Please share your positive natural hospital-birth stories!

[9jawife]

I have been seeing a wonderful team of midwives who deliver at one of the local hospitals. But I'm still a bit nervous about delivering in the hospital. Would love to hear your positive stories if you don't mind sharing.

 

[BellarinaBaby]

I had a wonderful natural hospital birth. I had planned on having a non-medicated birth, so my husband and I took Bradley classes to prepare. We also hired our Bradley coach to be our doula. My water broke in the early morning hours and off to the hospital I went. During labor, I only had my husband and doula in the room and they massaged me during contractions and helped me stay relaxed. Our doula also had me sit on the toilet facing the wall while my husband rubbed my back, she made me sit there long enough to have 5 contractions, then I would go back to the bed and lie down. I went from 2cm to 10cm dilated in about 6 hours. The nurses and midwives were great, no one offered pain medication and they let me labor how I wanted. Once I started pushing, all the pain seemed to go away, it's amazing. My son was born and I was able to have about 30 min of skin to skin before they weighed him and cleaned him. I had such a great experience, that I think for our next baby, I would love to try and do a home birth. I hope your labor and delivery go well!

 

[tinytabby]

I planned a home birth but had to be induced in hospital due to meconium in the waters.

It was a wonderful birth despite the drip! There was only a midwife present and we were very relaxed most of the time, listening to music and chatting.

Because it was an induction, I did go for pain relief (gas and air, and later diamorphine) but I avoided an epidural and any other interventions and LO was born very easily. It was fantastic.

The best thing you can do is not worry. Relax, make your room as homely as possible and trust the staff and your baby.

 

[SparkleUK]

I had a wonderful birth experience in a hospital.
I had a specific birth plan to be as natural as possible and the hospital fully supported this. I was low dependency so had my own room with en suite, I spent 2 hours of my 4 hour labour in a lavender bath having my back rubbed with lavender oil, watching Britains got talent with gas and air. Baby was back to back so super painful!
I went from 1-4 cm dilated in 2 hours and when I got on bed to be checked, I went from 4-10cm in 40 mins. I pushed 6 times and she popped out.
I had skin on skin for 15 mins as had to go be stitched but my partner then had skin on skin in my absence. My partner was allowed to stay overnight on a pull out bed to help me feed and change baby, and bond. I had as many baths afterwards that I wanted as I felt a bit grotty!
I can't praise my midwife and the hospital enough they were amazing. I'd love to do it all again in there! X

 

[smallpeanut]

Mine was perfect. 25 hr labour, got to hospital at 4pm, I was 2 cm moved to a ward til 11pm. Was 5 cms so moved to my own room with birthing pool. Gave birth with no gas and air or drugs at 2.24 am everything was calm and just as I wanted it x

 

[babyface15]

edit: see post below

 

[babyface15]

I had a natural hospital birth in North America using hypnobirthing techniques and nitrous oxide during transition. I really recommend the n.o. for this stage as I found it made it very manageable and I actually remember it fondly I even said I felt like i was at home lol which is a great thing. I had a detailed birth plan and luckily had caregivers who were very supportive of natural birth. Where I'm from you don't choose your labor staff, it just depends who is on call when you get there. If you have supportive midwives then you should have nothing to worry about!

I labored for 6 hours and had 6 hours of pushing due to back to back presentation, but found it all very manageable by focusing on relaxing into each contraction (learned through hypnobirthing). the pushing stage was hard work but had no pain!! I also had a doula which was really important to the success of my natural birth!

are you in the UK or north America? if your hospital has a policy of no eating or drinking in labor I would recommend that you sneak food (i had honey sticks and peanut butter) and drink (like gatorade) for energy. Good luck!!

 

[9jawife]

I had a natural hospital birth in North America using hypnobirthing techniques and nitrous oxide during transition. I really recommend the n.o. for this stage as I found it made it very manageable and I actually remember it fondly I even said I felt like i was at home lol which is a great thing. I had a detailed birth plan and luckily had caregivers who were very supportive of natural birth. Where I'm from you don't choose your labor staff, it just depends who is on call when you get there. If you have supportive midwives then you should have nothing to worry about!

