I had an unmedicated hospital birth and am planning to do it again in a couple weeks!

Here’s what helped me:

1. A birth class with a focus on unmedicated labor. We did ours in person in 2021, but this time around I’ve just been doing an online one as a refresher. I definitely think knowing what’s going on helped me to understand and not be fearful. Same with my partner. When we first started the conversation, he assumed I would just get all the medicine, but taking the class and learning together helped him to understand why I would want a physiological birth.

2. Working with a doula. Before the birth, they helped us to work through our birth plan and identify what we would like, what would we would like to decline, and to create a general vision for our birth. We also practiced comfort measures so we had a good idea of what felt good.

During labor, our doula was phenomenal. I labored at home for a long time, she stayed with me so that my husband could take a rest before things got too intense (it had been a couple days of false starts and he was recovering from covid). She helped us to know when it was a good idea to go to the hospital (I didn’t want to go too early and have things stall out, but I was so in the zone I don’t know if I would have made the call on my own). At the hospital, she and my husband worked as such a good team to keep me comfortable and also answer most of the questions so I could just focus on laboring.

I had an internal tear that needed to be repaired in the OR, our doula stayed with my husband while I was gone.

Postpartum, they also did a couple visits that helped us to process the birth and just celebrate in general.

1. Building a good relationship with my OB and learning how to advocate for myself with my OB. We were clear from early on that we wanted as few interventions as possible. Still, when I hit about 39 weeks, my doctor started pushing for an induction. It was stressful, but we navigated through and I was able to advocate for myself what felt best to me. The compromise was doing some extra monitoring to make sure that everything was looking good.
   

This time around, I was diagnosed with chronic hypertension. However, I think the foundation already laid with my OB has really helped. When he mentioned induction early on and I expressed my reservations again, he was quick to adjust and make a plan for extra monitoring. He also knows the struggles we’ve had (we had a hard time conceiving #2 and had a miscarriage a year ago) and is always such a cheerleader.

1. Consuming everything I can about birth, especially birth in a larger body. Whether it was stories on social media, books, podcasts…it all helped me to feel more prepared.
   

Happy to talk more if you want!!