A bit of a birth story. Doing it wrong.....again.

I gave birth three weeks ago (3 weeks and 12ish hours ago to be exact) and I found myself doing it all wrong (again).http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Between Aron's birth and this last birth I became a doula and a HypnoChilbirth practitioner. I attended six births in that time, both in hospital and out and I had supported another two women through pregnancy. I thought I knew a bit about pregnancy and birth. Lol.


Bear(bare?) with me while I jump around a little. I have never really been a fan of second stage. With Aron I coped really well with the labour (even enjoying much of it) and never noticed transition. Pushing him out though was a different story. It was so quick but jeeze did I scream, there was no orgasmic birth for me!

I've seen a few women give birth now and I swear I have never heard anyone make these sorts of noises! So with Tom's pregnancy I decided to work on accepting second stage, I dreamt about breathing my baby out, I may have even fantasised about having an orgasmic birth. I wanted to be silent (or at least not wake the neighbours 2km away :D), I wanted to be in control and dignified and I wanted it be gentle. I would use my yoga breath, I would quietly hum yessss, instead of scream NOOOOOOO!

Most women are physically capable of having this kind of birth. I know I am PHYSICALLY capable of having this kind of birth (I had had 3 straight forward births before this one) and I knew that the only challenge I faced was mental, I knew my thoughts and my constant-over-the-top analytical mind could possible hinder my path to a gentle, beautiful, ecstatic birth. So I worked on it. I listened to hypnosis cd's, I watched tons of YouTube videos of women breathing their babies out, I read birth story on top of birth story. I talked to my midwife and my doula at length about it, I was a little bit obsessed to be honest. All my preparation focused on riding the waves of labour, of getting into the rhythm, of really accepting and going within. This was my last birth and I was going to do it right damn it!

And then labour started...or did it? I wasn't sure. Yep definitely intense, hard to breathe through contractions...oh no wait they have gone away. My body betrayed me. I had never laboured like this before! There was no rhythm, no consistency, no rhyme or reason as to when a contraction (or string of contractions) would hit. And I. Was. Pissed.



After almost 24 hours (with very little sleep) I gave up. Fuck it, I thought. I was going to get a shower and go to bed. I had a big cry in the shower, a big self-indulgent 'poor me' whinge. Where was my baby?? I got out of the bath and promptly hit transition. My last contraction had been 20 minutes earlier and only lasted 40 seconds. Transition lasted almost two hours complete with uncontrollable shaking, crying, nausea, horrible thoughts and....yes, screaming. Loud enough to wake the neighbours. Pushing him out was long, intense and bloody hard work. It involved more screaming and complaining and quite a few "no, no, no, no, NOOOOOOOO"'s.

It has taken a bit of processing this birth (only a little bit though - he is only three weeks old!) but I have accepted that this is just the way I birth. And birth is not always pretty or gentle or easy. In fact I would hesitate to say that it rarely is (and please note that I am only talking about unhindered birth at home here, hospital birth is a whole 'nother kettle of fish).

I roar and scream and swear my babies out. I don't like it, it hurts and scares me. But I do it. I just give birth 'cause that's what women do. And, instead of seeing everything that was wrong with my labour and birth, I am now focusing on what was right. I'm focusing on the courage and the rawness and the beauty. On the knowledge that, despite REALLY not wanting to, I pushed him out of my vagina and into the world, drug free, free of strange hands and rough instruments. He got a gentle transition into this world, into water with his cord intact. And I am proud of that. And that's an awesome feeling.



I've learned lots of things over the last nine months. And one of those lessons is that there is no right or wrong way to give birth. No one is better than anyone else. And every single birth is different.

xo