By Sang Nguyen
Thursday was my last day at work and everything seemed too normal. Contractions came and went without any pain. Yesterday morning we woke up for a regular check. I started feeling a bit of cramp but nothing was too severe. When we were at our OB, ‘Clarita’, meaning little Clara in Spanish, was still on my right. She needs to be in the anterior position for me to have a natural birth that we planned. So as usual, we got home, ran Friday errands and came back to relax. I went for a short nap only to wake up feeling a bit heavier.
So I thought “Great, let’s do some excercises for Clarita to move to the front”.
Fast forward to 6pm, I started experiencing pain with heavy contractions. Hubby showed up just in time while I was on the floor practicing breathing. We started monitoring. I took a nice warm bath, ate some toast and went to lay down around 8pm. More waves were coming, they became shorter and shorter with regular increasing levels of pain. Every time there was a surge, I tried to count my breathing and thinking our baby wanted to see us. Until 10:30PM, the show came (I was bleeding). So we drove to the hospital and I was 8cm dialated.
The midwife asked if I needed any pain killer or happy gas, I refused. I said I will try to ride these waves. At a quarter to midnight, the pain got tremendously tense and my body just had this urge to push and push. When our OB came in, I was 10cm.
Within 15 mins, Clara is out. Happy baby, we had skin-to-skin contact, she cried only a bit and seemed so calm. She opened her eyes and looked at us. It was the most beautiful experience of my life!
The whole time, Juan was there, whispering in my ears to control my breathing. He simulated oxytocin by touching my lower back. I got on all fours, as it was helping me to control my pain. In preparation towards the birth, I walked at least 30 mins to 1 hr a day. Closer to the birth, I used an Epino device to stretch my perineum and most importantly, I avoided reading too much online and negative thoughts.
I was 5 cm on Thursday before the dialation of 8cm.
Thanks to the Calmbirth course, we learnt to have confidence and accept that our body is a great design of nature and women are created to birth new lives.
We learnt to positively control our mind, a source of power that could change our health and body. With the emergence of technology, we have became too reliant on external interventions rather than our own inner resources and ourselves.
Our Clara was born within 15 mins, after 5 hrs of controlled breathing from a positive mind. No pain killer, no intervention. Happy and calm as she is. So thank you very much Calmbirth.