Callie tells her birth story: 'I was terrified of giving birth. So I had a HypnoBirth. The hypnotherapy is given to aid relaxation, release fear and help alter the cultural belief that pain and childbirth go hand in hand, thereby avoiding the fear-tension-pain.
Even after all the classes, I had no idea I was going to go into labour when I did. At 36 weeks, I’d spent the day helping to fit our new kitchen. The night before the big day, I’d gone out to dinner with my husband, James.
Some time between 4am and 5am the next morning, I became drowsily aware of a crampy, period pain-type feeling. I concluded that I must have eaten something dodgy. I tried hard not to wake James – he had to get up for work in a few hours, and it was pointless interrupting him for nothing.
I grumped about for an hour or so, rubbing my tummy and attempting to get comfy in bed. To pass the time, I decided to practise the “20-20” breathing technique they teach in HypnoBirthing as practice for the birth next month and in an attempt to relax and relieve some of the cramps.
At about 6am, James finally woke up. He agreed that it was probably just “a bad prawn” from the night before.
I’d have stayed at home if I hadn’t noticed the tiniest bit of spotting. While I was vowing to sue the restaurant for putting my baby at risk, James was on the phone to the maternity unit. They advised us to come in for a check-up.
In the car, things got more uncomfortable. By the time we got to hospital it was around 8am. On the Delivery Ward, the only place available for me to be examined was a spare delivery room.
At this point I was in a calm world of my own. The room had a rocking chair so I sat and rocked myself gently back and forth, nodding drowsily to anything anyone said. I decided that it was a good time to try some more 20-20 breathing which helped ease the crampiness, and I felt pleasantly dozy.
Suddenly, I wanted to be sick. As I was throwing up in the sink, a midwife walked in. “Ah yes!” she said cheerfully, “that’s a sure sign of labour!”.
I went back to my chair to continue rocking sleepily. Eventually a student midwife came in and attached a monitor to see whether I was in early labour. It showed peaks indicating contractions.
I continued my 20-20 breathing, rocking peacefully back and forth. As per the HypnoBirthing training, I was staring to go “into myself”, shutting out the outside world, and although I was aware of the outside world I was totally focussed on my body and couldn’t be bothered to speak.
Eventually the doctor arrived and asked me to get onto the bed. The cramps had got stronger and I didn’t feel ready to move, so I serenely held my hand up to signal “please wait”, and continued to rock back and forth slowly, breathing calmly.
After asking me twice she started to get tetchy. “I can’t examine you in the chair, you need to get on the bed”, she snapped. James told me later that at this stage the monitor was registering quite a spike at that point , but no one was paying attention to the readings. The doctor huffed for a bit but waited.
The pressure started to ease so I did as I’d been told and lethargically got onto the bed. She examined me. “That’s the head!” the doctor exclaimed. I was eight centimetres dilated . There was a sudden flurry of activity as people dashed in with equipment, a cot, blankets.
At least, that’s what James tells me happened. I was still sort of dozing, in a world of my own, concentrating on breathing slowly and deeply, in to 20, out to 20, as I sat in the chair and rocked again.
The midwives were thoroughly disconcerted. “How on earth did you do that?” one asked me. “How the hell did you get to eight centimetres just by sitting there breathing?”
I didn’t answer. I was so relaxed and zoned out that I just couldn’t be bothered, so I let James explain about the HypnoBirthing.
“Ah, ok” the midwife replied with sudden understanding. “I’ll just let you get on with things then”.
Oddly enough, as soon as the doctor had confirmed I was in labour, the cramping in my back became more intense, although it was a long way from being seriously painful. I was suddenly nervous. This was it. Oh my god, I was having a baby.
One of the HypnoBirthing suggestions is that you should request that no reference to pain or pain relief is made. The theory is that as soon as someone suggests you might be in pain, or asks you if you need pain relief, you start thinking about things in those terms when you might not have done otherwise.
Based on what I experienced, that theory is bang on; as soon as it had been confirmed that I was in labour, the midwife immediately asked me if I’d like gas and air, even though I hadn’t indicated I was in any pain and even though up until that point they didn’t even believe I was in established labour. She must have been asking out of force of habit.
Anyway, I hadn’t even considered asking for pain relief, but as soon as the midwife mentioned it, I thought “oh yes, this is supposed to hurt really badly – I’d better have something just in case”. How ridiculous. At any rate, I took a slug or two to see what it was like but it was rubbish.
The only thing even approaching pain was the cramp in my back, and I swear a couple of paracetamol would have wrapped that up.
Anyway, as soon as pain relief had been mentioned, the cramp in my back responded to the suggestion and became more intense. I clutched the gas & air tube to my mouth, and reasoned that as things had been fine up until that point, relaxation was the key. I’d been extremely successful so far – the HypnoBirthing was working – and I knew I just needed to maintain my relaxation.
I asked James to plug me into the iPod and switched to the Relaxation script, which as part of the course you’re supposed to listen to on a daily basis to get you nicely chilled out for labour. It had been sending me to sleep nightly for the past two months, so instinctively I associated it with deep relaxation.
