Sarah's Birth
I can't believe I finally get to post MY birth experience!!
I was eleven days past my EDD and although I knew that the baby and I were
okay, I was
getting alot of worried phone calls from family and friends. I had been
having
contractions Friday afternoon, but went to bed with them getting less frequent
and weaker
all the time, so I was sure I was going to wake up in the morning still
pregnant as usual.
But, at 1:20 am I felt the first very strong, unmistakable pressure wave!
Yeay!! I waited for
two more of them before waking up my husband to let him know. We planned a
home
birth, so my husband started the process of filling the tub and calling our
midwife. I
turned on Hypnobabies birthing affirmations and rested in an all-fours
position because I
could tell the baby was still in a posterior position. For some reason all my
babies has
presented that way. For an unmedicated, at-home birth I really didn't want
this one to
come that way!!
My husband came in the room and told me that our midwife was in another city
an hour
away at a birth and he couldn't even reach her. So, he called her back-up
midwife while I
got in the tub thinking that MAY slow things down. It didn't, and the back-up
midwife was
home alone with her three kids and needed to find a babysitter before she
could come.
Ok, well, I'm glad we attended the "what to do if your midwife doesn't make
it, don't worry
she will" class.
By this point I couldn't listen to the CD anymore. I just had to go with
concentrating on
relaxing with "down and out." It was unbelievable how much that helped! I
noticed when I
didn't concentrate on that, I tensed up the pelvic floor and it hurt ALOT
more. "Breathing
the baby down" also made sense to me for the first time while I was having
contractions.
Your breathing muscles really can gently work with a contraction pushing the
baby down.
I found that my husband pinching the spot between mt thumb and pointer finger
helped
make it impossible to try and reach and grab anything. I just had to relax,
so that was a
perfect cue. I was on my knees in the tub doing that with my husband sitting
on a chair in
front of me until I pushed her out with two pushes two hours after labor
started and five
minutes after the midwife arrived. it was a perfect hypnobirth. I am so
grateful to have
had that resource to make my daughters birth so special!