HEADING

Hi Zoe,

I finally have a bit of time to share my birth experience, which was exactly how I wanted it to be (if just a little bit too early) - thanks to your teaching!

I had been listening to your recordings every evening before going to bed, and sometimes during the night when I couldn't go back to sleep. Making Bruno read didn't really work, his strong French accent preventing me from relaxing :)

We had written down our daily plan for our daughter's childcare for when labour starts.

And to be honest, apart from that, we didn't do much else.

On Friday 15th, I was celebrating my last day at work. On Saturday afternoon, my mum was flying from France to help me out with Léna for the coming half term.

Looks like everything was ready for Timéo to arrive.

At midnight, we went to bed but I was already feeling like I wasn't going to sleep. From midnight to 2am, I would wander around the house, finalising the maternity bag, emptying myself in the toilets and getting ready. I didn't feel like i needed the relaxation scripts at this point.

At 2am, I woke Bruno up to start timing the contractions; it turns out there were already 1min long and 5 minutes apart.

We waited an extra hour to call a cab as I was remembering the possibility of labour slowing down during the trip to the hospital.

In the cab, I had my dark sunglasses and the headphones with the relaxation scripts, and it felt like the 20min drive lasted 5 min!

When we arrived at the hospital, I stayed in my bubble with my headphones and Bruno was doing all the talking. I was checked at 5:40am (which meant we waited for like an hour) and I was 4cm dilated.

As soon as we got a room in the birth centre, I asked to to try the pool. It was ready within 10min.

It was a beautiful dark room, with a lighted pool, and I put on the speakers on my phone to continue listening to the hypnobirthing recordings.

During each surge, Bruno would massage me the lower back and it was quite soothing.

In the pool, between each surge, I would almost fall asleep as I felt very relaxed. During the surges, I would sort of sing/moan slightly.

The midwives left me alone and would only ask me to check the baby's heart every 15min.

Then the surges became more powerful and I felt like it was time to push. My breathing changed and I started screaming during each surge, but it was a relieving helping scream, and it was also blocking out the advises from the midwives in a way...

Timéo was born in the pool almost in his sack at 7:40am, 2 hours after being checked in. The 2nd stage lasted for maybe 10min.

I then asked for a physiological delivery of the placenta, which took the midwives by surprise. They were quite stressed about it when it was taking a long time to come.

But at this point, I was in my bubble with my baby so I couldn't care less!

In the end, I didn't need the injection as the placenta came after 50 min.

I ended with a 2nd degree tear and over half a litre of blood loss but that allowed me to stay an extra night in the birth centre so I won't complain about it :)

Timéo is a healthy boy who sleeps a lot and is exhausted with feeding so he has to be woken up a lot. Surely that will change soon.

Thanks a lot for sharing the hypnobirthing knowledge with us, this has definitely played an important part in this very positive birth experience!

The taxi journey was particularly dreaded and it ended up being relatively peaceful!

Bruno also felt really quite relaxed during the overall experience and didn't feel like I suffered a lot :)

I will definitely share your contact to whoever is interested in hypnobirthing.

Caroline's natural second birth