Oliver was born on the 2nd of Jan using Hypnobabies and no medication in a hospital setting!
It was an extremely wonderful and empowering experience and very fast. I started having pressure waves at 5:30am and he was born at 6:30pm with my husband and a midwife that I had never met before in an Italian hospital!!!
The whole morning I knew that I was having some discomfort but I never thought that we were going to have the baby that same day! We kept track and I just said that I wanted to stay at home as long as I could so when they were about 2-3 minutes apart we decided to head to the hospital.
We arrived at the hospital at 3:30pm and like many hypno moms the nurses had to ask why we were there because I was so calm. Whenever the pressure wave would begin I would just turn towards my husband and lean into him until it passed. The nurses hooked us up to a external heart monitor and left us. Finally they came in and checked me and were amazed that I was at 6cm. They had me go into a room with another couple of people (in Italy there are 4 beds in a room!) and I was not sure if I was going to have to continue going through pressure waves with other people.
Finally around 4:30 a midwife came in and escorted us to the delivery room. She complimented me on how calm I was and within minutes of her saying that, the pressure waves became closer and more intense. She encouraged me to use any position that felt comfortable so I went from standing/leaning into my husband/ squatting/kneeling on all 4’s, and they even had this cool toilet seat type thing that I ended up using during the pushing phase.
I really surprised myself because I am generally a very quiet person and I ended up being very verbal using my voice to help push the baby out. After an hour of pushing, Oliver was born while I sat on the “toilet seat” and my husband supported me from behind!!! I have to say that I have no idea how anyone has had a baby while lying on their back!!!
I was able to use the strategies from Hypnobabies during the beginning but never actually listened to the cd’s during the birthing time because it just went so fast and I had to use all my concentration to work with the pressure waves. Next time I will definitely have a hypno doula there to assist but I have to say that it was a very positive first birthing experience and I would definitely recommend Hypnobabies to EVERYONE!!!