Hi Janet, Below is our birth story, please feel free to use on your website if you’d like to 😊
Our birth story:
After a day of nesting (clearing the sitting room, sticking my affirmations on a board, getting candles ready etc) and a feeling like the baby was ready to come, and also having put into the universe that Wednesday evening as the most convenient time for him to be born, I started having regular mild surges around 8 to 10 mins apart on Wednesday evening as Fran was putting our 4 year old daughter to bed. The surges built during the evening, we put candles and fairy lights on in the sitting room and listened to River Dawn while I reread the hypnobirthing book. During this time I found using the up breathing techniques very relaxing, generally feeling chilled. We went to read in bed and see if we could get some rest, but then the surges started getting stronger and more frequent – around 5 mins apart. We went back to the sitting room to inflate the birth pool, which we really should have done earlier! As it wasn’t the most relaxing it could have been, and Fran was occupied doing that, but I was managing to still breath through the surges, which were now around 3 mins apart. My waters broke and we called the midwives who came over at around 1am.
One of the midwives was Tracey, who I’d seen throughout pregnancy, it was so nice to see a familiar face. Both midwives were absolutely lovely and camped out in the dining room as we’d requested in our birth plan.
While Fran was occupied with filling the pool I felt a bit out of control during my surges. He was there to do some back and arm stroking, and while he was doing that I could manage. I was also having urges to push down and it brought back memories of when I had Isla, she was back to back and I was told to resist those urges, so I had a little wobble but Tracey was amazing and said to follow my body but don’t encourage it, which really helped. Shortly after that the pool was ready and I felt instant relief when I got in – it was pure bliss! All was great from then on, Fran stroking my arm made me instantly relax, the surges were powerful but energising. It wasn’t long I’d been in the pool for before I started down-breathing (Between the up and down breathing I’d been doing a breath from yoga called the ‘golden thread breath’, which when you exhale you imagine you’re blowing a long golden thread into the distance – I found this useful when I wasn’t sure if I should be down breathing yet or not!)
Tracey came in to check baby heartbeat, as she’d been doing regularly, and then went back out again, I said to Fran “by the way the head is about to come out” – so he called them back in. They were all a bit surprised but a surge or two later our baby boy was out, just before 4am! I gave over to my body to gently ease him out, all I did was breath. It was amazing!! And no stitches required 🙂 I’m so thrilled to have given birth naturally with no pain relief and at home. It is a very empowering experience and two weeks after having Flynn my body feels great! We’ve been raving about hypnobirthing to everyone we see. Even though we only want two children, I could definitely do it again tomorrow!
Thank you so much for everything,
Carla x x x
Wrote this when he was 2 weeks, he’s now already 5 weeks old! A pretty laid back dude so far 😊