Jacob John's Birth Story Part I

I think I'm going to have to do this in parts, seeing as though my time is now very limited with two. I should be resting, but my mind is racing from the last 24 hours worth of events and I'm itching to get it out in words.

Let me take this back a little to AJ's birth day. During my pregnancy with AJ, I planned on an epidural all along. I just didn't research birth and I wasn't interested in researching it either. I only had experience with some people at work who studied Bradley and ended up with interventions anyway and were so depressed about it, so it turned me off of natural birth. I didn't have a natural birth friendly OB anyway and my hospital is known for it's epidural and C-section rates, so no one was exactly pushing me to read up on births. I don't regret his birth in the least. He was healthy and strong and that is all that matters. Still, something inside of me after the birth just didn't sit right. It didn't feel normal or what it was supposed to be. It seemed so medical for such a miracle--and I had absolutely no complications. It was intervention after intervention. I got there, only 3cm, they gave me the IV, they had me walk and I ordered the epidural. The epidural confined me to the bed and slowed my labor down--so they gave me pitocin. The pitocin was not good for me or the baby, but in the end...after 18 long hours, I gave birth to a 8lb 2oz boy. I tore pretty bad and felt terrible for weeks.

Then my best friend enlightened me. She told me about hypnobirthing. It sounded amazing, but I was skeptical until she birthed her beautiful daughter McKenna med-free in a relaxed environment. I was so inspired that I started to research natural birth. I watched the documentary, the Business of Being Born. I googled and you tubed birth videos and I studied up on all forms of pain relief and hypnobirthing appealed to me the most. It made sense with my personality...

sorry...battery is dying. To be continued!