Ligia and Alex

I went completely natural up until I was about 6cm dilated.  I’d begun to dilate on a Wednesday evening but didn’t reach active labor until Friday night at which point I was finally admitted into the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.  My labor was progressing very slowly and was therefore very exhausting because I couldn’t really sleep for about three days straight.  The painful feeling I had been so fearful of was really nothing more than what I would describe as heavy cramping.  It felt like bad cramps more than anything else.  It was definitely tolerable, and had I given the hypnobirthing techniques a little more practice, I do believe it might have made the feeling almost non-existant.

I do wish I could have gone to a birthing center too because though the hospital was decent, they really didn’t help me in the way I would have liked them too, even after having given everyone a copy of my birth plan.  That’s also something I will definitely do next time.  Our insurance didn’t cover the cost of a birthing center for some reason, so that’s why we ended up in the hospital.  They made me lye down even though I really wanted to be on the ball because they said my baby heart beat was not happy with me on the ball.  It kept dipping whenever I got on the ball.

After a while, they offered me pitocin which I didn’t want, so the idea of rupturing my membranes came up to try and induce things naturally.  They said it would help me speed things along since it was going so slow and I was really starting to feel delerious.  At that point, I guess I gave in to it, thinking maybe I could get through it faster, and so I allowed them to rupture it and that’s when the surges came on very strong.  I did begin to dilate faster but the downfall was that the surges became really intense too quickly.  I think it had been tolerable up until this point because the intensity was slowly getting stronger.  So we went ahead with the epidural which was a nice instant relief but made my contractions slow down.  So they gave me pitocin to increase the contractions so that I could push.  Then I pushed for about 3 hours with no real progress.  The baby’s head was slightly tilted and wouldn’t get into the right position so we ended up getting him out with an episiotomy and forceps.

So, it wasn’t exactly the experience I’d hoped for, but for the first part of my labor, it did go very well, so I don’t feel like the whole experience was a failure.  I think that for my next baby, I will have a better understanding of what to expect and how to avoid the things I don’t want.  Though the hospital staff was very nice indeed, they did follow procedures a little too much and that was slightly disappointing.  Alex and I definitely want to save up for a birthing center and midwife the next time we go through this.

But in the end, what matters most is that he came into the world healthy and that he’s a sweet, joyful little piece of heaven in our lives.  His name is Orion Athen and he was born 9 lbs. 21″.  He’s the best thing that ever happened to us.  We’d love to have you use our story as inspiration but we won’t feel offended if you don’t.  We’re happy with the way things turned out and we know that everything happens for a reason.  My eyes were definitely opened with the HypnoBirthing class because prior to it, I was convinced that there was no way I was going to go through labor without an epidural.  I have a much better understanding for what natural really means and the fact that I would like to try it again, I believe, pretty much speaks for itself.

Ligia, Alex and Orion