Dear sweet Aubryn,

You are just over two months old now and the absolute light of my life! We have spent the last two months cuddling, nursing, and getting to know and love each other more and more each day. I could not imagine a more perfect little girl to join our family - your Brothers, Daddy, and I are so blessed.

This is the story of how you entered the world.

The summer is halfway gone and my winter baby is no longer a newborn. It is probably time to write my second born’s birth story before the finer points melt away like the snow already has!

My first born, Delsy, was born in June 2012 in the hospital using Hypnobabies. It was a long birthing time. It was a good, but somewhat difficult birth. (Read the story here) And I hated staying in the hospital afterwards. So when I found out that I was pregnant again in the summer of 2013, I looked at our insurance benefits again and realized that free-standing birthing centers were covered in-network! I quickly transferred care to Minnesota Birth Center and signed up to take the Hypnobabies course again with Anne, who had been our hypno-doula with Delsy and was now a Hypnobabies instructor.

My journey to Hypnobabies started when my dear friend from college sent me a book on Hypnobirthing when I was pregnant with my second child. She had a wonderful experience using the techniques with the birth of her son and thought I would take interest in it with the upcoming birth of my second baby, another girl. When I got it in the mail, I told myself that I should read it and have an open mind, as there was a reason why it was sent to me. The birth of my oldest daughter, Annika Nari, was a good experience. It was relatively short (8 hours) and it was without complications. The one thing that was noteworthy was that I had a lot of anxiety and fear with the whole birthing process and those feelings still loomed with the upcoming birth of our second child, nicknamed Baby AJ.