Yanina's Birth Story
From Miguel: Yanina birthed our baby Gabriela 100% naturally on Thanksgiving day at 3:49 pm (11/22/07). The sun was literally shining on us as we celebrated the joyful arrival of the newest Morejohn nina into the world. She is very aware and is a robustly healthy 7.5 lb bundle of beauty. Yanina's composure and strength were extraordinary, she is resting well and we are immensely grateful for this gift we have been given. Thanksgiving day will never be the same for us again.
Here Yanina receives acupuncture during her labor
Yanina wrote this to me a couple of weeks later, and I wanted to post it so that all of you that reading can benefit from her words....
Thank you for your e-mails and for all your support throughout my pregnancy and with some of my troubles and difficulties. I hope most of them are over. I have to admit, that somehow in the preparation for birthing and breast-feeding ( I am now very glad I did a lot of homework on this topic in advance) I was completely unprepared to the physical hardships of postpartum. Somehow I thought I would be reasonably back to normal and ready to go just in few days, but it is only lack of thinking on my part. I wish I was more prepared just by knowing about it, for the weakness and swelling and body and joint aches and other postpartum discomforts that really require to stay in bed and rest for several weeks.... But this is all minor and time, rest and good nutrition and care, which I am lucky to receive consistently from Miguel is helping and I am getting my strength back every day.
I know I owe to you my birth story :) that you could share with the group.
My birth ended very well but was not an easy one - 41 hour birthing, Gabriela was posterior (head down but facing my belly instead of my back) so everything was progressing very slowly, at the end of 41 hours because her heart rate was not stable I was facing a serious interventions (epidural, internal fetal monitoring and very likely a cesarian and we agreed to all due to dangers to the baby - her cord was also around her neck as it turned out), but as she/me heard about C-section possibility, she suddenly turned the correct way and I had to push her out in sort of an emergency way in 19 minutes, so ended up with some tearing.
Miguel and Erica, our doula, were with me all the time helping, comforting and as biggest support in going through the process and making all the decisions. OHSU midwifes and delivery nurses were very supportive, attentive and respectful of our natural birth desires and Hypnobabies techniques (not once I heard the word pain when in the hospital). The very first midwife we saw in the hospital after 10 hours of birthing waves advised us to go home to avoid interventions. She figured out that Gabriela was posterior and predicted that birth will progress very slowly unless baby turns. She sent us home with several set of exercises to turn the baby, which we tried to do vigorously. Carrie, my friend acupuncturist came in and also tried to help to speed things up and to relax. Hardest thing in all the time of pressure waves was plain fatigue and inability to sit, lie down, rest or eat, but never pain.
My birthing was w/o drugs and natural and a very good ending to everybody's pleasant surprise on Thanksgiving day of November 22nd. Hypnobabies worked very well for me as due to the practice and mental conditioning I didn't not perceive my birthing waves as painful, but just as pressure and used deep breathing at each one, as a result afterwards I had a lot of chest and lung pain and discomfort - turned out to be a lot of deep breathing for so many hours. I also naturally choose to be in the standing (or on my knees) position for almost entire birthing time. We are very happy family now and the doula helped again with showing me how to latch correctly on day 3, since then we do not have any major breast feeding problems. It is still hard and we are going through an adjustment period, but we cherish every moment as Gabriela is growing and her and our worlds are changing every day.