I labored for 6 hours and had 6 hours of pushing due to back to back presentation, but found it all very manageable by focusing on relaxing into each contraction (learned through hypnobirthing). the pushing stage was hard work but had no pain!! I also had a doula which was really important to the success of my natural birth!

are you in the UK or north America? if your hospital has a policy of no eating or drinking in labor I would recommend that you sneak food (i had honey sticks and peanut butter) and drink (like gatorade) for energy. Good luck!!

Hi there, I'm in the U.S. I too have prepared a birth plan and was told by two of the midwives that it was pretty much doable. They did say I could eat and drink. I will not be getting an I.V. I am lucky to be near a hospital that supports natural birth, skin-to-skin, rooming in, etc. We do not have N.O. as an option here (that's the same thing as gas and air, right?) But I have faith my hypnobabies training and water birth will be enough for pain management.

 

[Josefin]

I had a perfect natural hospital birth with my second. Started feeling painful contractions after a whole day of BH. Took a shower and was singing trough the contracrions. After a few hours we decided it was best to go to the hospital. When we came in I got monitored for about 30 minutes. Then my contractions were pretty bad but I managed to breath through them. A MW came to check me and I was 10cm! Changed my clothes, started walking towards the delivery room and got my first "I need to push" contraction. Got to the delivery room and one minute of pushing and she was out!

 

[BubsMom17]

I had a wonderful hospital natural birth.
I told them I wanted to go natural, the nurses said, OK, let us know if you change your mind.
I was in mid-labor when there was a shift change, so the first nurses were very helpful in trying to help me breathe, they let me move as I wanted, walk around as I wanted to, etc. They pretty much left me alone unless I asked for someone.
When they second mid-wife came I was in serious labor, 8-10 cms. She was wonderful! She held my hands, showed my husband how to support me, just laughed when I told her to get the "f*cking birthing ball out of my face," she helped me walk when I needed to, and she basically just told me how great I was doing the whole time!
The nurses even mailed me a card at my home congratulating me and telling me how great I did! I made me feel really special.

I can't wait to labor with these women again.

 

[babyface15]

yes, I think its the same. except I was attached to a big tank of it, not the little hand held things they have in the uk. are you sure you don't have it? I didn't think we had it in Canada but turns out its just not used very often. if you don't I think you can definitely do it with hypnobabies and water!! just keep focused and get someone to remind you when things feel really tough that it means you're almost there

 

[tinytabby]

Gas and Air AKA nitrous oxide or entonox. It's used loads in the UK - you get offered it before any other type of pain relief.

I found it helped with the breathing through contractions as you have a kind of mouthpiece to suck on. It was nice earlier on in active labour as it did help to take the edge off the contractions. But once I was in the later stages of labour I didn't want it, I wanted to do it all myself.

 

[XJessicaX]

I was induced for my 2nd with the gel and they broke my waters so my labour wasnt totally 'natural' I guess. I used the TENS machine for the entirety of my labour which helped immensely and good breathing techniques and then used a tiny bit of G&A but found it annoying so gave it to my husband who was panicking! Urge to push came and I pushed my daughter out very efficiently! Loved that I had fully experienced it as my first I had an epidural and then a spinal block!

