Birth stories

ROMILLY’s BIRTH story - Summer 2019

HOW THE HOMEBIRTH STARTED…

On the 18th of July, which was my 30th birthday, I was 39 weeks and four days, so just two days before my due date, and had not had any signs of labour at all whatsoever. I wasn't even really waddling, so I didn't think it was going to happen anytime soon.

We’d been out for a birthday meal and then for a walk, came home to watch Love Island, sat on my birthing ball, and then went to bed. I remember because it was spot on 10pm and I felt this sensation; it was very low down, a lot lower than I thought it would be. I thought it’d be a bit more in the bump, but it wasn't. It was much more like lower uterine, and then about 5-minutes later did it again. At this point it was very mild, totally able to talk and breathe and no problems at all, so I told my husband. He was very excited.

We're both lying in the dark in silence and Richard would just say to me every few minutes have you had another one yet? And I'd be like ‘yes, try and go to sleep,’ and so it carried on like that for a couple of hours.   Richard went into the spare room to sleep because I thought if this is a false alarm then he needs to go to work in the morning.

I remember thinking yeah ‘this is lovely’. I put the candles on and didn't start the music or anything at that point because I didn't know if it we were quite there. I was on my bed on my hands and knees, and never once stopped moving -  just because it just didn't feel right to be still.   I was swaying, getting up and down, going to the bathroom etc and I decided at about 2am that I would wake my husband up.

We were just excited. I'd been having regular surges. We got the TENS machine out, and decided to start doing all the things we wanted to do.  Because we were having a home birth that just meant putting everything where we wanted it to be; the towels, the shower curtains. We were getting in the zone.

So we started Sea of Serenity playing [one of the hypnobirthing tracks provided by Sophia], and I used the TENS machine which was amazing. We were walking around all over the house. I was eating as normal, drinking plenty, and had heartburn so was drinking a lot of Gaviscon! About 4am we decided to call the midwife, who was wonderful.

THE MIDWIFE ARRIVES

Amy [midwife] came out and she was very respectful. I’d met her before which helped, but also it did change the vibe which I always knew could happen, but when it happened I suddenly felt a lot more awake. My surges dwindled a little bit and they spaced out a lot, so I then felt like I had stage fright and like I needed to prove that I was ‘in labour’.  Thankfully Amy has experience of this and she said: ‘Me being here is going to make things different; don't mind me, I’ll quietly do the paperwork’.  Then she gave me a choice that she could examine me then we could make a decision on what I wanted her to do, or she could just go downstairs and wait to see what happens.

I opted for the examination and was around 2cm dilated. It looked like things were progressing well, but my waters hadn’t broken.  So we sent the midwife home. She didn’t make us feel like ‘well don't you ring me unless it's absolute time’, she said just ring when you want to, and I'll come straight back which was really lovely. I think then we just carried on the way we were before, and funnily enough as soon as Amy left things picked up again.  I was in the bath, I was out of the bath. I was moving all over the place. We were just getting on with it, and then I think by about 6am it felt like time to get the midwives back.

The surges had become a lot stronger. I was thinking about using some gas and air. Amy was back with us by 730am, and this time things didn't really slow down. I don't know if that was because I had met her earlier.  She called the day team here [she was night shift], so the other midwives arrived and they had student with them which was absolutely fine by me; I had already given permission for that. They stayed downstairs whilst we carried on upstairs. I didn't feel like I was suddenly surrounded by people because they gave us space. They even did their professional handover in our kitchen whilst Richard had his breakfast!

He was downstairs having cereal and a cup of tea whilst they were chatting and I was quite happy to be left alone for a little while. 

"I was using the gas and air at that point which had helped me for a short time, but just being able to do long slow breaths was the best form of pain relief for me.”

I'd use the gas and air for a little while and then I just felt like it wasn't really doing anything; it was hindering my breathing so I went back to long, slow deep breaths. I think I did kind of throw the mouthpiece on the floor in a bit of a dramatic ‘we don't need this anymore’. Then I consented to having another examination because I wanted to know that I was making some progress.

I was nearly 5cm dilated but it didn't really matter that much.  Amy said she couldn't feel exactly what was going on because my waters were still intact. She said everything's going really well and she was really encouraging me. I was walking around a lot, stamping my feet and shaking my hands which really helped to get rid of tension and nervous energy. It felt good. I think I had about 10 baths and loved having a change of scene, loved being distracted, was still drinking fluids at that point but didn’t want to eat anything.

