A Calmbirth® story.
After going so far overdue with my first pregnancy and ending up coming away from my labour/birth feeling quite traumatized and negative about the whole experience, I felt like doing the Calmbirth class this time around, really contributed to how positive and calm my 2nd labour & birth was. I went into it with an image of how I’d ideally love for my labour to go, but also felt confident that if things didn’t quite go to plan, I’d still have some brilliant coping mechanisms ready to put into practice.
On Monday (5 days before my due date) I booked in for a pregnancy massage in the hopes of helping my body relax and produce some oxytocin, and by Tuesday night I was starting to have some extremely mild and irregular pain in my stomach. By Wednesday at 5pm, the pain had become a bit more intense and regular. I found myself thinking of every contraction as a ‘wave’, and breathing through every one by counting from 1 to 5 as I breathed in, then counting backwards from 5 to 1 as I breathed out. By 9pm things had started getting more intense, so I sent my husband Tim to bed to get some rest while I lit some candles, turned on my Calmbirth meditation tracks, turned off all the lights and sat on my gym ball; still counting in and out to my breath as every wave passed. I assumed that I would still have quite a while before needing to make my way to hospital, so I laid down on the couch and tried to have a bit of rest in between each wave.
I think I must’ve started almost drifting off because one particularly strong wave startled me and made me realise it was time to head into hospital. During the car ride, I continued my counting and breathing, and kept visualising my uterine muscles contracting and pushing baby downwards. We got to the hospital at 11:30pm and during waves I was draping my hands around Tim’s neck and leaning on him, while he lightly massaged my back like we had in the Calmbirth classes.
My midwife knew that I wanted to use the birthing pool to labour and give birth in, but I said I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to run it yet because I didn’t want to hop in too early and slow my labour down, and because of how well I’d been coping without pain relief so far but had decided not to have any checks to see how dilated I was, I figured that I still had a while to go. My midwife decided to run the bath anyway and said that she could always keep it warm for longer if needed, and it was lucky she did!
I hopped into the bath at 1:10am, and Tim set up my little battery-operated candles around the bath without me even having to ask. My midwife left the room because even she thought I still had a while to go, and only 10 minutes later, I asked Tim to get her because I’d felt the strong urge to push! With my first push I felt the strong ‘popping’ sensation of my waters breaking, and with every wave after that I just listened to my midwife’s instructions, kept my eyes closed, and I didn’t realise it at the time but even while I was pushing, I was using my visualisation techniques and repeating little mantras to myself like “baby down”. 45 minutes later, our not-so-little 10lb 2.5oz(4.608kg) boy, Noah Steven Garwood was born, without the use of any interventions or pain relief.
It was honestly the most perfect labour and birth experience that I ever could’ve asked for.
Laura.