Donovan’s Birth
My pressure waves started early Thursday morning, June 12th (not sure
what time as I didn’t look at the clock when they woke me up) but I
finally got up after one woke me up at 6:40am. I had another one 10
min later so I decided to try and time them. Starting at 7am I
started timing them and I had 4 in a row at just under 10 min apart.
They stayed between 10 – 20 min apart for most of the day. I started
listening to my Hypnobabies script Easy Stage One on repeat.
Between 5 – 6pm they started to get more intense and they seemed more
frequent. I asked my husband to time them for me and they were coming
about 6 – 7 min apart and lasting about 30 – 45 sec. I continued to
breathe through them and listen to my Hypnobabies scripts the entire
time. I alternated between Comfortable Childbirth and Easy Stage One.
At about 9pm when the pressure waves were about 4-5 min apart for an
hour I asked my husband to call my mom to have her come down (she
lives down the street from me). When the pressure waves were
consistently 3-4 min apart and lasting close to a minute we decided
to head to the hospital. I took a 15 min shower first while my mom
hovered over me and my husband got everything out to the car.
We arrived at the hospital at 9:30pm on Thursday, June 12th. I was
taken to a triage room and put on the fetal monitor, my vitals were
taken, and a cervical exam showed I was 6-7 cm dilated. The triage
nurse was surprised at this because she said I was doing so well.
A different doctor was on-call for my OB’s group so they called him
to get labor orders (I also knew this doctor very well and was quite
happy that he was on-call). The triage nurse told me that I was being
moved to a L&D room and they would keep the monitor straps on me and
hook me up when I got to my room. I asked her if I could have
intermittent monitoring so that I could walk around if I wanted to
and she said she would call the doctor to ask. The doctor insisted on
continuous fetal monitoring, but I wasn’t required to stay in bed, I
just couldn’t go past the wire length.
I was then taken to my L&D room and introduced to my nurse. I was GBS
positive so I already knew that I had to have antibiotics but I had
requested a hep lock only so another nurse came in to put the hep
lock in. I had to have two bags of antibiotics and was able to move
around at the bedside while this was being dripped. During this time
I was sitting on the glider in the room and was listening to my
scripts. My husband and mom were with me and were awesome in helping
me stay relaxed and reminding me to take sips of water to stay
hydrated. As soon as my antibiotic was done I was disconnected from
the IV.
My husband gave my nurse my birth plan and to my surprise she read it
very thoroughly and clarified a few things with me. He also gave her
the brownies I had made and she was surprised at this and said no one
has ever given them anything like that before. She seemed very
appreciative of that.
I continued breathing and relaxing through my pressure waves and when
they started getting much more intense I found that standing leaning
against the counter and swaying my hips back and forth really helped
me through them. I felt better able to relax my birthing muscles with
my abdomen kind of “hanging” out in front of me.
At 11:45pm I was standing at the counter in the room when I had a
pressure wave and along with it a huge urge to push and I did push
some and had a big gush of fluid. I told my husband and my mom and
said to get the nurse because I felt like I had to push. My husband
said that my triage nurse who first checked me when I arrived at the
hospital overheard him tell my nurse this and he said she whispered
to another nurse, “that was fast.” My nurse came in and had me get in
bed to check me. I had another pressure wave with an urge to push,
and I did, and had another gush of fluid. She said I was about 9 cm
dilated and they were calling Dr. Wiseman and I should not push until
the last lip of my cervix was out of the way. The most difficult part
for me was having pushing pressure waves with that incredibly strong
urge to push and being told not to.
This was the point that I lost focus on relaxing because it was so
difficult to not push. My husband and mom jumped in to help talk me
through trying to relax and not push so I would dilate that last bit.
The nurse wanted to check me again during a pressure wave to see if I
dilated. She checked me and I did dilate to 10cm and was given the go
ahead to push. The doctor was still not there yet. I tried to push in-
between pressure waves to help stretch my perineum without the force
of a pressure wave behind it and I did fairly well with this. I used
the “breathing baby down” technique of pushing and was very vocal
with the use of “ahhhh” to get through this part.
My nurse was getting very nervous because she said she could see hair
and the doctor was still not there. Another nurse in the room assured
her that he would be there any second. He came in shortly after that
and they got everything ready and wanted me to turn onto my back and
put my feet in stirrups but I was more comfortable lying on my side
with my leg up so I stayed in that position. My husband and another
nurse were holding my top leg up while I pushed. The doctor was
wonderful at helping to guide my pushing so that I wouldn’t tear. The
pushing part actually felt wonderful and not at all uncomfortable.
When he was crowning I felt very, very tight and stretched but I
wouldn’t call it painful. This was very interesting to me since my
biggest fear that I had was the pain of crowning and of tearing.
I started pushing at about 11:55pm and my beautiful Hypnobaby was
born at 12:15am on Friday, June 13th. He was 8 lbs. 4 oz. and 20 in.
long. My husband didn’t want to cut the cord (he’s always a little
queasy around blood and stuff and was holding himself together pretty
well for what he saw), but the doctor kind of pushed the scissors
into his hands and said, “come on daddy” and showed him where to cut
and he did. A few more pushes and my placenta came out and was
intact. I did end up having a small tear that the doctor was debating
about even stitching but he did do one stitch as a precaution because
it was bleeding a bit.
The only drugs I had for this birth were the 2 bags of antibiotics
when I first arrived at the hospital and 2 Tylenol tablets after I
was in post-partum to help with some soreness. I refused the routine
Pitocin that is given after delivery because when I asked if there
was a reason I needed it the nurse didn’t have one and she said that
I was fine. Total time from active birthing time to delivery was
about 6-7 hours and this is my first baby. Total pushing time was
about 20 minutes.
This birth was such a wonderful, intense and incredible experience
and I am so thankful to the Hypnobabies program for allowing me and
my husband to have a birthing experience the way God intended for
women to have.
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