“Hi Janet, Sorry it has taken me so long to write to you. We just wanted to thank you for everything that you taught us in preparation for the birth of our first baby. Hypnobirthing definitely helped us as our birth story didn’t go completely as planned (we didn’t get our home birth, due to staffing, but did have a water birth in hospital) but the relaxation techniques you taught us helped us deal with what could have been quite stressful situations.
We planned a homebirth but I went into labour late on a Friday night with what I thought was my waters breaking and the surges had started. Surges were getting closer together by Saturday morning so we phoned the maternity unit to let them know, we were told that unfortunately there were not enough “on call” midwives on that weekend and that we would have to go into hospital to have our baby.
This was quite upsetting for us but we knew that we had to take things as they came and try get back to our relaxation because after that news the surges had slowed right down. Because the labour had slowed down we were asked to go to the hospital to check if my waters had definitely broken, we did and they actually hadn’t.
We were told that we could either stay at the hospital as they had checked how dilated I was or try go home for a short while and that they expected to see us back very soon. We decided to go home to try and labour in a relaxed environment for as long as we could.
Once we got home we did some relaxation scripts and laboured in the birthing pool until the surges were really close and intense then we knew it was time to go in. We were only home for about 2 hours and then headed back.
On arrival at the hospital they took us to the pool room which they had prepared, but on my way in, I heard other women in labour shouting. Immediately I felt a lot more anxious and as soon as we got into our room, my husband put on our hypnobirthing music to try relax me again. Unfortunately my labour slowed right down again but we just carried on with our relaxation and breathing techniques.
Eventually as things started speeding up we got into the pool and as things were much more intense at this point I asked for gas and air, after a very long labour which sped up and slowed down a number of times .
I had reached the final stage and began my “down” breathing. I felt at that stage that I was so focused I was not aware of any pain, I knew that my baby would be born really soon and he was. He was born in the water 25 mins later at 5:25 on the Sunday morning, my husband was able to catch our baby boy and lift him out of the water. It was an amazing experience!
Hypnobirthing definitely helped me manage through the stress of plans changing, and helped my husband be able to support me with my breathing throughout the whole labour. Now we have a very chilled hypnobaby who is doing amazingly well with feeding and sleeping.
The time distortion element of hypnobirthing also helped me as it was a long labour. Thank you for preparing us for the birth of our child. We feel that you prepared us for every eventuality! And I feel that I was able to give my baby the best possible birth for him without the use of strong pain relief.
Love from David Shaleen and baby Ethan xxx”