Last Wednesday the 26th of March, I woke up in the morning thinking
that I had just had the worst night of sleep of my life! Nothing
exciting happened, just couldn’t get any good sleep for the life of
me. I had been in to see the nurse practitioner the day before for my
38 week, really 37 week 5 day appointment and everything seemed good.
She gave me “a prescription” to eat ice cream every day because my
weight gain was on the lower end of the spectrum, 22 pounds and I am
average weight to begin with. She didn’t do an internal because I
told her it didn’t really give us an indication of anything, she
agreed but made a comment that most women like to know where they are
at. I said not me, this baby will decide when it is done baking!
Back to Wednesday, about 8:15 am I was playing with my 22 month old
son on his climber toy with slide wearing my bath robe, when I bent
over to catch him come down the slide and “gush” my water broke and a
puddle was forming at my feet. Funny side note, we are in the midst
of potty training and my son has accidents on the floor here and
there. When my water broke, he looked at me, looked down at the floor
and looked back at me and said, “Mommy peeing!”
I hadn’t been having any pressure waves yet, same thing that happened
with my son, so I was kind of in denial that my water had just broke.
My husband was getting ready to head out the door for track practice,
he is a high school teacher that was on spring break and coaches track
as well. I go upstairs and tell him either I just peed on the floor
or my water just broke. He looks at me stunned and doesn’t really
know what to do. I tell him to go ahead and go to practice, since
there were 50 kids there and he was supposed to be the only coach
there that day. He seemed worried and I tell him I’ll call my mom to
come over with me while he is gone, just in case.
I call my mom and she is shocked since I am not even 38 weeks yet.
She says she’ll head right over. I return to my normal morning
activities of getting breakfast for my son, doing some laundry and
other stuff around the house. My mom shows up and comments on how
calm our house is for being in labor. Then the phone starts to ring,
everyone knows that we are having a baby soon, my husband apparently
called everyone known to us to let them know. Pressure waves finally
start at about 9:30 am but nothing strong at all. I actually think I
had been having waves before this, but didn’t recognize them because I
was so relaxed.
My husband gets home and remembers that he has an appointment with a
man at our house at 11 am. I tell him to go ahead and I’ll get ready
to go to the hospital. I hop in the shower and call the hospital, the
nurse I speak to is upset with me because it is now about 11:30 am and
my water broke a whopping 3 hours earlier and I “need to get to the
hospital soon”. I tell her that we will get there as soon as we can.
We get everything squared away at home and head out to the hospital
around 12:30 or so.
On the way to the hospital I start to listen to easy first stage. I
listen for about 10 minutes and decide that I don’t need this yet, I
can be completely comfortable without going into hypnosis. I’m going
to save this for when I think I really need it. We get to the
hospital and I give the nurse my birth wishes. She takes them with
her and comes back to ask the general admittance questions. She is
great about my requests to not use certain words or ask me to rate my
p***. She doesn’t do an internal check because I ask to limit
internals to as few as possible. She hooks me up to the monitor for
15 minutes and baby and mom are looking great, so she lets me off. At
this point I am having pressure waves every 3-5 minutes lasting about
1 minute each. The doctors and nurses pretty much leave me alone,
except to put me on the monitor every hour or so to make sure
everything is going okay.
At about 7:20 pm, I still am having waves about every 2-3 minutes, the
nurses and doctor comment on how well I am handling them. The doctor
comes in and says that she would like to check me, since we are
approaching the “12 hour mark” since my water had broken. I say no
problem and get the results that I am 4 cm dialated and 50% effaced,
not as far along as I had hoped, but I am still happy that I am almost
halfway there. At this point, the doctor gives me 2 options, start
Pitocin right away or wait 2 hours, recheck and re-evaluate. I say
give me 2 hours and she does. I continue to have pressure waves, most
of which are registering off the chart when I am hooked up to the
monitor every 2 minutes or so. I spend most of these 2 hours up
walking and on a birthing ball trying to have gravity help my body
progress so that I can avoid any interventions.
9:30 pm rolls around and the doctor rechecks me, 4 cm and still 50%
effaced. I feel a little disappointment because my pressure waves
were getting pretty intense, but I hadn’t made any progress. The
doctor asks if we can start Pitocin, I say that is fine, thinking
hopefully this will help me get closer to meeting my baby quicker.
The nurse goes to get the supplies for the Pitocin, they have to start
an IV because they haven’t done one yet and get me hooked up to
fluids. All this is done by 9:45 pm and she hooks me up to Pitocin then.
My husband decides to go for a walk and leave me alone with my mom for
a little break for himself. I say no big deal, we’ve still got a
while to go.
After a whole 2 minutes of Pitocin, I tell the nurse I’d like to go to
the bathroom and that I’m feeling “a little pushy”. I get unhooked
from the monitor and get to the bathroom. I start feeling to most
intense sensations I’ve ever felt in my body, no p*** just extremely
intense pressure waves that aren’t giving me a break in between. My
mom comes into the bathroom, looks at me and realizes that this baby
is coming soon. She goes into the waiting room and tells my dad to
get a hold of my husband now! She comes back in and sits in the
bathroom with me realizing that I am in transition. The nurse comes
in and says she needs to check me now, she says to my Mom I think she
is ready to go. I tell her to give me a second to get more
comfortable and a couple of minutes go by. My husband shows up, eyes
bigger than I have ever seen them and helps support me while I get
checked. It is now 9:55 pm and I am 10 cm dialated and ready to go.
6 cm in 25 minutes, all I can say is wow, the most intense 25 minutes
in my entire life! The nurse asks me not to have the baby on the
toilet, I tell her that there are no guarantees. I get a break from
my pressure waves and make a quick dash for the bed, the nurse and my
husband trailing closely behind with my IV bags in tow.
I am now on the bed kneeling backwards over the raised back and the
nurse says, wow that was quick, it wasn’t the Pitocin, it was all you.
She calls the doctor and begins to support my perineum and makes a
comment that she may be delivering this baby. I turn over to my side
and start exhale pushing, no one counting or coaching me. I am now
thinking wow this feels great, I’m going to see my baby soon. Doctor
shows up and baby is already crowning, no “ring of fire”, I am not
even uncomfortable at this point. I push baby out in 3 pushes, no
tearing or p*** at all. We realize we just had a baby girl and are so
excited. I look at my husband who has a stunned look on his face and
say, “That didn’t even hurt! I just had a baby with no p***!” Reese
came 2 weeks early weighing 6 lbs. 1 oz. and 19″ long.
I didn’t really use all of my Hypnobabies tools like I had been
planning on using them during this birth, but didn’t need to because I
was completely comfortable the entire time, except those intense 25
minutes from 4 to 10 cm. I have to say that all of the practice I did
for the weeks before this birth helped me immensely. I was completely
calm and relaxed during the entire 14 hour labor. I read all of these
stories on this group about p***less birth and thought that must be
nice, I am just hoping to be able to develop some tools to help me
cope. I ended up with a p*** free amazing hospital birth, more than I
could have ever asked for. It is a store I have been sharing with
anyone who will listen. Your mind and Hypnobabies are amazing tools!