26 Mar Hypnobirthing Success Story – Talis’ Birth
Hypnobirthing Success Story – Talis’ Birth
Kate Bergamasco of My Private Midwife teaches Hypnobirthing Classes at Clarity on Sunday evenings.
In today’s blog, she shares the story of a family that she helped through their first birth. When Kate first mentioned hypnobirthing, they jumped on board with enthusiasm and commitment, learning that birth didn’t need to be as frightening as they had been told.
Chrissy has kindly written her lovely empowering story…
“After hypno birthing my daughter Amelia in September 2015, I couldn’t help but feel that I could “do better” and so I was looking forward to our next daughter being born! I started my hypno birthing practice early in my second pregnancy and was able to go deeper into hypnosis quicker each time I practiced. This proved useful for me as I was diagnosed with irritable uterus at 27 weeks. I was having regular and painful tightenings, sometimes lasting for over a minute and up to every 3-5 minutes for hours at a time! It was exhausting! I was medicated to help reduce the amount of tightenings I was experiencing and found that this helped – but my hypno practice still got a good work out.
We did a one on one refresher during pregnancy, mainly to focus on fear release. I felt so lucky to have had such a great birth the first time around and needed to work through my fear that this next Labour and birth might be different. I did further fear release scripts with my husband in the days before our daughter was born after spending the previous few days dealing with my husband and toddler having gastro!! The Wednesday prior to my scheduled induction on the following monday, they both came down with vomiting and diarrhea which lasted until Saturday. It was like a bad dream! I couldn’t believe it was happening as I changed my daughters sheets through the night, covered in spew! I knew I needed to get back in tune with my body and my baby and release all the tension so that I could Labour and birth effectively come Monday.
As with my last pregnancy, I was induced at 38 weeks. My waters were broken and my tightenings became stronger and closer together. Within a couple of hours, I was well and truly in active and established Labour, no induction medications required. I was able to breathe my way through all my contractions and simply go within myself to manage them. I felt like I couldn’t possibly be in active Labour yet because of how well I was managing and because it felt like they were only lasting about 10 seconds – they were actually lasting 1-2 minutes but I was so relaxed and deep in my hypnosis for each contraction that the time felt different! In between contractions I still vividly recall cracking jokes and chatting with my husband and student midwife. I was able to go into my hypnosis so easily for each contraction and simply breathe through them. I was so proud of myself.
I was examined at 1:30pm and the midwife said I was 5cm dilated which frustrated me because when I was admitted at 7am, I was already 4cm! I was disappointed that I hadn’t progressed further. I wished I hadn’t heard her say the number. But I realized then that this was the time I needed to go back to my hypno techniques because if my cognitive brain got in the way, I could find myself with a Labour that stopped progressing. So I got back in sync with my husband, we snuggled up and whispered to each other, and we went back into our hypno scripts and I really focused on breathing my little girl down. It wasn’t long before I knew that she was close, and I instinctively moved into a squatting position on the floor where I knew my girl would be born. My student midwife sensed my change and very quickly got ready to deliver my baby.
Well, it worked – 15 minutes after being examined at 5cm, my baby girl was born! Tali Rae Michaela arrived at 1:45pm after just 2 hours of active Labour, weighing 4.08kg, and 51cm long. My husband just kept telling me “you did it! You did amazing. I’m so proud of you!”. It felt so wonderful. Poor Tali came out a bit shell shocked and needed a little bit of oxygen to get her started. She was alert and crying, just shocked from her speedy entrance into the world. Our obstetrician missed her birth – just as he missed Amelia’s quick birth 2 years ago! But, it’s just like they say – medical professionals like the OB should just be like life guards standing back watching it happen. The OB not being there for both births meant that they both went smoothly! And quickly!
Our first family selfies are time stamped at 2:05pm and after a rough pregnancy (irritable uterus, iron infusion, low blood pressure, reflux, pelvic pain and instability), I truly look and feel better in these photos than I had in the previous 38 weeks! Everybody kept commenting on how amazing I looked and I truly credit this to our hypnobirthing training. Working with my body and trusting it to birth my girls left me looking and feeling fantastic.
I hope my positive birth story can help change the landscape of horror stories that people are so quick to share with newly pregnant mums. If you do one class or research during pregnancy, make it hypnobirthing. You will not regret it. My husband and I have been using the knowledge and techniques for the last 2 and a half years and we tell everyone we know about how beneficial the learning has been for us. We couldn’t love this little hypno bub any more if we tried (and her big hypno-sister!).
Thank you Kate for helping us achieve the most amazing births of our girls xxx”
