passing since I mostly had my eyes closed and was deep within myself. I was not very helpful to the staff in that way haha. But after that check everything kicked into high gear and he came within minutes. 

 

He came and they placed him on my chest, it was all so surreal, they delayed the cord clamping and then Josh was able to cut the cord. We had about 2 hours of uninterrupted skin to skin and I was able to let him do a breast crawl to accomplish our first feeding. Everything was so beautiful and perfect. I am certain that I would not have had such a positive experience without the help of hypnobirthing and just educating myself on birth in general. It evaporated so much anxiety I had around the subject allowing me to remain calm and peaceful even though I was inexperienced and something so profound was happening to my body. Thank you again for the guidance, I will forever treasure it. I will definitely be using it in any future births and recommending it to anyone who will listen. I hope you and your family are well. 

 

Warmest Regards,

 

Noel, Josh and Baby Nathan