Jennifer's Story

Jennifer with her child “The choice of where to give birth was a very important decision for my husband and me,” says Jennifer of Saint Paul. “We knew we could choose the midwife to attend the birth, but that person might not be on call when it came time to deliver. “But the hospital where I’d deliver would be a given, so we really wanted to pick a place that we could trust with the vision of the birth that we wanted to have,” she says. “We didn’t take that decision lightly.”

Living on the East Side of Saint Paul, they were conveniently close to St. Joseph’s Hospital. “But even if it hadn’t been our local hospital, we would have gone out of our way to choose St. Joseph’s,” says Jennifer. “There was just no place else that fit as well for us.”

Jennifer and her husband chose the Maternity Care Center at St. Joseph’s Hospital because of its reputation for being very friendly for the natural birth process. “They have the lowest c-section rate in the metro by far, and that was a huge thing for me,” she says. “That just told me that their staff is very experienced and very open to letting things happen as naturally as possible.”

She was drawn to St. Joseph’s because of its waterbirth facility, and the staff’s experience with a technique known as hypnobirthing. “It’s a series of classes that HealthEast offers,” Jennifer explains. “They help you learn how to bring yourself into a state of deep relaxation to allow your body to do what it does naturally.”

You can hear the smile in Jennifer’s voice when she recalls the night her daughter came into the world. “It was wonderful. We had a beautiful birth. I had a very brief labor – the whole thing was only about six hours long. I went into labor about 9:30 at night, and just stayed home with my husband using the hypnobirthing techniques, which included deep breathing and some visualization. We stayed home until about 12:30 in the morning, and then went to the hospital.”

When she arrived at the hospital, things were moving along: she was already eight centimeters dilated. “They were trying to hurry up and fill up the waterbirth tub because they didn’t expect me to be that far along! But the staff was very calm and friendly and happy, very warm,” she remembers. “They did whatever my husband and I needed to be comfortable.”

HealthEast certified nurse midwives have embraced waterbirthing as a calming, natural option for many. Jennifer describes her experience. “We moved into the waterbirth room, and it was so nice and relaxing. It was very comforting for my body to be in the warm water.” The midwife arrived and a few hours later Jennifer’s daughter was born at 2:59.

Thanks to the support she received at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Jennifer says she was able to enjoy the whole labor experience. “I really felt like I could do anything and everything I needed to be comfortable. Having that freedom and that trust was essential to having the birth that I did, because had I not felt safe in the environment of the Maternity Care Center, there’s no way I could have relaxed and given birth so naturally and quickly."