Getting my VBAC was very dramatic until the actual birth. Click here to read her birth story!
The actual birth was very simple, easy and almost completely painless. It was very manageable and I never doubted I could do it during my birthing time thanks to my preparations and Hypnobabies.
My story is a great example of the points you make in the Top Three Tips to Enjoy Birth Book:
- I followed my intuition
- I traveled half way around the world
- I drove two hours for a supportive care provider
- I used my Hypnobabies to prepare and chose to use it during the birth.
- I am so glad I didn’t settle for a repeat cesarean.
When I was pregnant in Korea, there were very few options, especially since I do not speak Korean. In the process of researching and planning for my VBAC, I decided to birth back in the US, but I continued to research and expand my contacts and have formed a small, but vibrant natural birth community here. There is a HypnoBirthing instructor here teaching classes and several others in the area who attended the HypnoBirthing Teacher Training, but not Hypnobabies.
I have decided to become a Hypnobabies instructor myself, but since they are not doing teacher training this year, I will have to wait. I am going to try to do the hypnosis home study pre-requisite this year so I can be ready for the training next year. I have been helping women have better births over here through my blog by connecting them with the right people and resources, but I want to do more by teaching classes.
Anyway, onto the e-book: it is awesome! I am in the process of course development for childbirth education/birthing preparation classes and your book and videos really get to the point of what I try to convey to moms-to-be.
I think the three tips are an excellent way to get women to think about the kind of experience they want and then make choices to support it. It is a great starting point and I think the stories that illustrate the points are very powerful.
I think that sometimes women feel overwhelmed and do not know where to start when researching the options, but giving women some basic points to think about and areas to explore will help tremendously.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I took a 3-session hospital-based childbirth education class and a 6-session doula-taught childbirth education class. I had a scheduled c-section for breech so I wasn’t able to test how they would have carried me through the birthing process, but I got the sense that childbirth education classes, no matter how thorough, give you enough information to HAVE a birth philosophy, MAKE birth choices, and WRITE a birth plan, but not enough skills and tools to EXECUTE a birth plan. Also, a lot of the information that you get in childbirth ed on things like nutrition and OFP, you get too late to be useful because most people take the classes late in pregnancy.
So for my VBAC, I did the Hypnobabies Home Study. I practiced it and it worked. I did not breathe the baby out, but the persistent breech issue distracted me towards the end and I lost focus a bit in my preparations, but it was still an amazing experience.
