Birth story - Michelle and baby Nicolas

My pregnancy was crazier than I ever imagined. I found out I was pregnant at 24 weeks and was living in China at the moment. My husband and I decided to go to his home country Colombia to have the baby since his sister is a doctor specializing on obstetrics.

I heard about hypnobirthing from a friend and being that I’d always been afraid of birth I wanted to believe it was something positive and that our bodies were perfect for this.

I honestly have zero pain tolerance so I wasn’t 100% sure if I would be able to make it throughout. My parents (both doctors) did not believe I could do it and laugh at me for telling them what I wanted to do. (One of the reasons why we didn’t go to them to have the baby)

Being in Colombia, and in a small town, I was received with much sketchiness, but the support of my husband and my in laws helped me believe in myself and in this program.

I stared having contractions during day 1 past 40 weeks, but I wasn’t even sure they were the real thing since they came and went and were so soft.

40+2 I had a doctor’s appointment (20 minutes away from my city) when we got to the appointment the doctor had an emergency and told us to meet him around 2:00 pm. Throughout the day I was having contractions every 6-7 minutes apart, but again they were really soft so I didn’t think this was it.

We walked around town with my in-laws and my husband, until it was time to meet the doctor. When we saw him he decided to check me and said I was 5cm dilated, we couldn’t believe it.

He told us to go get my bag and come back around 7:00 pm to be hospitalized. So we went home and grabbed my bag and the babies and I sat on my birthball and watched Desperate Housewives until it was 7:00 pm. I wasn’t ready to go back to the hospital, but pressure from my sister in law made us go back to the hospital.

When we got there the doctor said I was 7cm and that I needed to be hospitalized, but that I would be given a catheter because of hospital policy. I’m extremely afraid of needles and I knew this was going to make me more stressed so we decided to go to a friend’s house to wait it out.

Around 11:00pm I was just exhausted and wanted a bed to sleep so I decided to go to the hospital so we could finally get some rest. We had paid for a private room and we thought we would be staying there until ready.

When we got the hospital they made me change out of my clothes even though I had my own PJ’s and attached me to a machine.

We were in a room that had 4 more beds, my husband was given a plastic chair to sit on next to me. I was getting stressed but he read one of the scripts and helped me put my headphones on to listen to positive affirmations.

We ended up spending the night there and around 6 am they checked me again and said I was 8 cm and to relax since I was almost there.

It was a rough night, but we were excited it was almost happening. However I was exhausted and starving and tired of eating healthy cookies which were the snacks we had brought. That’s when we found out about hospital policies that I wasn’t supposed to be eating... which I had mentioned before I would be doing to my doctor and he said it was fine.

Around 10 am they checked me again and said I was 7cm, which started to stress me again because I was going backwards?

However my husband helped me to relax again with a light touch massage and positive affirmations.

My contractions were getting stronger and I was sitting at the edge of the bed whenever they would come but I would fall asleep in between because I was that tired. Another doctor saw me and asked me if he could break my waters since it would help speed up labor, since he said my contractions shouldn’t be letting me sleep.

After using my BRAIN I decided to go ahead. Afterwards my surges started to get stronger and I would start to tense up, but my husband kept reminding me of my breathing and would help me calm down. I would still fall asleep between contractions because I was extremely exhausted. Around 1:30 I felt like it was time and told the doctors, but since I was still so calm (compared to ladies that would come screaming) they believed I still had a while to go, except for one nurse that told me if I felt like pushing to do it so with my contractions. So I started doing that and the doctors came and realized my baby was crowing so they rushed me to the birth room.

A few minutes later at 2:00 pm exactly my baby was on top of me. I couldn’t believe it. The wait was definitely more tiring than actually getting my baby out.

My placenta was delivered with a massage and off I was to another bed. My husband got to have skin to skin with our baby too.

I’m so glad for the Positive Birth Community for helping believe I could give birth without much pain.

Everyone in the hospital was impressed and even my parents after hearing everything asked me to tell them more about hypnobirthing.

Thank you!