The midwives were really respectful and spent a lot of time downstairs.  They asked me could they would come in to monitor the baby every so often, but weren't intrusive in any way. Richard and I just hung out upstairs. It was a really hot day so the windows were all open and we did end up with some people from next door coming round to make sure we were okay because I was making a lot of noise, roaring noises, which just felt amazing!

“I stayed upright the whole time; I only actually sat down for the examinations so that was about twice. The rest of the time I was either walking about, or on my hands and knees. I was kind of squatting and lounging on things, and that's when my waters broke” [around lunchtime].

THE WATERS BREAK…

I was stood next to our bed and I felt like my surges were really intense at that point. Then I felt this almighty burst and the waters were all over my husband’s feet. He was a bit surprised!

The midwives were just like brilliant. Around lunchtime, or maybe a little bit later, we had a very unexpected [and long overdue] delivery of our new sofa. We really needed that sofa because we just moved into the house a few months before so I kept thinking ‘oh well, we can't have a baby and not have a sofa, that will be really annoying’, but it was hilarious that the soft and Fern both came on the same day. The delivery men heard some interesting noises I think. By this point I was starting to get a lot more signs that labour was progressing. There was a little bit of mucus which I hadn’t had any of before, and that came out very close to Fern coming out.

SECOND STAGE OF LABOUR…

As the delivery men were leaving I felt a huge urge to push in the bathroom whilst I was stood in the doorway, and I remember just thinking ‘Oh my gosh, yes,  there's something happening’, so I went into the bedroom and was on my hands and knees on the bed for a little while, but then decided to kneel on the floor with my head resting on the bed.

I felt in a really good position. I was breathing well all the way through. I was getting a bigger space in between the surges so I was getting time where I would just rest, that felt really nice. I'd fall asleep even if it was only about 30 seconds and then I'd wake up and push again but there was no no active pushing;  my body was pushing and then doing what I felt needed on top of that which was involuntary, like I couldn't help it.

I was still moving and making lots of noises to help move the energy downwards but I wasn't going purple in the face! I could breathe with awareness when I needed to.  Everyone started cheerleading a bit more because they could see something happening, the midwives at this point all came in, and even then they were just sat around the room out of the way. I could just hear voices every now and then but I know the student midwife was sat to my right, and there was another behind me, and then the other midwife was out of the room because she didn't need to be there.

Richard was on the bed and we've got a mirror on our wardrobe that slides across so Richard could still see what was happening with the birth whilst being beside my head which was good because I was doing a lot of hand squeezing. My body just kept pushing and pushing and then I remember thinking the head was very close to being born (which turns out isn't as bad as people make out!).

I thought if I can push as hard as I can now and get the head out then I'll only have another one surge after that and then the baby will be here and I'll know whether I've got a girl or a boy; that's a really good motivation! The head was out and everyone was just so happy, I remember hearing Richard say ‘the baby’s got chubby cheeks’ and then she was fully born.

It didn’t feel like a big drama. I just told the midwife to lay her in between my legs. I picked her up and saw that she was a girl - told my husband and we were just so so happy, it was just the best feeling ever! There's a lot of happiness, and there's a lot of relief, and a lot of just feeling that you are the strongest person who has ever existed!

“I remember thinking quite a lot ‘I am so amazing’ and then there were lots of tears, and it was just lovely - and our baby was perfect.”

She was lovely and pink. There were never any concerns about her. I think the midwife might have brushed a towel over her but she was perfectly fine so we were having skin to skin contact straight away, and then after a few minutes of being on the floor the midwives cleared the bed put a clean sheet on it for me, put lots of disposable pads on it, and all three of us got into bed. Fern had her first breastfeed straightaway, and she was lovely and alert.

THIRD STAGE OF LABOUR - PLACENTA DELIVERY…

I decided not to have any drugs for the third stage placenta delivery; if there was any bleeding or anything then I would have changed my mind.  We kept the cord intact for about an hour while Fern fed, and then I started to get these crampy feelings. I knew the placenta was ready to come out so I went to the bathroom and Richard cut the cord. It had gone completely white and had stopped pulsating - the time was right.

I squatted on the floor and the placenta basically plopped out. I handed it to the midwife and said ‘there you go’.  I wanted to keep the placenta; we haven't done anything with it yet, it's just in the freezer waiting, don’t know what we're going to do with it but we didn't want it taken away as waste.

