10 Ways I Prepared for my Dream Birth (and GOT IT!)

by Danielle Steller | DanielleSteller.com

“Wait, you’re not gonna take the drugs?” a stranger says, who’d just overheard my conversation with a friend at a party, clearly noticing my soon-to-birth belly. “Nope, I don’t plan to..” Not that it’s any of her goddam business. “Oh trust me, when the time comes you’ll be SCREAMING for the epidural!!”. Hormones or not, I was just about ready to knock this b&#($ out.

“Why, do you have kids?” I snap back quickly, blood already boiling over. “Oh no I’ve just heard it’s, like, the worst pain in the world.” Oh. Right. So she heard from someone at some point somewhere that sh*t was hard, so felt the need to pass on her useless, uneducated, scaremongering nonsensical knowledge (if you could call it that!) onto me.

*Breathes deeply* For the millionth time.. I just let it go in one ear, and out the other.

This is the kind-of BS so many pregnant women have to experience. What’s upsetting is that its not just from strangers, it can also be family and friends, with the best of intentions (you’d hope) sharing their birth horror stories.

You may not realize it, but every time you’re exposed to this, it sits in your subconscious. Especially if you’re a first timer, you don’t know what to expect. Each story can start to chip away at your confidence and let the fear in. Not to mention how panicked the whole process looks on TV and film.

So amidst the fear mongering and actually never having done this birth thing before – how the frig did I not lose my sh#%?!! I’ve compiled a little list of the things that, I believe, got me through my first time birthing.

1. I Meditated Like A Boss.

I literally meditated almost everyday for a year. So if one more person wants to tell me I’m “lucky” I had an “easy” labor and birth.. they can @$%$ right off, haha. This was not luck. Nor easy, really. It was mental preparation. Mind over matter, 100%. I am certain without my meditation practise that I would not have been so well equipped at keeping my cool through the peaks and troughs of labor. I have suffered with anxiety attacks in the past, so I know first hand how much power the mind has over the body.

Dee’s tip: If you’ve never tried meditating before and you’re not sure where to start, download 1GiantMind, an app specifically designed to introduce first timers to the practise of meditation. If you’re still into it beyond that, check out the free guided meditation clips by Jason Stephenson on YouTube.

2.We Hired A Doula.

After Ryan and I had done our research, we decided that to provide the best possible long term health outcome for both myself and the baby, it would be ideal to have a natural birth. That means – no pain relief – minimal medical intervention – and doing everything we could to increase our chances of this occurring. That’s when we looked at the stats and decided to hire a doula.

Some people say its a wasted expense, but have you ever heard that from someone that has hired one? Probably not. And you won’t hear it from me.

Our doula, Zoe Burchett, was instrumental to keeping things calm and natural. During the pregnancy, she gave me books to read to get educated, she helped us shape our birth preferences and answered any questions we had along the way, even attending our midwife appointments. She was only a call away as I went into labour, kept us company all day and literally held my hand while Lana’s head was crowning! She was an absolute angel. Oh did I mention, she took photos too! 🙌

Another huge reason we decided to hire a doula was to ease the burden off Ryan so he wouldn’t be stressed out trying to time contractions or being my “go-get-me-stuff” person. This day was just as important for him as it was for me and with Zoe looking after everything birth, Ry was able to be present, emanate relaxed happy vibes and enjoy the journey with me.

3. I Prepared Pain Relief Alternatives (didn’t just hope for the best!).

I knew that during the throws of labour, if I didn’t have some clear alternatives prepared, I’d be dreaming about that magical serum (aka epidural) that could take me to la la land at the click of a finger. So to resist the temptation, I had several options I could fall back on;

Gas: Didn’t end up using it
Warm shower: Didn’t use this either
Meditation: It got me through early labour.

TENS machine: When active labour kicked in, the TENS machine took the edge off. Ryan set it all up and tested it out on me quite early on, just so we didn’t have to fiddle around with it on the day.
Warm bath: The warm water in the tub was what I most looked forward to and it was sublime. I managed to get to it during transition and crowning, so she ended up being born in there, just like I’d hoped!

Dee’s tip: For more details on the exact tools I used in each stage of labour, read more at The Day I Became A Mama: The Water Birth Of Lana Aurora

4. We Chose The Perfect Hospital For Us

Don’t just assume that all hospitals are the same, they most definitely aren’t. Each differs in their standards of care, policy and procedure.

Our local hospital which is an easy 20 minute drive from home, turned out to be a nightmare. We went to our first appointment excited as new parents-to-be and were quickly deflated after a less-than-interested midwife spent our whole hour talking through the hospital policies (i.e. If you choose an epidural, it’s an automatic episiotomy and forceps delivery. If you pass your due date by ** days, it’s hospital policy to be induced.) We both walked out feeling dis-empowered and deflated. When did birthing become so medicalized?

