Elise Desiree Berensen
December 14th 2011
8:18am
9 Pounds 2 ounces
20.5 Inches
With this baby I felt like I should try to experience a natural birth. Crazy right? nope not really. I had heard too many epidural horror stories and I'd basically gone natural by accident with Zac so I decided to be prepared this time. I took Hypnobirthing class and it was awesome! I'm totally sold on hypnobirthing it helped me tremendously, if you are pregnant you should look into it. Here is the confession to which I'm really embarrased to admit to my other hypnobrithing mothers...I ended up getting an epidural and it was the best. Hypnobirthing + epidural = best labour and recovery ever.
So I started feeling consistent contrations while we were at the dinosaur bones museum around 5ish on tuesday night. By 7pm I started timing them and Amy came to get the boys. They were very excited to be going to sleep over at Amys house. I laboured as long as I could at home and at around midnght things started picking up so I thought I should get to the hospital so they could put me on the monitors before I really needed to start concentrating. We arrived at the hospital and I was still at a 3cm (I'd been that at my doctors appt earlier that day) The nurse checking me in took about an hour just to register me she was so slow and the entire time I had to be hooked up to the monitors for a reason she couldn't tell me. After that she told me to go and walk then we came back in and I thought I was doing all this hard work and that I'd be really close but when she had to check me again to register me again I was only at a 4 which is why in hypnobirthing they tell you not to have them check you at all. I was really discouraged but I kept trying and remembered that I went from a 6 to delivery with Isaac in 45 mins. Then I threw up alot and got the shakes and couldn't hold my self up to do any sort of position changing and I had a really hard time concentrating on the hypnobirthing breathing and relaxing techniques so the pressure i felt turned into pain, I called for a epidural! I think the entire staff were relived, including my doctor (she told me afterward that she doesn't understand why women don't get epidurals and aren't induced at 39 weeks). Seriously if you want some support from hospital staff to go natural don't deliver where I did. 2 hours later the epidural man came in and gave me the best epidural ever, I could still feel my legs so when it came time to push I knew and was able to use the hypnobirthing birth breathing to breath my baby out. two contrations and minimal stitching miss Elise came into the world. she was promptly taken away because she was having a little trouble breathing, it felt like they had her forever and I was a little miffed that everyone else had held my baby before me. When I finally got to hold her I decided she was the cutest newborn ever, serioulsy both will and zac looked like old men when they arrived. She is eating like a champ and sleeping exactly how a newborn would sleep. The boys love her, for zac it was love at first sight but William threw a huge tantrum and wanted nothing to do with her. Don't worry now he loves her just as much as the rest of us. so even though some people may think that the hypnobirthing class was a waste of money because he knew i was going to get a epidual anyway hypnobirthing helped me during labour which means the class was worth every penny and even though I felt like a failure when I got the epidural I really wasn't prepared to be spewing my guts out and shaking uncontrolably but thats child birth you really have no idea what will happen.
Hey Juliet--don't spend another second thinking getting an epidural is a failure! You had a fantastic birth, you were in control, not afraid and comfortable knowing what to do. You and baby E were the stars of a great show. Big congrats!
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