Are you thinking about trying hypnobirthing? Maybe you want to hear a hypnobirthing story from someone who has been through it to see if it is for you?
Before we get started I just want to say that I thoroughly recommend hypnobirthing. You’ll see from my story that it helped me from start to finish.
Oh, and if you want to know more about hypnobirthing, you can also check out this post.
This has ended up being a pretty long story, so I’ve decided to split it into two posts. It was actually quite emotional to write, as it brought back so many emotions. Reliving it through words left me with a big fat smile on my face though. What an intensely beautiful experience.
Waters breaking at the gym
It started off as a totally normal day. I was off work by this point as my doctor has signed me off the week before, but I was feeling pretty good and was going about my day as normal.
I was due to meet a friend from work for lunch. As that’s also where my gym was, I decided to hit the gym before meeting her.
I started my strength workout: 5 sets of heavy leg presses and bent over rows; 5 sets of chest presses and lateral pull downs; then 5 sets of deadlifts and shoulder presses.
At around 11:30am I was almost at the end of the session and felt good. Then, during the second set of deadlifts I felt something. Did my water just break?!
Luckily it was just a little bit, so I wasn’t standing in a pool of water or anything, but my trousers were definitely wet. Gathering up my stuff, I quickly headed back to the changing room. As I was grabbing my towel for the shower, a lady started talking to me.
Lady: “Oh wow, how far along are you?”
Me: “39 weeks”, secretly thinking: and probably in labour!
Lady: “That’s impressive, I definitely wasn’t going to the gym when I was that far along. Hey, didn’t you used to teach Body Combat here?”
Me: “Yep, I did”…..please stop talking to me, I’m in labour
Lady: “How come you stopped teaching?”
Me: seriously…you want to have this conversation right now?! “Oh, you’re not allowed to do Body Combat when you’re pregnant, so I had to stop” (that was the shortest, albeit not completely true, answer that I could come up with). “I’m really sorry, but I have to run”.
I made it into the shower and then my water broke a bit more. This time there was a big gush of water. Once it had stopped, I quickly washed myself and started to get dry, when it started again. Another big gush. Again I washed and dried….and then it happened again! How am I going to get out of here if this keeps happening?
After the third time I waited for a minute. It seemed to have stopped, so I quickly washed and dried and went back over to my locker.
Getting back home
There were a lot of questions running through my head. How on earth am I going to get out of here if my water keeps breaking? Can there really be any more water, it already feels like Niagara falls has cascaded out of me!? Should I go straight to the hospital or go home first?
As the changing rooms were down in the depths of the building, unfortunately there is no phone signal, so I couldn’t call neither Mr A nor the hospital. There were no contractions though, so I decided I would call the hospital on my way home to see what they recommended.
The next problem to solve was that I needed to get on the bus to get home. What happened if water started gushing again?
Luckily for me, the weather had turned quite cold and I had my big maternity winter coat with me, which reached all the way down to my knees. I proceeded to shove my gym towel down my trousers, like it was a mammoth sanitary towel. No-one could see it thanks to my coat and the waddling walk I had to do didn’t raise any suspicions as it just looked like the walk of a heavily pregnant lady!
On the way to the bus stop I first of all tried to call Mr A. It wouldn’t connect. I called the friend I was due to meet to tell her what had happened and she was super excited. As she works in the same company as my Mr A I asked her to check if she could see him online on the internal chat system. He was away. Bugger, still no way to contact him. It was lunchtime and he was most likely in the canteen, where there is no connection. I sent him a message and knew he should be available soon enough.
I jumped on the bus, laughing to myself at the funny situation with my gym towel between my legs. The next call to make was to the hospital. They said that as the contractions hadn’t started there was no huge rush, but told me to come in about an hour and a half later. That was perfect as it gave me time to get home and pop the last couple of things into my hospital bag and hopefully get hold of Mr A!
As I was nearing home Mr A called me back. He was excited and nervous. Luckily the office is less than 20 minutes on the bus from home, so he was back in no time.
Waiting for the surges to start
We got an Uber to the hospital and made our way to the maternity ward. The midwives greeted us and showed us to a small room, where they hooked me up to a machine to see if there were any contractions going on. Nope not yet.
I asked if we really had to stay or if we could go home until things were further along. Unfortunately they said we had to stay due to the increased risk of infection once the water has broken.
On top of that they said they if contractions hadn’t started by midnight that they would want to induce me. Oh no… interventions are being mentioned already and we haven’t even started properly yet. I messaged my sister, who is an amazing energy healer, and asked her to do some distant healing on me to get things moving!
As we were in a fancy pants private Swiss hospital, a lady from the “hospitality department” came to introduce herself. She explained how the meal service worked and asked us to fill in our menu choices for the next couple of days! I was in total awe. I mean I knew this hospital was good, but this blew me away. There was an amazing choice of food, plus twice a day I would be served a bone broth, to help with recovery, and a breast feeding tea.
While we were waiting for things to get started I decided to do some work (yes really!). We were in the middle of trying to buy quite a complicated buy-to-let property in the UK and I really wanted to get the mortgage application submitted before the baby arrived. Several calls and many emails later the mortgage broker finally had everything he needed.
By now it was coming up to 6pm and there were still no signs of contractions. It was time to get things moving. There are some nice views of Lake Zurich nearby, so we went for a little walk to admire the view. As we came back I asked Mr A to do some light tough massage on my back. By now my sister had also been doing some energy work on me too. Finally I could feel some contractions starting!
This is where I’m going to leave it for part I. In part II you’ll hear much more about my hypnobirthing story and how it helped me during the toughest parts of labour. See you there!