I contacted another hospital roughly 40 minutes drive from home. From the very first phone call with a chirpy midwife, I knew we found the place for us. We met almost every midwife in the team leading up to the birth and all were incredibly encouraging of Natural birth. When I reached my due date, induction wasn’t even mentioned, and they continued to say things like “baby will come in her own time”, which was so encouraging. And she did, only 2 days later. Their policies were in line with their relaxed culture and didn’t put pressure on women to be induced, nor did one decision for intervention dictate a domino effect of other interventions – each decision was able to be made in isolation according to the birth choices of the parents-to-be. Now that’s empowerment!

5. I Dreamed Up My Ideal Birth.

Seriously!! You’ve had this perfect little fusion baby roasting in your belly for nine freaking months, you can’t honestly tell me you haven’t dreamed about that moment you meet?!

If not.. do it now.

Unleash your wildest dreams in all their mushy hormonal glory.

I watched a heap of different types of births on YouTube and there were a few standout water births that looked so relaxing and goddess-like, I just knew it was my ultimate dream. The more I watched, the more prepared I felt. And they all happened to be hypnobirthing mamas, hence what drew me into the idea of doing the course. Just like most things in life, you gotta dream the dream to know the right path to take to achieve it!

6. We Completed a Hypnobirthing course.

..and it did not come cheap. It cost us $500 for the 2 day course, but it was well and truly worth it. The actual hypnobirthing techniques, I’ll admit, I didn’t really use on the day (I fell back on my familiar meditation practice instead) however the information on the stages of labor and what you go through physically and psychologically were invaluable.

There was a huge emphasis on just how important it is to relax and let your hormones do the work, to trust your instincts and let the oxytocin (your body’s natural painkiller: ten times stronger than morphine!!) take over. Knowing what was happening inside my body during labor was empowering and it took away the fear of the unknown.

They also went through every possible medical intervention with a fine tooth comb and explained the different scenarios you might need them for, and then the risks involved should you choose that path.

Now you’re probably wondering why I said we completed it. Well another awesome thing about this course was that they emphasised the importance of the birthing partner and taught us techniques partners could use to help distract mamas in labor such as light touch, massage, pressure points stimulation, guided meditation, etc. Attending the course together was a beautiful bonding activity. It made the whole thing feel so real.. like, this is really happening.. we are going to be parents, eek!!

Dee’s tip: We did Hypnobirthing with Jess Lowe from Path to Birth and highly recommend her classes.

7. I Did Some Heavy Reading.

Google was my bestie and these two books got my head into the right place:

The Positive Birth Book by Milli Hill
Magical Beginnings, Enchanted Lives by Deepak Chopra

8. I Created a Birth Preferences Manual

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some nutter who had a specific plan (we all know birth doesn’t work like that!), but I did know that being educated about my birth choices in any given situation would mean I was more likely to get the birth I wanted (a drug-free, completely natural water birth with minimal medical intervention) and that was enough for me.

After learning what I needed from all the points above (hypnobirthing, heavy reading and midwife/GP consults) Zoe suggested I use the diagrams from the Positive Birth book to create a visual chart of my preferences. That way, the midwives rostered on could see what my preferences were at a glance without having to ask (I figured I’d be a little too distracted to engage in conversation).

I literally went into that hospital so prepared I had a birth preferences manual for the midwives! I thought they’d be offended but they were actually pretty impressed and said they’d hoped more women approached birth this way.

Dee’s tip: Although my ideal birth was a water birth, I also outlined preferences in case of an emergency c-section and had a section on words/vocab I preferred medical practitioners use on the day in line with Hypnobirthing.

9. We Researched How To Induce Labor Naturally.

In the days leading up to my due date, we did every trick under the sun to avoid getting induced. From having a lot of sex (awkward when you’re tummy is so huge, but still fun!) to drinking raspberry leaf tea and eating dates daily. I can’t say any or all of it worked, but bubs did join us only 2 days after her due date.

It’s also rumoured that acupuncture and eating spicy food works too. Hey, if she took any longer I probably would have tried those as well!

Here is a brilliant summary I found, detailing 11 natural ways to induce labor, with advice on methods that have a decent medical research backing and warnings against the old wives tales which are just plain bogus (*clears throat*DON’T drink castor oil!).

10. I Created A Positive Birth bubble

The more positive birth stories you hear (and they do exist), the more settled you’ll become. The more you learn about the actual physical and mental process of labor and birth (that it doesn’t have to be a flustered mess like in the movies), the more empowered you will feel. Stay away from the fear mongering loons, anyone or anything that makes you feel anxious until the big day. Laurie explains the birth bubble so perfectly here.