Dear Kristin,
I studied your Birthing Through Hypnosis techniques 2 years ago before I had my son. It worked so well, I used the techniques again for my daughter, just born 3/22. You can feel free to use this story anonymously if it gives other expectant mothers encouragement and reassurance. Your online class helped me greatly to reduce my fear of childbirth and give me great tools to take control of my birthing experience. With your help, I delivered both my children with not too much pain or trouble, relatively quickly and easily and no pain medication. In both cases, my birth experiences were better than I had hoped.
Thank you!
L
Birth story from my first child:
Five weeks before my due date, I took the train to the office and began feeling mild contractions. Though I felt a little “off,” the contractions did not continue, so I went ahead with a presentation to 100 people. That night, at 3:30 am, I felt a sudden gush of water. I knew my waters had broken, and I started laughing because it was so ridiculous that labor started so early. I called the hospital, and after the nurse grilled me and pronounced that I told a pretty convincing story, she asked me to come in. I had not packed my hospital bag, so my husband and I scrambled to throw things in. I sent emails to work to explain that I had to cancel meetings because I was heading to the hospital. We arrived around 6:30 am. I was having mild contractions. The doctor confirmed that my waters had indeed broken and warned that because of the risk of infection if I did not deliver on my own within 24 hours, they would induce. I had dilated only 1 cm by then. The rest of the day, contractions got steadily stronger, and by the evening, they became quite uncomfortable. At midnight I was hoping to hear that I had dilated maybe 6-7 cm, but I was really bummed to discover that I had only dilated 3 cm. The doctor wanted to induce me then, but I begged to try on my own just a little longer. They agreed to wait one hour.
I put on the Birthing Through Hypnosis relaxation audio tracks and turned off the lights and entered “the zone.” When contractions started, I felt intense pain and I would bring my knees up and squeeze. Then I willed myself to focus on the “voice” in the rainbow relaxation meditation and I would relax and the pain would melt somewhat. When the contraction finished, I would fall asleep until the next cycle. I was dimly aware that the nurse came in to check every once in a while.
At one point the “voice” stopped. I panicked and called my husband to somehow make it come back. I frantically asked for “Track 2! Track 2!” Meanwhile, contractions were coming and I tried desperately to remember the “strawberry mist,” but it was not really working. Finally, the “voice” returned, and all was well again. Turned out the batteries had run out on my phone, but thankfully my husband had brought the plug, so we were able to get it started again.
Finally, around 2:30 am, I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stripped my monitors off and headed that way. Meanwhile, my husband wondered where all the doctors had gone, so he went hunting. While in the bathroom, I felt especially strong contractions and began moaning. I was wondering if maybe I was 5-7 cm and if maybe it was starting to hurt enough that I might think about asking for an epidural. The nurse outside the door asked me to come out to be checked, first sweetly, and then more insistently. I told her, “In a minute. After I go first.” Finally, I gave up and went back to bed. She checked me quickly and declared “10 cm and pushing.” She pushed some magic button and all the lights went on and people and equipment appeared suddenly from nowhere. I was amazed.
They pleaded with me, “Don’t push. The doctor’s doing a C-section next door.” Though they asked me to breathe a certain way, I did not know how I could possibly keep my body from doing what every fiber meant it to do — push the baby out. Finally, the doctor arrived. After 30 min, I finally pushed the baby out at 3:07 am, less than half an hour before my 24-hour goal. He is perfect and so was his birth!
Birth story from my second child:
Five days before my due date, at 3 pm, I was driving the car home and started feeling mild contractions and my own leaking that could mean my water had broken. I called the hospital, who recommended I come in. We arrived just before the Ob-Gyn Department closed at 5 pm. During the drive, my contractions came every 3-4 minutes and lasted 50-60 sec each. A doctor saw me at around 5:15 pm and confirmed that my bag of waters had indeed broken. Immediately after he left the exam room, water poured out all over the floor. He predicted that, given how fast my previous labor had gone, I might deliver within 3-4 hours or so. He was kind enough to take me himself in a wheelchair down to the Labor & Delivery Department around 5:30 pm.
My nurse and began admitting procedures. Contractions started hurting more, so I put on the Birthing Through Hypnosis relaxation audio tracks maybe around 5:45 or so and blocked out everything going on around me. The contractions got worse and closer together. I told my husband to watch the monitor for the next time I had a break between contractions so he could help me go to the bathroom. But the nurse was never able to get the monitors to pick up either my contractions or the baby’s heartbeat because I was so deep in my “zone” that I never responded to her attempts to move me. The contractions would keep coming in one wave after another, and never seemed to subside long enough for me to make it to the bathroom. I was surprised they seemed to hurt so much so quickly and I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to control the pain as well as the first time. I just wanted very badly for it to all be over as quickly as possible.
Then maybe around 6:20 pm, the doctor came to check me. I took off my headset through which I was listening to the Birthing Through Hypnosis audio tracks, so that I could respond to her questions. She checked my lungs and I was gripped by really tough contractions and the sudden urge to go to the bathroom. The doctor and nurses are reluctant to do an exam to see how much I had dilated because they didn’t want to introduce risk of infection. But they finally decided to check and, to their great surprise, declared that I was “complete.” I asked, “What does ‘complete’ mean?” Someone told me I was 10 cm dilated and the baby was coming NOW.
The pain was so bad I started screaming and flailing out of control for a minute, but then I calmed down and tried to systematically push. I asked for a mirror to watch what was happening, and I could see my baby’s head coming into view. But mostly I closed my eyes and concentrated on pushing. Then at 6:39 pm, I felt a big bloop . . . and then relief. I thought, “That must be the head – what a relief! The rest will be easy.” Then another bloop, and she was out.
The nurse said in her 15 years, she had never seen anyone focus so intensely, cope with pain so well, and deliver in such a controlled and deliberate way. The next day, another nurse told me people were still talking about my birth on that floor.