24 Mar Sara and Steve
Our beautiful son was born on Tuesday afternoon. As we had managed to convince the hospital to give us the normal amount of time before an induction, the whole process happened naturally. First contractions woke me up at 2.30am but I put the MP3s back on and managed to doze intermittently until 6am. My waters broke at 8am but, annoyingly, the contractions stopped! Due to the polyhydramnois, I had been told to go straight to hospital as soon as my waters had broken so we were seen at the Ante Natal Day Unit at 10.30. They monitored me and were happy with what they saw so booked me in for an induction for the following day. Before going home, we had lunch in the M&S cafe there and I experienced a return in contractions. They became more intense and by the time we walked back to the car park (around 1pm), I had to take some time out in a lavatory. The pain was pretty intense and I was really disappointed that early labour was so painful and scared that I wouldn’t get through it without enormous amounts of drugs. Steve finally managed to persuade me to move far enough to unlock the door and immediately wanted to get help but I was scared of being left alone. After some effective negotiation and soothing techniques, he ran out and found a radiologist who asked two porters to take me back to the ante natal day unit. When they examined me, they found that I was 9cm dilated! I was rushed to a delivery room where our son was born 11 mins later! It was an extraordinary and slightly surreal experience. Even yesterday, it still felt like an odd dream. Anyway, the main purpose of this email is to thank you for teaching hypnobirthing to us. It really helped me to have a birth that I would never have thought possible.