Nov 10, 2016

In all honesty I was skeptical about Hypnobirthing in the beginning, I had been there before, it cou

Kenzie Anne – Birth Story

Kenzie Anne, my little hypnobub, was born at 9.48pm Thursday 10th November 2016 after 3.5 hours of active labour.

Kenzie is my second child and at the beginning of this pregnancy I decided to invest more time into preparing myself and my husband Darcy for labour and birth. After having an epidural during my first labour, I found myself more open to trying new techniques to prepare my mind and body for birthing.

I booked in with Shari to complete the two day course and both Darcy and I left each session feeling empowered and with an overwhelming sense of "I think we can do this." We practiced using the techniques we had learnt from Shari through the remainder of my pregnancy and found which methods worked best for us. We are so proud to have achieved the birth we hoped for but there is no doubt that we worked really hard in the lead up to be as prepared as possible.

My waters broke at 2am on Thursday morning and after calling the midwives, we decided to stay at home and see how my surges progressed throughout the morning. My surges started at around 45 minutes apart and stayed that way for the majority of the day.

Around 3pm they started to get closer together and were becoming more intense so my husband and I decided to head to the hospital. After seeing the doctor I was told that I was in the very very early stages of labour but would have to stay in due to needing antibiotics due to the length of time it had been since my waters broke. This news did shock me initially as I felt like the surges were starting to get more intense and associated this with being further along through the labour. They set us up in our hospital room to get some rest ready for labour to most likely start early the next morning.

In all honesty this news really did rock me. I started to doubt everything I had practiced and the thoughts of "I can't do this" started going through my head. I was starting to feel very overwhelmed with the idea that this was going to continue all night. At that moment I was really at a crossroads. If I stayed in this headspace, I was not going to achieve the labour Darcy and I had worked so hard to have. Darcy took control and helped me to get the room ready; dim the lights, get my aromatherapy oils going and start playing the hypnobirthing tracks. I put it off at first, if I was so early in my labour I "shouldn’t need" to be using all of the techniques yet, but Darcy was insistent.

By 6.30pm I was laying on the bed, listening to the hypnosis tracks whilst Darcy did light touch massage. I instantly relaxed and got into my zone.

At around 9pm I had to stand up due to my surges intensifying and lying down becoming really uncomfortable. By 9:15pm I asked Darcy to ask the midwives if I could go to the birthing suite as I felt like my labour was really starting to progress. It was almost change of shift so he was told they would come and move me shortly. After another 10 mins I suddenly had a weird feeling and said to Darcy that I thought I needed to push (after having an epidural during my first labour I wasn't sure what to expect and I still had the thoughts of "I am not supposed to be this far along" going through my head). Darcy left again and this time Sinead the midwife came in to get the move to the birthing suite started. I went to stand up but had three really intense surges one after the other and when I pushed back onto my knees I had the overpowering urge to push. All I remember is saying "I need to push! I need to push!".

In this moment my relaxation bubble completely burst and panic set in. Even now I was still second guessing if this was happening as I shouldn’t be ready to push yet. Sinead started telling me to slow my breathing down and we both couldn’t believe how quickly I could get back into my relaxed zone. She managed to get me up on the bed and confirmed that I was 10cm dilated and ready to push. Before I knew what was happening more midwives came into the room and set up ready for delivery.

3 surges later, Sinead delivered my beautiful baby Kenzie. For the next 10 minutes all I could say was "I can't believe that just happened, I just did that, that just happened!" The midwives told me that everytime they had put their heads in to check on me; Darcy and I had seemed so calm and in control they didn’t think my labour was progressing so quickly. They were just as surprised as I was. No drugs, no stress and I didn’t even make it to the birthing suite!

I am so grateful to my husband and my mother for being there throughout my enter labour and really taking charge and making sure I remained as calm and relaxed as possible. But we couldn’t have done it without Shari and all that she taught us and her support throughout my pregnancy.

In all honesty I was skeptical at the beginning, I had been there before, it couldn’t make that much of difference could it? Oh how wrong I was. I now feel like I have one of those stories, the birthing stories that once you read them you laugh and think that could never happen to me. With hard work and an open mind our bodies can seriously achieve anything!

Katy and Darcy