A Healing Birth by Monica Eleazar-Manzano

The night of March 12, just a day after my husband, Montri’s birthday, I started having cramping sensations very similar to PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome). They were surely contractions but were still far apart with no real pattern. In the previous days, I also saw a series of ‘bloody show’ (blood tinged mucus from the softening of the cervix) in the toilet. I felt that the arrival of our new baby was near… I just needed to wait it out. We used a contraction timer app which I downloaded in both my ipad and iphone. When I found it too much of a hassle to be right next to my gadgets after each contraction, I just manually took note of the intervals with pen and paper. The last book on birthing I read was Hypnobirthing. 

I used the breathing techniques during surges/contractions to keep me present and calm. Then I started self-administering remedies from the birthing homeopathy kit and scanned some prayers from the Zohar specifically for labor and birth.

I sent a text message to both my midwife, Deborah and my doula, Irina at 3:21 am that contractions were already 6-8 minutes apart and that I could no longer sleep. I knew that Deborah was going to come when I could no longer talk in between contractions (which wasn’t my case because I could still concentrate and speak in between them) but since she would be coming all the way from Antipolo, my husband and I wondered whether we should set up the birthing pool so at least it would be ready when they came. 

Read the FULL STORY on Monica's website Birthing and Beyond. Monica recounts her birth experience  - a successful unassisted home VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean)  in a series of three articles.