On June 12 ( 11 days after our guess date) I finally woke at 4 am to consistent back pain and pelvic pain that came and went for 4 hours. Being in only early stages Matt and I decided to continue our plans for the day and did some landscaping Then had tea at my parents. This slowed things down and it wasn’t till 9 pm that evening that things started up again and came on very intensely. Within an hour I was having 60 second surges 2 and a half minutes apart. We made our way to the hospital by 11 and were told that although it was intense I hadn’t progressed far and they sent us upstairs to continue our hypnoBirthing.

At 2 o’clock with surges only 30 seconds apart we were allowed to go the birthing suite and I got in the bath. Here I stayed for 4 hours listening to the rainbow mist track over and over again and I felt so relaxed my surges actually synchronized with the track and each change of colour initiated a surge and relaxed me further. As I left the bath things were getting more intense and Matt was amazing, if I lost focus he held me and over emphasized his relaxation breathing for me to imitate. This relaxed me instantly. From doing light touch massage then pressure points he was amazing and the midwife said we should hire him out as a doula. At 8:30 am the OBGYN came in to introduce herself and check on my progress, my waters broke and this marked a huge change in our natural birth. There was maconium in my waters and they wanted to monitor bub to ensure this wasn’t caused by distress.

When monitoring they found that with every surge babies heart rate was dropping dramatically and we were told that if they didn’t perform an emergency Caesarian immediately that our babies life was at risk. We consented and at 9:10 Maddison Caley entered the world. The OBGYN explained that bub had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and that each surge was causing it to restrict and caused her heart rate to drop significantly. We were told that baby had also turned and I had been experiencing back labor for a significant part of my labour.

Although we didn’t get the beautiful natural hypno birth that we had worked so hard for we did get a beautiful healthy baby girl. We will certainly be using hypno birthing again and know that we made well informed decisions throughout this scary process using the BRAN technique to ensure we knew everything that was happening. Baby is incredibly strong, alert and calm. Our OBGYN sent away the cord blood to analyze how long bub had been in distress and this affirmed for us that the duration of the time we hypno birthed she was calm and relaxed despite her predicament.

As for me, I am extremely happy to have a beautiful healthy baby girl but after seeing my sister hypno birth and then myself having to have an emergency Cesar I find it so hard to believe that people would ever elect this over a natural birth if possible. I felt so useless not being able to attended to my baby in the first day or have that skin to skin I wanted as I was stuck on my back and couldn’t even see or comfort her properly. The many physical limitations i now have for weeks and months following the surgery is disheartening as well. We will certainly be using hypno birthing techniques to try for a natural birth of our next babies.

Teneale and Matt, Dulacca, Queensland