They checked it over and said it was perfect, and then we just got back into bed and chilled out.  The midwife helped me have a shower, did my blood pressure. Baby was perfect, they weighed her, and then they left us to it and we just relaxed. I didn't have to have any stitches or anything so that was another added bonus.

I think there’s a lot of pressure on women. You're either in one camp where you've had a really traumatic emergency, a horrible experience, and come through the other side of it or you've had a perfect calm pool birth.  You worry about what other people think if you tell them that you had this lovely calm experience. You don’t want them to feel bad, but actually none of us have a choice about what happens, only how we respond to it.  I just knew that I wanted to, if I could, avoid any unnecessary interventions. I'm really glad that we did avoid anything unnecessary and it wasn't so much about achieving this idyllic birth where everything's  ‘perfect’, it was more just about whatever happened us being able to accept it, and having feeling positive about it rather than being really upset if we didn't have the birth that I wanted.

“What hypnobirthing gave us is that we knew we could accept whatever happened, and it just so happens that Fern’s birth was perfect for us.”

Also, Romilly, you mentioned to me earlier that you felt like you were having a huge kind of emotional release as part of your labour? I remember crying; I didn’t think I would cry because I thought I'd be too busy, you know being serene and breathing perfectly, but actually I did cry because it felt really good to cry. I needed to cry because it was really intense, and I didn't know if I could carry on doing it. The crying really helped get all those emotions out.  You really want everything to go okay, you want your baby to be okay, you don't want anything bad to happen, so it's like letting out all of this stuff, and then once I'd finished crying I felt a lot better.

Richard was amazing. You don't know how you're going to be beforehand, and I had said a few times to Richard ‘Please, please don't panic if I'm loud. Please don't panic if something happens and it is all very focused on that. Please don't panic if there's an emergency,’ but he didn't panic and obviously there were no emergencies but seeing me in the way I was, which must have been a little bit like a feral animal, I never ever got the sense that Richard was upset or that he needed my support.

Richard was there, and I always knew he was there. He was never far away. He was just taking it all in his stride and being strong which was what I really wanted. I would have felt bad if I felt like he was upset or worried about me too much but he just knew instinctively what to do. He knew when to step in and say do you want me to step back. He intuitively knew ‘Romilly does not want me to rub her back she probably wants me to go away’, but it was it was different every time, each surge was different – and Richard just knew what to do to support me.

Having a hand on you would feel like the best thing in the world during one surge, and then the next one would feel like you just needed everyone to leave you alone.  Richard was very good at managing that and doing the right thing. He never once made me feel like I’d hurt his dealings by telling him to leave me alone. I think I apologised a million times as well even though I knew I didn’t need to because we just we had this connection all the way through.

How much of a part would you say that the hypnobirthing and the birth preparation, and to an extent the prenatal yoga, supported you through the birthing experience?Hugely, massively. I felt like, as I mentioned in one of our chats, this sacred space that you go into during hypnobirthing classes just gave us this time together to get ready for this wonderful event.

Hypnobirthing and yoga gave us a bit of time just to be in the pregnancy or in the birth, time for you and your body where you're not thinking about baby clothes and all that kind of business, and the stuff that everyone wants to ask you all the time. 

“Hypnobirthing takes away all that noise and gives you time just to be a pregnant person. It’s like we went into this special zone - the zone that we've been in whenever we've been with you or at your house. I don't know if that's what would have happened if we didn't do it because Richard might not have felt as prepared as he did, and we wouldn't have felt as excited or fearless without it because we’d probably have worried about stuff.”

You also mentioned in our chat earlier that just a few hours after Fern joined us in the world there was pizza and champagne and you were still listening to something special in the background! We still had on the hypnobirthing music about four hours later! I think we’d gone downstairs and had a takeaway and then gone back upstairs and realised it was still playing.

It was nice to have it on in the background, and we'd just came downstairs with baby it was so strange to go upstairs as a pregnant woman and then come back downstairs holding this little baby girl who we didn't even know was a little girl just a few hours before because we didn’t know her gender. We were just thinking ‘here she is, let’s go in the living room with our ‘new sofa’, and we didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything or worry about a thing; Fern was born, we got our new sofa, and we watched Love Island [laughing].  It was just perfect.

Bryony’s birth story

Rebecca’s birth story

I wanted to prepare for the birth, that's kind of how I am just in my normal life; ‘preparation is key, knowledge is power’, so we signed up for hypnobirthing.  Practicing it a lot was really important to me. 

