"Pain-free" Natural Childbirth...

Say what?!

I think that was my reaction the first time I heard about hypnotizing yourself for a comfortable, natural childbirth. It was when I was pregnant with T and a friend passed along her Home Study Course. She had tried it for her labor but lost concentration during a long and difficult ride to the Birth Center (they lived 45 min away). She admitted she had only done parts of the course and wasn't really expecting it to work.

Hmm, one point against.

Nevertheless, curiosity got the better of us and we made our own half-hearted attempt for a couple of weeks. But a combination of the cheesy scripts, the overzealous bolding and underlining every other sentence throughout the manual, and most of all, the doubt that came from not knowing if I could be hypnotized, or what this whole labor/birth thing would feel like, led me to conclude it was not the birth prep that I wanted to go into this scary thing called Labor with.

Fast forward to this pregnancy. The birth prep course we took for T's birth was helpful, but I wanted more tools to help me have a natural birth this time. We looked into Bradley, Lamaze, and finally returned to Hypnobirthing and its more robust cousin, Hypnobabies. Again, I was skeptical. Then I stumbled upon this Hypnosis for Birth board (and specifically birth stories likethese ones) on BabyCenter.com. Stories of regular women from all over writing in telling about their incredible, unusually fast, easy and most remarkably, comfortable births! I also started googling Hypnobabies on You Tube, and watching a bunch of women, silent or gently "ahhh"-ing through parts of labor that I was decidedly UN-silent through!

It turned out our homebirth midwife had delivered hypno babies too, and had her own stories of the remarkable relaxation the women were able to achieve through self-hypnosis. One lady she attended last year was lying quietly in her birth pool when Marla arrived. She raised her head after a little while to announce calmly, eyes still closed, "baby is crowning." A moment later, "Head is out" Marla came over to shine a light to check the baby's color underwater, which was perfectly pink. The baby was then born... completely healthy and fast asleep!!!

I'm not expecting one of these sleeping labors, or a 22 min dad-delivered-at-home birth because the family never realized they were in labor until the baby's head emerged. But it does give me hope that my labor could be much more relaxing and pleasant than it was last time.

Not that getting a fairy tale natural birth is simply a matter of watching a pocket-watch swing before me as B croons, "you are getting verry sleeepy..." It's actually a lot of work, listening to 1-2 x 40 min scripts daily, doing self practice 2-5x daily, practicing with your birth partner every other day, as well as a lot of reading. With my current work schedule and a 2 yr old that is a pro at distractions, I'm lucky if I do one daily script (usually as I fall asleep at night), and practice with B once a fortnight! So just like college, I'm 5 weeks away from D-day and nervous that I'm going to fail the exam due to insufficient studying.

Nevertheless, I'm hoping my subconscious is paying attention when my conscious mind is busy negotiating with a sleepy preschooler and freaking out about the piles of e-mails I still have to get to... And that somehow, when Noah's Birth Day is finally upon us, that this hypno-anesthesia hocus pocus kicks in!

Just for the record, I've already had one point in Hypnobabies' favor... I got a flu shot a few weeks ago and as the needle was poised above my arm I realized this would be a good mini test! I quickly got into the "awake" hypnosis mode, directing my anesthesia to my arm where the tip was about to enter. I don't mind needles but there's usually a pinch and ache involved. Amazed, I felt nothing more than light pressure at the sight of the injection. The nurse asked me if I was OK as I did my weird relaxation (I think she was worried I was going to pass out). I just wanted her to leave so I could jump up and down yelling to B that it worked!

What's in a name?

I don't know if other families out there find it easy to name their babies, but for B and I this process has involved two rounds of months-long testing, trying, researching, shortlisting, trying again, and finally, throwing caution to the wind and choosing!

We wanted to name this baby as soon as possible, so T could learn the name and begin to associate the bump of mommy's tummy with the real, live, baby that will be hanging out in her house (a lot), come November. It still took us eight of this little guy's 9-10 months' inside to decide! And now that she knows, trying to keep it a secret until the birth has become futile.

The process to choose a name was made a little more complicated by the first and middle name we chose for T, honoring her two maternal grandmothers. We found ourselves in a complicated bargaining process - how to choose a name from each family, reversing the order of lineage that we used for T to be fair, keeping the second middle and last names to be the same for our nuclear family, and maybe, just maybe, fitting in a name that we really liked just in and of itself. All without burdening this little guy with a string of monikers so long he would have to risk committing fraud every time he filled out an official document.

So what is it already?!

;-)

Early on I fell in love with the name Noah. I don't know any Noah's personally but those I know of and hear of are sweet and caring, living up to their name's meaning: restful, comfort.

Which just left the middle name. After wrestling for ages with other family names that we also liked, I woke up one morning, turned to B and asked, what do you think about your name? Neither of us had ever suggested this, and B immediately choked up. That solidified it, leading us to start/continue a family tradition to give the first boy's father's name as a middle name (as B has).

It's now wonderful to be calling him by his name. T loves saying it, and telling anyone and everyone who will listen about her "baby brudder, Noah!" She especially likes talking to him when he's kicking (aka trying to stretch out my poor stomach for more space in these last few, increasingly cramped weeks!).

We can't wait to meet you, Noah.