Share your birth story and photos!

I want to take a minute and share my birth story. I think that it's important to look at our births, to learn and grow from them, and to also find joy and happiness and empowerment from them. As a doula, a main goal of mine is to help as many women as I can fell empowered by their births, however they may go.

Dexter Allen was born at 38w6d after a 2 day induction on Cytotec and Cervidil due to preeclampsia. I went to the hospital Monday around dinner time, all that night and all of Tuesday my contractions were very very mild. Wednesday around 12 my water broke, and my labor went from mild to incredibly intense. I was having hyper contractions(contractions that don't let up and last 2 minutes or more) because of the induction drugs. I started panicking (I let my anxiety took over) telling myself I couldn't do it, that I didn't want to do it anymore. After getting out of the shower(about an hour after my water broke) and pacing the room totally focusing on the pain, I told my doula I wanted the epidural. She suggested we try Nubain first. I said okay, because I had had it the night before to help me sleep so I figured why not. It did little for the pain, what it did do, was help me relax. I was able to relax enough that I could listen to my hypnobirthing and accept what my body was doing and stop fighting the pain. Once I stopped fighting, I can honestly say I felt no "pain". The only time the true pain would come back was when someone spoke to me(a few times the nurses had me flip over because his heart rate was dropping from the drugs) and drew me out of the meditative state I had myself in. I only spoke once and it was to tell my husband to be quiet because I couldn't hear my hypnobirthing. The next time I spoke I said I had to push. No one believed me because they thought I was sleeping! The midwife checked me and sure enough I was at 10cm. After about 2 hours of pushing (would have been much shorter if I had been in a better position) my beautiful baby boy was born.

I love sharing my story so people can see how much fear=tension and tension=pain. Going into future births I know now how to get myself into the right mindset and how to let go and accept what my body needs to do. I also feel confident in my ability to help mothers release their fear and help guide them to a place where they can cope with labor peacefully. We need to trust our bodies, trust our instincts, and trust the beautiful process that is childbirth.

Share your birth story in the comments!

Hypnobirthing through transition (8-10cm)