Once again, let me preface this birth story as I have before – I never could have done it without Hypnobabies. It is the most amazing thing I can imagine. No matter what my birthing experience, which has been different each time, Hypnobabies was able to get me through it with flying colors. I can’t tell enough people about it and wish every woman would have enough confidence in themselves to try it. As for the birth…..
My due date was on Wednesday. I was hoping something would happen early, but since my other boys were late I wasn’t expecting much. So when I started having birthing waves (the positive word we use for contractions in Hypnobabies) on Monday night around 10:30pm I was very excited. I timed them for a little over an hour and they were anywhere from 8-15 minutes apart. I woke Jonny up and let him know what was going on, just in case. We timed the waves for a couple hours, but they were still pretty weak and not getting any closer together. I was doing my hypnosis in preparation for the baby coming. Since Seth’s birth happened so quickly (only 6 hours from first contraction to holding a baby), I thought it was only a matter of time and I didn’t want to feel unprepared (you can read Seth’s birth story for more on that). Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would have another Evan on my hands.
During the morning the waves stopped and I was able to get some sleep. I was thinking it was probably good and that I would have plenty of energy to have the baby Tuesday. The waves came and went all day. They would go for a couple hours and then stop. I used my hypnosis some of the time to keep up the practice, but they were not really strong enough yet to really need it. We had grandma and papa come get the boys Tuesday morning thinking it would be time, but by the afternoon nothing was happening. This went on all day Tuesday. We called our doula a couple times to keep her updated on my progress. Jonny and I waited, went to lunch, walked around the mall and tried to get things going. Nothing. So I went to bed at 9pm thinking that if the baby came during the night or next morning, I would need the energy. I slept the whole night and got up at 4:30am.
Wednesday morning I got up and had a few waves. They were still really weak and far apart – maybe every 10 minutes for 30 minutes but then they would be 45 minutes apart again. So we continued all day again and talked to our doula to keep her in the loop. We tried different labor stimulating techniques and got bouts of waves here and there, but nothing substantial. We decided to have the boys come home after Evan got out of preschool since there wasn’t any significant progress yet. Our doula and I thought maybe the baby was posterior (sunny side up) and he wasn’t engaging very well. I spent a lot of time trying to get him to turn around, just in case.
Of course, by this time you may be thinking they were just Braxton-Hicks contractions and that I wasn’t actually in labor yet. But this was my third time around this track and I can tell the difference between practice contractions and the “real” thing. These were definitely the real thing, just not strong enough yet to get me out of early first stage labor. I had a long, prodromal labor with Evan and knew all about this kind of thing. After my very fast birth with Seth I knew that once things really got going and the waves started working, things would move really quickly this time too. It was just a matter of time to get this little guy to get serious about being born.
After another night of weak waves and trying to get a lot of sleep to keep my energy up, Jonny and I decided to try to get back to normal and just wait until the baby decided to make his appearance. We thought he just wasn’t quite ready yet or all the things we had tried to get things going would have worked. Jonny went back to work on Thursday and I went about my daily activities with bouts of waves continuing. I went to my weekly doctor appointment and told my OBGYN what was going on. I was getting pretty tired, both mentally and physically by this point. I felt like my life was on hold with no apparent end in sight. The hypnosis was keeping me calm and relaxed, but in between I was getting pretty testy. Since everything was looking favorable with waves and some other birthing symptoms, I asked the doctor to strip my membranes. I was pretty sure that would get things going in the near future. As it turned out, it was exactly what I wanted. I hoped that I could get one more night of sleep and then have the baby Friday. I talked to our doula again with an update, then planned on another regular day on Friday with hopes of having a baby.
So Thursday night I went to bed with more waves. I woke up a few times during the night to some stronger waves, but was still able to get back to sleep until just before 4:30am. At that point I woke up to some stronger waves so I laid in bed awhile and did my hypnosis through them. I didn’t know how close they were yet and I debated if I should wake Jonny up. Since he would be getting up for work soon anyway, I decided to see if he was awake and ask him to time a few. After about 40 minutes he figured they were ranging from 3-8 minutes apart. Since they were stronger than they had been all week, we decided Jonny wouldn’t go to work and that we would start preparing again for a baby. Jonny called grandma to come get the boys and called our doula to come check on me. He was loading up the car and getting ready so he wouldn’t have to worry about it later, which turned out to be a good thing. I came downstairs to sit on the birth ball and do some more hypnosis. The waves were getting a little stronger and I wanted to make sure I had time to get really deep. So around 5:30am grandma picked up the boys and my doula came. I talked to her for just a couple minutes and then my water broke during a birthing wave. All of a sudden things went into high gear. A third baby with contractions averaging 4 minutes apart and ruptured membranes can come pretty quickly. So Jonny finished getting the boys in grandma’s car while I slowly walked out to our car and got in. We headed off to the hospital and got there about 6am.
They checked me and we waited in the evaluation room until they could get a room set up. The hospital was packed that night – apparently they had over a dozen women come in that night to have babies. Between the women from the previous day and the ones coming in that night, they only had a couple rooms left. And even though I was only 3cm dilated when I got there, things seemed to be progressing quickly. I got to my room about 7am and the waves were coming quickly now and getting much stronger. By the time I got to my room, I was only there about 30 minutes before I felt like I needed to start pushing. The nurse checked me and I was almost 9 cm. By that time my mom and mother-in-law were also at the hospital so they could watch the birth since neither had seen one before.
The nurses got the room together quickly and called my doctor to come from her office next door. She checked me and I was 10cm dilated and ready to push. I started with a couple small pushes and then got down to business. After about 30 minutes of pushing, we had our new baby boy.
He was born at 8:48am, only about 4 ½ hours after my first strong birthing wave. As my doula and I predicted, once things really got going they went very quickly. The hypnosis was wonderful – keeping me calm and relaxed for another pain-free birth. It was very intense and there was a lot of pressure because of how quickly things progressed, but I had such a great experience. We are so excited to have our new addition. Baby Levi looks a lot like his brothers, and we’re sure will fit right in and be wrestling with them when he gets a little older.