HOW LABOUR STARTED… 

I was nine days over my due date and dad came to stay for the weekend. We went out for a nice meal and afterwards I dozed on the couch. 

My husband Jim decided to go to Lidl and do a big shop. Dad and I were both questioning ‘who goes to Lidl at 9pm on a Saturday night?!’, but he just felt he wanted to get a lot of food in. Then we all went to bed.

I woke up around 6am and felt a twinge. The feeling that I had was so insignificant that it wouldn’t have been enough to actually wake me up, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. It was quite normal for me to be up at that time so I went downstairs and then dad got up and the two of us pottered about.  I got on my birthing ball probably around 10am. When I went to the toilet my mucus plug was in my knickers and I thought ‘oh, this is happening’

The surges started again but it wasn’t really like anything I’d expected, a little bit painful, but I’ve had worse pain in my life for sure. Then I remember thinking I was having three surges in ten minutes and I was sure that couldn’t be right because there wasn’t really any pain, nothing you’d write home about anyway.

I decided to call the hospital and tell them I was having three surges in 10 minutes, but that it didn’t feel painful enough to come in. They told me to take a couple of paracetamol and have a bath. The bath was heavenly. I had a bath every night during my pregnancy anyway so I was really at home in the bath. I listened to my hypnobirthing tracks, felt calm and relaxed, and was doing my calm breathing.

Time flew by and about 2pm I told my Dad I thought I was in labour so he took our dog Neville to his house. Jim brought up our wedding photo album to look through which was lovely and we had some tea and toast. Everything was just ‘nice’. 

 Then I thought the surges were ramping up – still three in 10 minutes, so I phoned the hospital and told them my surges were consistent. It felt too early to be going in if my surges had only started at 6am that day but we decided we’d go because it would take us an hour to get there. In the car it started to feel a bit more intense but I think just because it’s not so comfortable, whereas at home I had my candles, music and everything which felt really relaxing. I wore my sunglasses the whole way to the birth centre and it felt really really nice when we got there.

I was examined and was 3.5cm to a stretchy 4cm dilated. The midwife left us to it and we put the battery candles and our music on and got comfy. I didn’t get in the pool as the midwife said it might slow labour down as it wasn’t yet fully established, but she said it was ok to get in shallow bath. I sat in the bath in the dark with my battery candles nearby but I’m quite tall and the bath wasn’t that comfy. I think about an hour had passed and I said to my Jim that the surges had suddenly got intense, I almost couldn’t catch my breath between each one. I remember thinking if this is how strong it’s going to be going forward I will have to rethink my options. I really wanted to birth without intervention, but if it was going to be that intense for 24 hours I didn’t know if I could do it.

The midwife came back in and offered to check how dilated I was. I didn’t really want to be checked, I wanted to protect the calm space I was in and nobody really wants someone poking around their private parts but I decided it’d be good to know in case it had reduced or progressed really fast.

It turns out I was 8.5cm dilated so I’d progressed quite rapidly in an hour. I got into the pool and the midwife told me ‘if I tell you you need to get out of the pool you do it, no questions’ I agreed. I absolutely loved the pool. I had some gas and air but didn’t want to have too much or feel too out of it. It felt like it was all going really nicely and again the midwife left us to it so we had lots of privacy.

Jim was feeding me little flapjack bites and Percy Pigs [sweets], then all of a sudden the midwife told me I needed to get out of the pool. She asked if I’d felt a pop which I hadn’t. She told me my waters had broken and there was meconium in them. That seemed a little strange because I felt really calm, but I thought perhaps Ada (my baby) had got a little shock or something must have happened for there to be meconium. I was a bit puzzled but a lot of people I’ve spoken to have said same thing happened to them so maybe it’s a bit more common than you think.  The midwife said she’d give me half an hour pushing time to get my baby out. I started to push the hypnobirthing way where I was really breathing my baby down but she said there wasn’t time for that [meconium] and that I was wasting my energy on the breath. She told me to hold my breath, bear down, and push which was fine.

I was pushing I was on all fours on the bed. About half an hour passed and the midwife recommended we move to the labour ward. I thought I’d have been more apprehensive about the labour ward but I was just in my zone, and breathing with my eyes closed because I thought being transferred might throw me off a bit. When I got there my contractions had fallen off a little and they wanted to give me the synthetic oxytocin drip which wasn’t ideal, but I really didn’t want a c-section.

