I wanted to take a moment to quickly share some notes on my Hypnobirth experience. My labour in total went for 30 hours. The reason that it was a long labour was due to the position of my sons head in my pelvis acting like a plug, preventing my membranes from releasing, or allowing me to dilate.
I went to the hospital after the first 7 hours when my surges were only 3 minutes apart, we were very disappointed upon an examination to hear that i was not dilating. Due to the confidence and knowledge i had from going to your classes we decided to head home and let things progress.
We persevered for another 7 hours, and headed in again. I had now dilated only 2 cm, however the lining had thinned. They decided to keep me at the hospital. If it wasn’t for the breathing techniques I learnt I would not have been able to endure these long hours, it really helped me get through each surge. I had some very lovely midwives during this time, however, we had one difficult midwife who thought my waters had broken, but I was quite sure that they hadn’t. She suggested that we go onto the drip to “move things along”, completely disregarding our birth plan, it was at this time that our knowledge from the classes was required, my husband reminded her that we did not want any drugs or inductions and we would not be interested in any further ‘suggestions’.
Thankfully we had a very supportive obstetrician who respected our wishes and allowed me to continue birthing. However, after more hours, he did an examination and saw that the membranes had still NOT released and suggested he break the membranes to allow the baby to move down further as I was starting to become tired, we did another hour on the fit ball to see if the babies head might move and then decided to allow the obstetrician to release them. As soon as the membranes released everything moved into place and not long after our beautiful, alert, happy, boy was born, in a matter of about only “8 birth breaths”.
For us knowledge was power and if we hadn’t educated ourselves with the Hypnobirth classes and book I could have ended up with a drip induction, vacuum extraction or an unnecessary c-section. Although it was a long birth, it was still a very empowering experience for both of us, no horror stories here! The best part was when I had given birth I was still able to hop up, carry my baby, and walk back to my room. (In fact we got in trouble for taking our 6 hour old son to the cafe with us, we were on such a high).
Thank-you so much Melissa!
Annabelle and Paul, Numinbah Valley
