Thank you Erin for sharing your beautiful birth story with us, we loved reading it here at The Calm Birth School.
“I’m finally sharing Seamus John’s birth story and he’s almost 3 months old already!
Being well prepared with knowledge and my Calm Birth School techniques made all the difference. The hospital staff said it was a perfect textbook natural birth and kept commenting about how in control and calm I was throughout. One midwife I had been seeing for my appointments came to check on us the following day and said, “I heard you didn’t even need the midwife!”
At 39w2 days, I woke up with *a lot* of energy. (Enough to prompt me to Google ‘feel like working out a ton before labour?’) After a nice breakfast and more compulsive cleaning, I did strength training, yoga, and some low impact cardio kickboxing. Then I took a nice soak in the tub, went back to cleaning…. Around 12:30, I was squatting down in the yard finishing washing the windows when I felt a tiny pop, and suddenly I was soaked like I peed my pants. It just kept coming. My partner’s mother had said when I cleaned the last thing, it would happen!
I contacted the midwife on call and tried to relax at home and wait for contractions. They were happening very frequently in clusters, but not strong. I had a very hard time timing them, and finally decided they were constant enough to go in around dinner time.
Around 8:00pm, I think, contractions started getting more intense and I got into the labouring tub. Colin was very supportive, but I just wanted to focus on my own, so he read a book and kept my birth affirmations playing on repeat. A great nurse cared for us most of the time, and until I got into transitioning, they pretty much let us be as I had asked, other than the nurse coming to check the baby’s heartbeat every hour (the belly strap monitor was distracting and really irritated me). I was able to use my breathing to relax easily through contractions until I was transitioning and I threw up a little. Shortly after that, I wanted to get dry, so I got out of the tub and moved to the bed, where contractions got very intense and seemed to last longer. That was the only part when I would have used the word ‘pain’ and my breathing started to go out the window, but luckily that part seemed brief.
I started feeling like pushing and they tried to have me wait for a half hour, but I quickly asked again and the midwife returned. This was the hardest part for me and the only time that I started to stress a little bit, not because it was painful (really just uncomfortable pressure), but it was harder to cope with because I did not feel like I had enough energy to push and I didn’t feel like anything was happening. (Also, while I had done well at blocking out negative birth stories, I had positive ones in my head of my mom and aunt telling me that contractions were tough, but pushing was quick and easy, which set me up after I had coped easily with contractions.)
The midwife suggested I sit on the toilet after a while. I felt like all the pressure was in the back. Colin came in to the bathroom, but I asked him to leave because I was afraid I would poo (I didn’t, just a very tiny bit I could deal with in there on my own!). Finally, I remembered something I’d read, and I straddled the toilet backwards and hung a bit from the pipes behind it. I started to feel the pressure in the front, finally a stretching sensation, and reached down and thought I felt his head! I waddled from the bathroom to the bed and told them he was coming. I squatted back on the bed holding the elevated headpiece. When his head started coming, they had me turn and lay back, and there he was! A couple more hard pushes and his shoulders were out! They put him on me, waited for the cord to stop pulsing and Colin cut it. The placenta came quickly and easily within ten minutes or so (They said it was a beauty and the cord was impressively thick, I felt a strange sense of pride).
Shae was born calm and alert at 4:17AM on March 13th, 6lb15oz, about 15 hours after my water broke (It was daylight savings). He cried a little as they towelled him off and then got to know us peacefully. I swear he had this little serene smile right away. They let us relax for a couple hours, then examined him and transferred us from the birthing room to our room.
I had only a superficial tear on the labia and didn’t need any stitches! Thank you, perianal massage!
I cannot say enough good words about Calm Birth School! Birth was challenging, the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, but also peaceful, loving, and empowering. I couldn’t have asked for a better birth. The nurse said she had never seen such control during labour and she and the midwife told the rest of the staff. Colin proudly tells everyone that I was “a specimen”, an Amazon, or that I could’ve been squatting down under a tree, and how the staff raved. My initial recovery was easy and adjusting during this “fourth trimester”, well, has been about as challenging as the birth, but also all the while feeling how much I will miss it already and loving every second.”
To see how you can create your own calm birth please sign up here: www.thecalmbirthschool.com/freehypnobirthing-2016
