Diana and Erik #2

Katherine’s Birth.

Sunday 9th March – I was fed up. I was in pain and was soooo tired of being pregnant. Although I was still 3 weeks early, I was ready to have this baby. My hips hurt, I waddled and was in pain trying to lie down. I had been sleeping propped up on the living room floor for several weeks.

Well Erik did a fear release session with me and practice our HypnoBirthing one more time. Not much later, my surges started becoming more regular and frequent. Erik went to sleep and I stayed up counting and watching Ann of Green Gables. They had been at 5 minutes apart from 11 till 2 and so I woke up Erik and we called Grandma. “Hi Grandma, do you have any eggs I can borrow?”

“I only have a few, I knew Scott should have gotten some more. Are you serious?”

I busted up laughing and pretty soon she was totally awake. She came over and we took off for the hospital. The surges were frequent but pretty mild. We got checked in (I was dilated to a 5) and I was so tired and so went to sleep for an hour or so. Around 5:30 my midwife Nancie Mooy came and checked me. I was starving so they got me some breakfast – toast, yoghurt and fruit. “You are the only woman I’ve ever seen want breakfast while she is in labor,”  Nancie said. Around 9:00 we decided to break my water. The surges were easing up and we had been walking the halls (I was at a 7 but it seemed to be stalling like last time). Nancie assured me that she would not give me pitocin, I could hang out in the hospital for as long as I wanted. So she broke my water and I walked around the room, stopping during a surge. Then I would sit down during the surge and then I stopped walking as the surges increased in intensity. Pretty soon I was laying down. I kept asking Nancie to check the baby’s position – Katie kept moving around. So I would reposition so that she would be positioned correctly to be born. We found a good position with me laying on my right side. After a little while I stopped coming out of my hypnosis, with Erik sat by me just constantly going through our scripts and giving me affirmations. He did a wonderful job.

At one point Nancie had to leave for a little bit and a new lady a doula came in. There we were – me laying there not making a sound or any external change and Erik talking quietly to me. She came bustling in jabbering away about who knows what. I quickly tuned her out and went back to my focusing. Then she started messing with the monitors around my belly – it broke my concentration and made me start to tense up – so I swatted her hand away. Erik realized what was going on and asked her to stop. I then had a hard time relaxing again during that strong surge. It was kind of cool that they couldn’t tell when I was having a surge. As my surges got really intense, I threw up and fainted ME “where am I? ”

ERIK “You’re at the hospital – how could you forget that?” But even after that I was able to get back to my deep relaxation.

It was hard work. At one point I remember thinking “an epidural would have been so much easier. I had better never have a baby without HypnoBirthing. ”Nancie asked me if I felt the urge to bear down. I ignored her since it was too much effort to respond. And then I could feel Katie moving through my cervix and I said “the baby’s coming. They got the room ready and I raised my leg. Erik supported me and I pushed through two surges (I was too anxious and just wanted it over). Katie was born. I watched Nancie catch her and lay her on the bed. The umbilical cord was really short, so Erik cut it before they put her on my tummy. She was so perfect.

The birth was everything I had hoped for. Nancie was amazing- she just let us do our thing, but was there for support and to offer suggestions that really helped (like the positioning etc.) She was great – she believed in me and eliminated ‘pain’ from her vocabulary even though that was hard for her. Katherine was beautiful. I was so grateful that she was healthy and strong. We can’t tell what color her hair is. Sometimes it looks brown, sometimes blonde and other times it looks red. I guess we’ll see.