Kate’s Natural, No Tearing 2nd Hypno Water Birth

Birth Story by Kate, Hypnobirthing Mum

“My body was instinctively doing what it needed to do. I don’t think the midwives really realised how close I was to birth as about 20mins later my little babe popped out into the bath…“

I cannot believe that nearly 2 and a half years after Sadie, I am writing up our second birth story!

We started this birth journey by refreshing our hypnobirthing toolkit with the amazing Kate at Positively Hypnobirthing. Having the refresher option was great to get back in the headspace and all of the course content comes flooding back. It was also therapeutic to talk through Sadie’s birth, what we enjoyed about the birth and what we wished could be different next time. The main element that I really wanted to experience differently, was the particularly negative midwife I had in birth suite, so I began advocating early on for this.

I sought a student midwife from Griffith University and Anna was amazing, joining me at my routine appointments and at the birth as well as post-natal appointments. I shared my previous birth story with Anna and she became an ally early on in promising she would be by my side to advocate for a different midwife if we saw the same one from last time. It felt empowering having an additional person in my corner joining the birth who along with Ryan, could communicate what I wanted. I was under the GP shared care model again this time around, except now that we had moved suburbs I was allocated to ‘My Midwives Varsity Lakes’ which meant I had some continuity in seeing the same midwife my whole pregnancy and she also did my post-natal visits, but just unfortunately isn’t at the birth. This was a great alternative to the MGP program which is so hard to get into, as the continuity throughout the pregnancy and after meant I formed a connection with my midwife Donna and felt really safe and secure with honestly sharing with her how I was feeling.

Onto the birth! At 39w5d at 3.30am I woke up with some inconsistent period cramping, this is how my labour with Sadie started so I had a feeling we were on. I stayed in bed and tried to rest, and around 5.30am the cramping had ramped up and was turning into consistent contractions. I woke up my husband Ryan, and we stayed in bed until around 6.30am. Ryan then set up the living room with candles, music, the tens machine and my exercise ball and I moved into the space to focus on working through the waves. Thankfully our 2-year-old strangely stayed asleep until around 7.15am and my Mum arrived at the same time she woke, perfect!

I used a birth comb for the first time when everything started to intensify and found it super useful. By 7am the contractions were coming every 4-5 minutes and lasting for around 40 seconds, it felt like everything was happening quickly so we made the decision to head to the hospital at 7:45am. We got to MAC by 8:15am ish. The midwives could see that I no longer could finish sentences and was consistently throwing up and they made the decision to jump me in front of some of the ladies waiting to go to birth suite because I was a second time Mum.

Thank goodness for that decision! When we went into birth suite I was straight into the shower, leaning over the exercise ball and using the birth comb. Ryan set up some music and the candles and switched all of the lights off. After close to an hour, Anna the wonderful student midwife let me know the bath was ready as she knew I really wanted to birth in there. So I slowly moved into the bath, but before leaving the shower on the last contractions I felt the urge to bear down and I did. I knew I was starting to push.

Into the bath and I was no sooner starting to naturally push and bear down with each wave of contraction. My body was instinctively doing what it needed to do. I don’t think the midwives really realised how close I was to birth as about 20mins later my little babe popped out into the bath and I reached down and pulled her up to me and the midwives were not ready in the slightest!

Super special to again not know the gender and find out together after birth. After a second degree labial tear with Sadie I was so so shocked to not have any tearing this time around. Full credit to the bath! So 6 hours from first niggling cramp to birth, only around 4 hours of labour, only 1 hour and
20mins of that in the hospital and one healthy little girl to show for it!