As she started to do that I felt a really big contraction and I asked her if the effect was that instant, and she said they hadn’t even put it in yet! Perhaps that was just a placebo effect, but basically the contractions came back with a vengeance; a big full force which was great. Isn’t it funny how I've started to talk about contractions just because I’m talking about the labour ward! I nearly always call them surges.

I was pushing and pushing and the midwife said she couldn’t quite get a read on my baby so suggested they put a clip on her head to monitor her heart rate or I could lie back and they’d put monitor bands on my belly.

I wanted to be upright, but I also wasn’t familiar with this clip and didn’t want anything touching my baby. I don’t think it’s as invasive as I thought it was in the heat of the moment but I’m glad we decided not to do it; I got on my back instead.

The midwife said she was going to prepare me for an episiotomy. I told her I didn’t want one, and asked if it was really necessary?

She said I was doing really well but we needed to move it along more. We agreed I could have a few more pushes and see what happened. Ada got further down the birth canal which was great and the midwife downed tools and said I didn’t need the episiotomy. She’d been right there with the blade just a minute before, so I was really glad I’d asked and made her pause and think about whether I needed it that second.

The midwife and my husband were encouraging and cheering me on and that was one of the things I really enjoyed about the labour ward. At the birth centre we were really left to our devices which is good, and I think that’s really great for hypnobirthing, but I’d also say that as a first time mum the labour ward was really reassuring because I was being told how well I was doing and I respond really well to praise. In the birthing centre you have to really trust yourself.  I think if I was having another baby I’d be fine because I’d know what some of it would feel like, but with my first I didn’t mind the labour ward all all in terms of being cheered on.

Ada was born at 850pm. Considering I had my first twinge around 6am and that’s just over 14 hours it was all really good. I remember being elated, we had skin to skin straight away and the midwives were laughing and said they’d never seen so much meconium. Then it starts to become a bit of a blur.

THE THIRD STAGE

Jim said that their faces became a bit more concerned, not with Ada because she was just perfect. Two paediatricians had come in, checked her over said congratulations and left us to it. But we were waiting for the placenta and it wasn’t coming out so I said it was ok if they wanted to give me the injection to speed it up, but it still didn’t come. Then all of a sudden everyone was in the room and the placenta wasn’t coming away. Part of it had come out but the rest hadn’t so they wanted to take me to theatre to remove it.

I was really grateful for hypnobirthing again because I was staying calm no matter what was going on, and I’d been confident enough to say I didn’t want the episiotomy and question why I needed it

We went off to theatre and I had an epidural. I think if I’d heard this story when I was pregnant I’d have been really disappointed to need an epidural. I was elated, and because I’d just had my baby I couldn’t really feel that disappointed about the epidural! It was quite nice because any of the tenderness I was feeling from having just given birth evaporated. I think I was gone for quite a while although I didn’t realise it. Jim said he felt like he was on his own with Ada for hours, but he got a lot of skin to skin time with her which was good.

I thought I’d have been more upset about having an epidural after having given birth naturally but I really wasn’t bothered, and even now it’s not even the part of the birth story that I focus on. I want to focus on how brilliant it all was, and that my baby came out perfectly. Even though my surges fell off a little bit here and there they came back strong.

Even just going down to theatre – you know, I’m without my baby, I'm without my husband who had been with me every step of the way, but I remember just doing my hypnobirthing breathing to stay calm. 

I think every aspect of hypnobirthing is invaluable. It’s brilliant to keep yourself calm when making decisions and I like the fact that we were armed with this knowledge so we could question, in a positive way, what was happening.

When the midwife told us the drip was oxytocin and we knew it was synthetic we gauged that it was fine to have it because at that moment we wanted Ada to be born as quickly as possible (but then we didn’t need it anyway!).

 All in all it was brilliant, it's like doing a marathon; one of the biggest sporting events you'll ever do physically on your body; it’s just amazing.

And then you get that amazing toast from the NHS and a really nice cup of tea. It’s just as lovely as everyone talks about. It’s this really cheap white bread and really salty butter, just delicious.

 It was all good, there was nothing big, no drama in the middle of the night because it all happened in the day. The birth was probably the easiest part of the whole thing for me in terms of pregnancy, labour, breastfeeding, sleepless nights. I mean the labour ends doesn’t it, and everything else you have to prepare yourself for day in day out. It was just brilliant.

