Jonah's Birth Story
My partner Riley and I took the 5 week hypnobirthing class privately with Amanda, this class was extremely helpful for both Riley and I. My contractions (surges in hypnobirthing terms) started November 14th around 11 pm. I started timing them with my app, the surges were consistently about 8 minutes apart and were picking up enough that I really had to work through them. My midwives had told me if I was ever unsure if I was in labour or not to take a hot shower and if they still continued after, that it was most likely early labour. So after getting out of the shower I decided it was time to wake up Riley which was at about 1 am. I was planning to have my baby at my Mums house so we got our stuff together and headed over there. I was still unsure if I was experiencing real labour so I continued timing my surges waiting until I got to the “5-1-1” mark (contractions 5 minutes apart lasting 1 minute, for atleast one hour) at 3 am my surges were 7 minutes apart lasting 2 minutes and they were quite intense so we called my midwife to see if she would come and check how dilated I was. Being a first time mum they didn’t think I was that far along yet and thought I still had a long time to wait so they told me to just try to rest and call again when my contractions were 5 minutes apart.
This was when things got very intense very fast, between 3 am and 4 am my surges went from being 7 minutes apart to being 2 minutes apart. The midwives had still not arrived and I was starting to get to that point in labour where I wanted to go to the hospital to be checked and “get the damn epidural” looking back on this I realize that I was most likely in transition as this was something Amanda had told us about. The midwives finally got to my house around 4:30 am, when they checked me I was already fully dilated.
In Hypnobirthing they teach us not to push but more importantly they teach us to listen to our bodies and pushing was just what felt right so I started giving little pushes whenever i felt like I needed to. When Amanda says Hypnobirthing Mums usually progress much faster she isn’t kidding! My labour progressed so quickly that we didn’t even have time to prepare the birthing pool we had planned for and I didn’t have time to listen to my relaxation recordings but my partner Riley reminded me to use the breathing techniques to breath through the surges and it really helped to keep me calm.
Throughout my pregnancy and while taking the hypnobirthing class the positive affirmation that really resonated with me was “I feel confident, I feel safe, I feel secure” so with each surge I repeated this to myself and reminded myself that my body was designed perfectly to do this and that each surge was bringing me closer to meeting my baby. Jonah was born at 5:48 am, my midwife passed my baby between my legs and into my arms and through tears of joy I saw my beautiful baby boy starring back at me, in that moment I felt so much love and happiness and most importantly I felt extremely proud of myself.
I had no tearing thanks to the perineal massage Amanda had encouraged me to do and I successfully birthed my baby in the comfort of my own home without the use of an epidural, laughing gas, or any other pain relief options other than strictly the hypnobirthing techniques and the help of my partner Riley, my amazing mother, and our midwives. The only thing that could have made my labour better was if I had known how far along I was, if I had known I was in transition and already going through the most uncomfortable part of labour I could have been reassured that this meant I was about to meet my baby and that I didn’t have long left, because I had not been checked I thought I had hours of labour to go and that made me loose a bit of confidence in myself, with all things considered I had an amazing labour and I will definitely practice hypnobirthing again with my next pregnancy and labour. Although I pushed my baby rather than breathing him down and although I can’t say I had a completely pain free labour I can say that my labour would not have gone as well as it did and my partner would not have known how to help me had we not taken the hypnobirthing classes. Because of these classes I was not fearful of labour, I was just excited for the day to come when I could meet my baby, and not having that fear in the back of my head made all the difference.
While writing this I have a beautiful healthy boy laying in my arms, everyone always comments on how content and calm Jonah is, Amanda had told us that usually hypno
babies have these characteristics. I feel lucky to have such a happy baby and to have had such a great labour experience thanks to hypnobirthing, I would recommend these classes to anyone who is considering the use of hypnobirthing for their labour. Labour truly can be an amazing and beautiful experience if you open up your mind and allow it to be.