 

[TicToc]

I had a great experience on accident dong it natural at a hospital. The staff were great and didn't push things on me at all. Of course back then I didn't know as much so I didn't care about cord clamping or immediate skin on skin so had I then I might have different feelings about it. This time around I will be asking all the policy questions when we tour the hospitals birthing center to make sure I don't need to switch plans but so far I plan to do it again at the hospital with my OB. I will research hypnobirthing and DH is an awesome coach/advocate so I feel confident we can do it how we want. One good piece of advice I saw on one of these threads was to not go running to the hospital at the first onset of contractions, that way they aren't getting impatient with you if you are there a long time. Last time I went right away, this time I will take my time getting there and just hope we don't have her in the car somewhere

 

[juhnayrae]

I did a natural hospital birth just two weeks ago. It was incredible, although it was the hardest and most painful thing I've ever done, it was definitely worth it. We made the decision to do a hospital birth because DH's sister was born with birth defects (holes in her heart, a rare eye disorder, and she's missing her corpus callosum) and we wanted the safety net of being in the hospital should something be wrong with our baby. Although we wanted to be in a hospital, we were both adamant from the beginning about wanting to do a natural birth. I was lucky enough to find a group of midwives that have hospital privileges, but are very supportive of natural births with little or no interventions.

I woke up at 5:30 on a Sunday morning with back pain that kept coming and going. Eventually it started to wrap around into my abdomen and I knew they were contractions because they were different than the BH I had been experiencing before. I timed them for an hour and they were about 7 minutes apart. Later that morning, DH and I went for a walk and I sat in the bath, but nothing was slowing them down. We called our midwife at 11:30 when they were timing about 3-4 minutes apart and were lasting anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute. She told us to make our way to the hospital since I tested positive for group B strep and she wanted to get me started on the antibiotics.

When I first got in she checked me around 12:45pm and I was already dilated to 4/5 and was 70% effaced. We were pretty excited, but from then on things went pretty slowly. I walked, sat on the exercise ball, rocked in a chair, and got in a birthing tub in our room, but by 7:00 I had only dilated to a 5/6 and was 90% effaced. My waters hadn't broken and my midwife told us she could break them in order to speed things up, but that it was totally up to us. We decided to have her break my waters because I was scared to labor late into the night and get exhausted. She broke my water at 7:30 and IMMEDIATELY I felt a difference in the contractions. Ohhhhh my goodness! They were intense!

From then on I got more and more intense contractions, sometimes 4-5 in a row without a break. My midwife checked me again 2 hours later and to my dismay I had only dilated to a 6/7. I started to get really discouraged and scared that I'd be laboring all night. So I continued to walk, use the exercise ball, and eventually got back into the tub. After being in the tub for 30 minutes, around midnight, I started to get the worst contractions and I thought I was going to lose control. My midwife then told me to get out as soon as the contraction ended so she could check me. To my surprise I was dilated to 9cm!! She kept asking me if I felt pressure, which I did, and I started to feel the need to push. In 15 minutes she told me I was complete and 13 minutes later (after about 5 or 6 pushes) our sweet girl was born! While I was pushing my midwife actually told me to slow down because it was going so quickly, she was scared I would tear. I couldn't control myself at that point though, I wanted that baby OUT!

DH was amazing through the whole process, he was so supportive and helpful! I couldn't have done it all without him. Our midwife and the nurse were also amazing, despite the pain they were all the best support team I could have asked for. Natural labor was definitely the hardest and most painful thing I have ever gone through. I labored for almost 20 hours and spent 5 of those in hard labor. Overall, I'm really glad I did a natural birth, I think it was great for both me and baby. My recovery has been amazing, I haven't really had any pain other than soreness. My daughter is doing great too, she's been getting glowing reviews from all of the doctors.

The rule that you immediately forget the pain of labor when you first hold your baby was not all the case for me. I still shudder when I think about those hard labor contractions!! Every time I look at her though, I realize I would do it all over again, we're just so head over heels in love! I don't regret going natural at the hospital at all!

 

[acrossthepond]

This is such a great thread! I'm due early November with my first and have chosen a hospital birthing center this time around. I'm really happy with the midwife centered care so far and everyone seems really onboard with my natural, unmedicated birth plan (provided everything ticks along nicely and there are no surprises of course).

I was wondering... has anyone come head to head with a hospital's policy about having to induce if its been 12 hours since your waters broke? I'm a bit paranoid that I'm going to find myself between this particular rock/hard place and was wondering how others might have prepared for this or dealt with it?

Thanks!