“When my husband and I took a hypnobirthing course, we were doing it to help us prepare for a planned homebirth of our third baby. We didn’t realise then that what we would actually need hypnobirthing for was to help us to stay calm and focused and ready to give birth to our baby in hospital during a global pandemic!
Our first two children were born 4/6 years ago in a midwife-led unit and both experiences could not have been more perfect to us. Both were born in a birthpool and I felt strongly that the little bit I knew about hypnobirthing at that time – tuning into innate instincts and allowing my body to relax – helped to create positive birthing experiences for us. That’s why we decided to birth our third baby at home.
One week after my baby’s ‘due date’, I received news that the homebirth service and the local midwife-led unit were both closed indefinitely due to staffing shortages caused by the Covid pandemic. I was bitterly disappointed at the news; we had prepared for this for months, we had visualised what the birth could look like and we had invested a lot of time and money into preparing for it too! The days following the news were tough and I felt anxious. We hadn’t visited the labour ward at our local hospital before and we knew that their pool was also out of use, so I knew for definite that I couldn’t rely on water as a form of pain relief which I had done previously.
Honestly, I was scared and it took lots of listening to calming relaxations, deep breathing, talking through my fears with my husband, massaging, hot baths… you name it, to get back into a positive frame of mind. It was hard, especially as I was now approaching 42 week’s gestation and facing increasing pressure to ‘act’ rather than wait for baby to make the first move. But, we did eventually find peace with the idea of having our baby in hospital. We began to visualise it, still with the the music, lights, affirmations, same amazing birth partner and same baby! Just a different location.
From 42 weeks, every day, we agreed to attend hospital for fetal monitoring, which had to be done without my husband as there were new hospital rules because of Covid, understandably. While there, I had many discussions with professionals involved in my care, some of whom were supportive and talked to me about pros and cons of induction and allowed me to ask questions. I did also hear very frightening things from medical professionals which made me feel scared and angry and I felt they were trying to force me to make decisions through fear.
Hypnobirthing had once again prepared us for that – to ask for evidence and to use the BRAIN acronym to really assess the information we were being given. With all of that in mind, we refused induction for the first 4 days but eventually made our own informed decision to book an appointment for Friday (42 weeks + 5) for an ‘assessment’ prior to making a decision on an induction. However… we didn’t need that appointment!
On Wednesday night (42 + 3) I began feeling the beginnings of labour. We made our way to the delivery unit at 2am and I immediately found it difficult to get comfortable. There was no pool, it wasn’t the homebirth we wanted and I wasn’t feeling relaxed. As a result of that, my surges slowed and I became very tired. At 5 am, doctors were pressing the midwife to intervene by breaking my waters or offering a sweep, but I knew my baby was on her way and I just needed to refocus and find my own way.
The midwife was clearly trying to respect our wishes as set out in our birth plan but also to balance that with hospital guidelines. My husband asked her if she had any concerns about the health of our baby at that point, to which she replied no: we decided we felt there was no medical need to intervene from that point of view. So, my husband grabbed me a snack and some water and within 10 minutes of that ‘refuelling’, I rediscovered my own determination to let my baby take control. The surges became much stronger and longer almost instantly and 60mins later our baby girl made her way very quickly into the world, still in her waters – so, almost a water birth!
The birth of our third baby was full of change and uncertainty and it presented us with plenty of challenges. We couldn’t control what was happening in the outside world, nor could we change some of the decisions that were out of our control such as the cancelling of the homebirth service or the ramping up of hospital restrictions. What we could control was our response to all of this and hypnobirthing (many phone calls and messages with wonderful Janet!) gave us the confidence and the skills to do that. I’ll be forever grateful to the support we received from Janet to guide us through this journey.”