Mama D says: “We used all of the hypnobirthing techniques and I was in the pool most of Tues afternoon and eve eating jelly babies and having a giggle with the midwife at some of our song choices on our playlist (Lion King Circle of Life for example!)”

Hi Claire!

We loved your hypnobirthing course and doing your pregnancy yoga classes was a highlight of my week in terms of relaxation. It felt very strange when I couldn’t go anymore even if it was for an excellent reason!! I almost feel like our baby boy must know your calming voice though!! I can’t recommend your yoga and hypnobirthing course enough!!

Here is our birth story for you to share:

First of all, before the birth, my nighttime routine was doing the Hypnobirthing ‘Up’ Breathing on my exercise ball before bed (along with my pelvic floor exercises!) and then doing a Hypnobirthing track. We loved listening to the tracks and they must have been relaxing as I never got to the end of one without falling asleep! With the ‘Up’ Breathing, I practiced whilst watching a YouTube video of a sunrise as this is one of my favourite things to do… we did Pen y Fan at sunrise when I was 30 weeks pregnant and I regularly do sunrise swims with the Dawnstalkers group in Penarth.

With the Partner Scripts, I got my partner to record them and either did them in the bath or on the sofa just before going up to bed. I definitely had the ‘Soften’ one in my head a couple of times during labour in the hospital!

On Monday morning (first day of my maternity leave), I went swimming with some of the other Mums-to-be from yoga! That evening the surges started. We did a track as usual. At about 3am we called the MLU. We went in but they thought it would be best to go home and relax, so we did that and tried to go back to bed for a while and then I had a bath with with one of the Hypnobirthing scripts. 

We went back into the MLU around midday, and I was in the pool most of the afternoon and evening doing the ‘Up’ Breathing but also probably enjoying the gas and air a bit too much! The midwife we had as we went into the evening shift helped us really relax too. We had our relaxing playlist on for the first stage of labour and then in the evening, for the Down Stage (second stage), moved to our more upbeat playlist, including Circle of Life from the Lion King and Elton John which the midwife thought was quite funny so we all had a bit of a laugh about that. 😂

At about midnight, after quite a lot of the down stage, it didn’t seem like much was happening and the midwife suggested a check and some time out of the water as it seemed to have been slowing down the surges. We used our B.R.A.I.N to make an informed decision and chose to go with her suggestion. After our midwife had done her checks, we discovered that the baby’s head was sideways on making it harder for them to get out.  They had also gone for a poo inside, so we chose to get some help.  He came out with forceps at about 2.30 am on the Wednesday with such a lovely surgery team and the same midwife came up supported us. Although it wasn’t exactly the birth we hoped for, it felt like all the decisions were ours and we felt as relaxed as we could about it all!