Early Christmas Gift

I wanted to take this blog post to talk about one of the greatest moments of my life: becoming a father. My wife and I had a baby girl named Maren on December 4th. That day was one of the happiest days of my life, tied, of course, with my wedding. My wife was a champ and gave birth without any pain medications and the result is this beautiful little girl. She was about 2 or 3 hours old when this picture was taken.

Of course, music had a big part in the birth. It was the first time I've ever tried to put together a string of songs together for relaxation that lasted more than an hour. In fact, I wanted to make sure I had enough, so I had 13 hours of songs on my iPod, ready to go at a moment's notice. My wife's preferred music when she needs to relax is acoustic music, so that was a must. It was pretty easy to find a lot of acoustic music, but there was one caveat. Given the fact that she was going to have the baby without the assistance of any pain medication, I knew I wanted her to feel empowered by the music of strong women. That made the playlist a little harder to negotiate. We have several days worth of music on our computer, but there was a limited amount that fit that description. Eventually, I had to relent and use some male musicians as well, but always tried to intersperse them between females, and never more than 2 or 3 in a row.

Aside from choosing the music, I also helped my wife try to relax during contractions, which became increasingly stronger. Much of what I did was take her through short breathing cues and used positive affirmations to encourage her. That, coupled with me timing the contractions, seemed to help a bit. Generally, my talking went like this: "Okay. Take big, deep breaths from your belly and focus just on this one breath. 15 seconds. You're doing great! Just take it one breath at a time! 30 seconds..." and would continue for the rest of the contraction, which would usually be a minute. Obviously, I was not at my absolute best, but I can't help but think that my music therapy experience helped quite a bit.


Overall, the birth was a great experience for my wife and me. Labor was 11 hours with only about 20 minutes of pushing. We were able have an experience that we set out to have. Most importantly, by the end, we had a beautiful daughter!