Sure enough, I started to calm down again immediately and the pain subsided to be replaced once again by crampy pressure. The rest of the labour seemed to whizz by, with me almost entirely shutting out the outside world and just focussing on the birth, on my breathing and on my relaxation.
I was fully aware of what was going on around me, I just didn’t want to participate in it. Poor James had to answer most of the questions the midwives asked me because I just wasn’t listening and couldn’t be bothered answering. Luckily the course prepares birth partners for this, so he was fully in tune with what I wanted.
As the time whizzed by, the cramp in my back seemed to come and go but with no rhythm and no discernable pattern. Again, HB teaches you not to pay too much attention to contractions, and certainly not to time them yourself.
In a way it’s just as well the monitor was there because the midwives couldn’t tell when I was having contractions, as I was totally calm and quiet throughout. Although I didn’t really feel the contractions, I did feel an intense ache in my lower back that came and subsided without a pattern.
I thought that if I could just get in a comfortable position, my back would feel better, but the wires on the monitors were impeding my movement, and I felt frustrated. In my birthplan I’d requested no continuous monitoring, but I realised that as this was a slightly premature birth the rules might have to be different.
At this point, it was about 9.30am and I’d been in the hospital for about two hours. The midwives were buzzing round talking to James but with the iPod on I couldn’t make out what was being said and although I was curious, I didn’t really care.
He told me later that they were telling him a blue line had appeared on my lower back which indicated I’d reached 10 centimetres. I had declined any more examinations with the typical HypnoBirthing sentiment: “I’ll just go with what my body is doing – it’s worked so far”, which is based on the theory that if you’re treated in a medicalised way, you’ll stop viewing the birth as something normal and natural that you’re fully in control of, and instead it gets passed over to the professionals as a medically managed event.
Luckily I had understanding midwives.
Another aspect of HB is the belief that managed pushing is unnecessary. The theory is that your body will expel the baby of its own accord, and that managed pushing before you’re ready just leads to a lot of huffing and puffing, bruised cervixes, tears and not a lot of progress.
They told me to push when I felt ready, so that’s what I did, and rather than let my body do it for me I used a combination of pushing and the HB “J-breathing” – a gentle way of breathing the baby down. In any case, it felt good, like the way you feel when you have a really good stretch - once you’ve started you don’t want to stop. In between pushes (of which I had about five or six in total) I relaxed and listened to the script.
One of the midwives started rubbing my back. It was bliss. My notes say that this stage of the labour lasted 53 minutes, but it felt more like quarter of an hour.
Every so often I’d give a push, and in between I rested and listened to the script on the iPod, continuing the 20-20 breathing.
“This is amazing,” I heard one of the midwives say. “What on earth is it she’s listening to?” James tried to explain it all again to the slightly nonplussed midwives.
The feelings got more intense as the baby made her way down and started to crown. For the first time I started to make a noise, not as an expression of pain – although it WAS uncomfortable and slightly nerveracking – but as an expression of determination.
I reminded myself that my body was designed to do this and that I didn’t have a design flaw.
"That’s it!” said the midwife in response to my growls. “Use the pain – don’t waste it – when the pain comes, use it to push”. I looked at James and rolled my eyes at him in an attempt to communicate that there wasn’t any pain, hoping for some reassurance that this was ok.
In fact I still wasn’t feeling contractions, I was just feeling the need to push, coming in waves. I took more sucks on the gas and air, in an attempt to keep my breathing nice and deep and regulated, but I noticed my breaths were very shaky.
I’d turned off the Relaxation script (I’d had it on loop three times) and was just listening to the hypno music. I reminded myself of one of my Birth Affirmations - that my body was built to do this, and that it would open for my baby just as it should. Then suddenly her head was out.
The urge to push had passed now she’d crowned and I could feel a slight impatience emanating from the opposite end of the bed. I waited for a while but nothing happened. “Ah well” I thought, “I’d better just get on and do it”.
Without waiting for the surges I gave a couple of little pushes, and felt my baby’s body slither out. It was 10.26 when Molly was finally plopped on to my chest and I finally got to say my first hello to my daughter.
“A bad prawn indeed”, I said to James through tears of elation. “She’s not a bad prawn, she’s a lovely prawn”.
Pink and wrinkly, she was beautiful. As for the stats, from the start of my “upset stomach” to delivery, labour had taken six hours - exactly the time I’d thought of when we’d done a birth visualisation exercise during the HypnoBirthing classes and the tutor had told us to “decide now” how long our labours would be.
She was 6lb 12oz, my pulse had never gone above 70 throughout the entire labour, and my blood pressure and the baby’s heartbeat had stayed relaxed and constant throughout.
When I got to the post-natal care ward, a couple of midwives came to pop their heads round the curtain. “We’ve heard about you!” they said.
Before the birth everyone had told me about the “amazing and wonderful way” the mind has of forgetting childbirth, and having now done it myself I can only conclude that this theory is slightly off the mark. You don’t forget childbirth, you forget a traumatic experience.
I might have been in my own zone during labour, and I might not have noticed what everyone else in the room was saying or doing, but I can certainly remember every feeling and every sensation I had when I was birthing my daughter.
And although the cynics among you probably won’t believe a word of it, I can honestly say it felt fantastic.’
