What to Do When Baby Arrives Early……and You're on Holiday!

A few months ago, bebo mia hypnobirthing clients Hubert & Zara welcomed their baby girl into the world in a rather unexpected place..Montreal. They were out of province on business when their little one decided to make her entrance! Below is the story of how they stayed calm and made this surprising experience the best it could be.

“Baby made a surprise early arrival on Fri. Aug 31st @ 10:12 am

Hubert and I were in Montreal for a short 2 day work trip when my
water broke at the hotel the night of Monday August 27th.  We didn’t want to
chance coming home and giving birth on the road so we checked into a
hospital to make sure I was ok.

Without our midwives and without our family or anything familiar
around us, we relied greatly on our Hypnobirthing techniques to stay calm
during this unexpected situation.  We still wanted our natural
Hypnobirth and we even brought our package with us to practice while
we were away.  Good thing we had it with us!

At the hospital, it was difficult to keep everyone on our  birth plan
since it was an unfamiliar hospital and we had a hard time
communicating with many of the staff.  Oh, and with the staff changing
every shift, we kept having different people who didn’t actually
respect our needs for a calm, quiet place to birth.  Many nurses and
doctors we dealt with even told us flat out that they didn’t have time
to read our birth plan and didn’t care about it.  But Hubert was my
Silver Back Gorilla and did so much to advocate for me despite
resistance from “ego driven” hospital staff.  We played our
affirmations and kept calm as much as possible.

We left the hospital after realizing that being there was halting the
natural process of opening up…..different people coming in and out,
being loud, etc.  We opted to check out and go back to the hotel
until I felt the surges happening closer together.  We realized that the baby was safe
inside me and that there was no infection so I felt better to leave
the hospital environment.

By Wednesday, the surges were close together and we were happy to be back in the
hospital…but it didn’t happen that quickly. It took all Wednesday and Thursday to
get to from 1-7cm – I blame it on the constant monitoring (20 mins on
the monitor every hour on the hour) and all the ins and outs of
hospital staff which kept stalling my flow.  I was exhausted by
then. All day Thursday, I remained at 7cm  so early morning Friday
(at 1am), Hubert and I opted to take some Pitocin and we feel the
decision (although not our ideal) was the best we could make in this situation.

I had no pain medication and was going into my zone, breathing my baby down
with Hubert’s support.  The staff kept making him feel unwanted and
they were quite dismissive to him, but he stayed right there by my
side and we kept on with the Hypnobirthing techniques all the way to
the end.

The baby crowned and I was not afraid of the “ring of fire” at all!  I
wanted to get baby out already and see him or her.  Hubert held the
mirror for me and I saw the top of baby’s head and that gave me
incentive to keep pushing on. When the head came out, I had a little
more in me to push and all of baby came too.  Hubert and I reached for
our baby and he announced that it was a baby girl!!  **Looks like we
were a class of all baby girls at Hypnobirthing**

She lay on my chest and within 30 seconds, she went to my breast and
started to feed.  She was super hungry!  I was elated and on a
high from what we just witnessed.

Although it was a challenge to keep our birth plan intact amidst the
environment we were in, we kept as close to it as possible and in the
end had the most incredible experience bringing baby into our world.

Baby is doing extremely well!  She is perfect!!  We named her Ocean.
We hope she is fluent in French when she starts to speak.”

Thank you for sharing your story about this unexpected, yet amazing experience! Congratulations to Zara, Hubert and baby Ocean, and cheers to Hypnobirthing!

Check out our directory for a local Hypnobirthing practitioner.