Mama R says – “I am confident that my quick and calm labour was as a result of Hypnobirthing. I put all my trust in my body and my baby and viewed labour as a beautiful and empowering journey where I would get to meet my baby at the end. I don’t think I would ever have thought this way without Hypnobirthing – so thank you so much!”

Hi Claire

I don’t know if you remember me but I attended your hypnobirthing course at the end of last year. I have been meaning to share my birth story with you for a while and can’t believe I am only now sitting down to do it! I loved the course and I really feel that hypnobirthing played a huge role in my son’s birth. So here it is!:

So my due date (4th January) came and went which I was completely unphased by. I am normally an anxious person but I felt so calm and trusting that my baby would come when he was ready. The night of the 6th, I was woken a few times by back pain which felt like surges, but I wasn’t sure. I then woke up to find that my mucus plug had come away and started to feel excited – this was the beginning. But I was aware that birth could still be a few days after this happened so wasn’t anticipating anything just yet. However, that day I continued to have the surges in my back. I called the midwife unit just to check that these were “contractions” to which the midwife told me no, as I would definitely know if they were (she was wrong!). I was coping fine so my partner and I carried on with our plans that day – we went to Harvey’s to buy a new sofa. By the time we got there, my surges were ramping up but still very irregular. Again, I was coping fine so just carried on (I had to pause in the middle of signing the finance agreement to breathe through a surge!). After we bought a sofa, we headed over to Asda to get the last bits and bobs for the hospital. Again, I was completely calm and taking everything in my stride. 

At about 7pm, we decided that the surges were coming frequently enough to start counting, so we ordered a burrito bowl to load up on energy and started counting the surges on the Freya app. After dinner, we ran a bath, lit candles and played my labour playlist. I couldn’t quite believe how manageable the surges were. I breathed calmly through each surge and practised the up breathing. In classes, I found visualisation really difficult, but in the moment I could easily and happily picture the sun rising. I spent the next couple of hours either in the bath, or lying on my side on my bed, all the while breathing through my surges and enjoying a lovely calm environment. Not once did I feel like I couldn’t cope, and not once did I feel that I was in “pain”, rather that I was helping my body along with the process. At one point, I broke down in tears and was overwhelmed with emotion that I was finally going to meet my baby soon, after the long journey of miscarriage, trying again and pregnancy. 

When the surges were one and half minutes long (about 4 hours later), I called the midwife unit. However, they were still 4-5 minutes apart, so the midwife told me I had a long way to go yet, and that I sounded absolutely fine so just to be patient and keep doing what I was doing. At that point, I decided to get back in the lovely calming bath. About 10 minutes later something in my body changed, and I was on my hands and knees with my body pushing every minute. I was making these guttural noises which caused my partner to come in and ask me what was going on – but I couldn’t answer as my body was so focused on what it needed to do. My partner called the midwife unit who asked to speak to me again, to which he said “you can try!”. After one deep roar into the phone, the midwife said “Ok you better come in then!”. I don’t know how I managed to get dry and dressed but I somehow did while my partner was running around the house getting everything together (we were under the impression that we had a lot longer than this so were not fully ready!). Luckily the hospital is only 5 minutes drive away and at 12.20am we walked through the MLU doors (after stopping every minute from the car park so I could bend over and push). The midwife looked at me in shock and said “what happened? I spoke to you 20 minutes ago and you sounded fine!” I couldn’t even answer as I knew that my baby was coming, and after 30 minutes of pushing, he was here and on my chest. I had no time for pain relief, so I felt everything, which was actually kind of amazing. 

The midwives were amazed that this was my first baby and said that I could have easily done this at home. Had my waters broken earlier, it was very likely I would have had an unplanned home birth! I am confident that my quick and calm labour was as a result of hypnobirthing. I put all my trust in my body and my baby and viewed labour as a beautiful and empowering journey where I would get to meet my baby at the end. I don’t think I would ever have thought this way without hypnobirthing – so thank you so much! I really love remembering my son’s birth and reminisce about it with such fondness. 

I hope you enjoyed my birth story – I will definitely be planning a home birth for the next one!

Thanks again!