Imogen's birth continued...

 

Like many people, when I fell pregnant with my daughter in 2010, I remembering thinking "I've heard of hypnobirthing...", but it didn't seem very pressing in the early weeks of pregnancy, so I forgot all about it. It wasn't until I had an email from a friend who'd learnt of my impending motherhood, and begged me to try it.

 

Having received the 'Mongan Method' textbook and CD, I put it away and thought no more of it. I packed it to take on holiday, but still didn't get around to it...until I got on the plane home. When I thought "come on, get on with it". I was 20 weeks pregnant, and within the first 15 minutes of reading, I was convinced. As soon as I arrived home I looked into classes, and attended my local information evening the next month, where I was even further convinced that it was what I wanted, not only for birth, but for my baby's experience of birth and first moments in the outside world.

 

I attended the four week course, made some lovely friends with the two other couples, also both first time parents and looked forward, with joy and expectation to my birthing day.

 

However, my daughter's pregnancy came with complications. At 28 weeks pregnant, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and told that if my baby was growing too large that I may be induced early. At one point I was even told that I would be induced at 34 weeks, but thankfully, that was a false alarm and my induction was booked for two days before my estimated due date.

 

I was annoyed, but accepted that my "perfect" birth was not to be (although I tried everything to make labour come naturally early, but it was not to be).

 

I successfully laboured in the latent phase with lots of walking around and distractions from the tedium. I was happy, calm, although frustrated that nothing seemed to be happening quickly enough. I was bored and wanted to meet my baby, and also try the hypnobirthing techniques for delivery that I practised and was looking forward to. I laboured for 29 hours before being given a sleeping tablet, because, like me, the midwives were also convinced that I couldn't be near active labour, most likely due to my calm, quiet and still labour. It didn't help, I didn't sleep, active labour was close. At this point I also took some morphine and gas and air, to help me sleep (I still couldn't), not to help me manage labour - that was in control!

 

I entered active labour at midnight and dilated from 2-10cm in just two hours. My husband was called at 2am, and I was taken to the delivery suite. It was at this point that the medical team advised me that I may consider a forceps assisted delivery because baby's heartrate was decelerating.

 

Anyway, I used my skills to help breathe my baby down and my waters broke as baby arrived; at 3.41am, and weighing 7lb 14 1/2oz (so not that big in the end really!), my perfect and beautifaul Imogen was born. She was pink, healthy and "the most alert baby [I've] ever seen" (according to the midwife present at her birth). She was 9 on the Agnar scale at one minute, and 10 at five minutes (excellent!). Life had definitely changed in many ways. I couldn't wait to do it again.

 

One final hypnobirthing point to note was that the Health Visitor at 10 days post-partum commented that we were the most calm new parents she'd ever seen...completely down to the calm pregnancy, labour and birth that we experienced (and the CDs that we listened to for many months after Imogen's birth too!).