Lucy’s BIRTH story - Summer 2019

Some women seem to have a relatively easy time, mine unfortunately was not easy; a very long, and I would say ‘a difficult labour’. I think without hypnobirthing it would have been even harder, and probably even longer.

Before I go into the positives I'll just say because of the circumstances of my labour we were unable to be in the environment that we had always hoped and planned for, which was the birthing suite. This would have allowed us to have, for example, the wise hippo music playing. I had a reed diffuser and I had all this planned out but my waters broke before my contractions started and even though I ended up going into labour naturally I was booked in for an induction. 

I ended up being on the induction suite for about 10 hours when I was in labour and that was difficult because it wasn't private. I felt very exposed, like I didn't have an ally in terms of a midwife; it was a midwife that I didn't really know, and she wasn't there all the time. It was a struggle to get basic things like water to drink or a pillow, so it was quite uncomfortable, quite stressful, and that made labour difficult. However, The Wise Hippo hypnobirthing says you have the best birth you can on the day even when there are factors that you can't control; we knew that, and my husband Martin kept reminding me.

The positives are that the preparation we had done, for example the waves of relaxation, carried me through I think about 75 per cent of the labour without the need for any pain relief or any other intervention. 

"Hypnobirthing gave me the confidence to ask for what I needed and we were able to manage it and deal with it using the techniques we had learned."

EARLY LABOUR

As soon as the surges began to be quite substantial, and you know, a bit more challenging to deal with, I was visualising the waves coming up and going away again. I think I did that for maybe seven or eight hours (though time went a bit funny at that point).

It did become quite challenging to manage just on breathing techniques alone, but at the point I asked for pain relief the midwife said: ‘You're making it look easy’, and I couldn't believe that because it didn't feel easy! Although I got to the point where I needed some extra help the midwife said she couldn't believe that I’d gone so long on visualisation and breathing techniques alone.

Martin was doing the soothing strokes massage, especially when I was in the nice bath, and right up until the moment Bronte was born. It was really helpful.

Forceps helped Bronte be born, but we felt that we were empowered to make decisions about was right for us and what wasn't.

It wasn’t what we planned, we know we planned it completely differently, but you can't plan for everything. It's a unique experience and you just have to kind of think what is best for us now. We knew that some assistance was needed whether that was pain relief or forceps to get Bronte out but all of that felt positive because we knew it was the right thing for us at that time.

"I think the hypnobirthing gave us the confidence to ask for what we needed, and not to feel any shame or guilt for not doing it exactly like they do on the calm birth videos."

I’ve reflected on the pain relief a lot and I have both positive and negative thoughts on this really. The positive side is that I coped for a substantial part of labour without the need for any pain relief at all because I managed my surges through visualisations and breathing techniques, and I managed to push my baby practically all the way down just on that alone and I think that's a positive experience. I was in the zone, and it's a totally unique physical and mental experience. 

But I think I actually forgot that pain relief might be an option. I can't be sure but maybe this was because the birthing videos we watched as part of the hypnobirthing course showed ‘time in labour, no pain relief’ and and I don't know whether I'd sort of unconsciously absorbed the idea that it's better to not have any pain relief  at all, and then when it came to labour I forgot that it was an option.

When the midwife offered it I was like’ Oh yeah, of course’ but I had written on my birth plan not to offer me any. I thought I’d ask her if I needed it but I forgot. I would say think carefully about this one aspect of your birth plan, and don't rule things out because you don't know exactly how you will feel on the day. I did afterwards come to terms with the idea that I did need the assistance to get my baby out at the very last minute - and as time has gone on I feel much less apologetic about the forceps. Bronte’s head was in a slightly funny position so I just could not pop her out. I asked for the forceps assistance and felt empowered doing so. We did what we needed to do.

I think in the early days maybe, because my hormones were all over the place, I felt a bit of sadness about that - like I hadn't done it properly, I hadn't given birth in the way that I planned and hoped.

But it was right to ask for support, and you know one level of assistance is having a midwife there at all or having done any prep at all; you take the assistance you need at the time and upon reflection I did what I needed to do for me and my baby. We did what was right for us.

Hypnobirthing gave me the confidence to ask for what I needed and we were able to manage it and deal with it using the techniques that we learned - and do the necessary processing afterwards.

We can’t thank you enough Sophia for the expert guidance during the course and personal, kind support that’s continued after the course has finished and our baby has arrived. We’re looking forward to continuing our journey of discovery and bonding with our daughter through your baby massage and baby yoga classes.