Zoe's Hypnobirth - Taj's birth story - A dad's perspective
** Taj Bloomer - 23rd December 2015 - 3.91kg - Fiona Stanley Hospital **
When Zoe and I found out we were pregnant we were really excited. After a couple of weeks she came home saying she has being looking into Hypnobirthing. I was quite skeptical at first, having never heard of it. I was like “Okay…what is it?” Zoe had done her research obviously knowing what my reaction was going to be!! Really I didn’t want to do much away from the normal as was our first baby and in uncharted territory. Once she went through it, I realised its not that bad. “After all, you are the one that has to go through it, I’m just a support role for you. So look into it and I’ll do whatever makes you happy and easier for you.”
While Zoe was in labour I felt pretty calm. It was our first child and my first birthing experience so I had no idea of what was considered normal and exactly what was going to happen. Zoe was unreal and she really wanted to met our little man, so she was in the zone. My role then was just to act as support and do whatever she needs to get through the labour. Obviously as things started getting more intense, Zoe would begin to slip a little, that’s where I would come in and use the techniques taught to me during the Hypnobirthing training, I was successfully able to re-focus Zoe!
In our particular case, the techniques we found most useful were the CD’s on rotation playing in the background off her laptop, the lavender spray every so often in the air and when she really needed a refocus, the light touch with the count down back from 40 really helped aswell. I think the main thing is, there are times when your partner will freak a little but you as the birthing partner just need to remain calm, stay quite firm in talking to her and use whatever techniques you need to re-focus her. Stay positive and keep the cheat sheet at close proximity so you can refer to it for help if needed. But just stay positive and always relay a calmness to your partner even if your racing on the inside!! After all, she does look in discomfort from time to time and that’s obviously not easy to just sit by and watch. But I felt in Zoe biggest moments of support, if she looked at me being calm, positive and supportive, then she relaxed and calmed quickly and was able to refocus!!
On the whole, Zoe was amazing. She was that focused and determined that she could have almost done most of it by herself! She had done a lot of research into the Hypnobirthing techniques before hand and could focus herself quite easy. It made my job quite simple. Just be there when she needed it. In between surges she could relay to me which techniques were really helping her and which were not as effective. So then I could use the effective ones the next time a surge came along!! That’s the key, constantly re-enforce her and ask her what’s working and what’s not. It is my opinion that without using Hypnobirthing, Zoe would have definitely needed more pain relief. As it was, she only used gas and air to help her out. Zoe really wanted a water birth, but as we were induced this was unable to happen. But the Hypnobirthing was able to help Zoe adapt to the changes with ease and move along with the labour!!
I would definitely and have already recommended Hypnobirthing to other couples who are pregnant. In fact, a bloke from work said to me the other day, my Mrs is looking at this weird Hypnobirthing stuff, sounds weird to me!! I was like, mate me and Zoe just went through a Hypnobirth and began telling him about it. He knew nothing about it and then after our chat, he was like, “oh that’s not as bad as I thought, actually sounds pretty good!!” Especially when I explained the terminology and the reasoning behind it. That really makes sense. And definitely makes for a more relaxed and calm approach to child birth! The problem is, mostly only hear of the horror stories with child birth, and to be honest, only after doing the Hypnobirthing experience had I ever really seen women going through child birth relatively pain free and with little to no discomfort.
You don’t see that in the everyday representation of child birth. And for them reasons alone, I would recommend Hypnobirthing. We will definitely use the same techniques for baby number 2.
