Birth Story:
Tania BOGREN
I was pretty intimidated by the idea of birth before I had my daughter in February 2014. My exposure to pregnancy and labour had been limited to films and "one born every minute" where you generally just see people in pain, shouting! Also I had heard a lot from other Mums (and never anything good). In fact, the only two positive stories I heard, were from colleagues who both told me they'd used Hypnobirthing. I'd never heard of it before then and thought it sounded a little hippy-ish.
But their stories made a
big impact and because
of them and due to my
concerns, I opted to do a
Hypnobirthing course
alongside NCT classes.
Without a doubt I feel it
was this preparation,
which gave me the birth I
ended up having. I had a
natural birth & it was the
most incredible - and
crazy - experience. My
contractions came out of
nowhere. It was like going
from a standing start to
300 miles an hour within
minutes! It was unexpected
and without the preparation I definitely would have felt out of control and probably opted for lots of intervention.
Everyone told me, that first babies are always late and labour takes forever. She was born 8 days early and my labour was 6 hours from start to finish! On the morning of the day she was born, I had a feeling that she was going to arrive. My husband thought it was wishful thinking! But as I got out of bed at 7.30am, my waters broke. I'd heard that waters very rarely break first, so I was a bit surprised. In fact my husband actually suggested I might have wet myself, which wasn't appreciated... I'd no contractions or other signs, so I called St Peters & they said to wait an hour and ring back. I'd just about had time to eat something (which didn't stay down long!) when I started getting strong contractions at 8.30am, about 3 to 4 minutes apart. It was quite a surprise as I was expecting contractions to build up gradually like they teach you, especially as it was my first baby, but they were really intense from the first moment. I used the visualisations and breathing techniques I'd been practicing from that point until the
moment the baby
appeared. I used a
TENs machine as well
and also put some
hypnobirthing tracks on
my iPod, specifically
designed to accompany
labour, which I found
fantastic for staying
calm and focussed. I
rang the hospital again
to advise them I was
contracting every 2-3
mins for up to 90 secs
and was politely told I
"didn't sound too bad"
and was still "very early"
so was told to wait at least another hour before coming in. Apparently it's common for Hypnobirthing mothers to be underestimated in terms of their progression. I had a feeling it was time to go to hospital, but we anyway had to wait for a different reason - we were awaiting a plumber! We'd had no central heating for five days & they were booked to finally install our new boiler that day! On top of that, all the roads around Staines were closed that day due to the significant flooding that year, so we had to find a new route to the hospital! Not the most relaxed situation...
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