the birth of birdie

second time parents share the positive birth story of their beautiful daughter, birdie

Welcome to the world! I was so excited to receive this wonderful account of birth from second time parents Nina and Matt, who attended my Group Hypnobirthing workshop in July 2018...‍‍‍ They worked as a team to get to grips with how they could make their birth a more positive experience than their previous one by acknowledging their fears, understanding the physiology of birth as well as how breathing techniques, environment, sights, sounds and smells can have a huge impact on the birthing body and mind. Although Nina will say it was a fluke that they managed to avoid a medicalised birth, I'd like them to give themselves a tonne more credit than that. I know that the hard work they put into releasing their fears from their subconscious as well as the preparation they put in led them to their empowering birth. Where the mind leads, the body WILL follow, after all!

We had our baby! Birdie was born on Monday 26 Aug. 

Quick (ish) birth story for you. My waters broke the day before so we had to pop into hospital on Sunday evening and were told that if contractions hadn’t started we would be booked for an induction on Tuesday morning. In the end we came in about 9.30am on Monday because I couldn’t feel her moving. We were monitored for a while and I had to ask whether I could feel the baby or whether I was contracting and the midwife told me it was the latter (because of my induction with our first daughter I was really paranoid I wouldn’t know what surges / contractions felt like which turned out to be the case!). We were told that because of the lack of movement we needed to move to the induction straight away and the plan was to start the dreaded drip.

At 11am we went to the delivery suite, set up the diffuser, got the on the lavender on the hanky (mmmmm, I loved that) and tried to remain in a Hypnobirthing place.  By some strange twist the baby’s heart rate was too high and my contractions were starting to take off so they decided I could be left alone. The sensations were getting stronger and I was using the open breath (just thinking ‘open and release’ over and over again) and then started the gas and air. I was examined about 1.30pm but was only 2cm but that examination strangely seemed to calm the baby down. 

I was struggling so luckily they agreed I could have the epidural which was great (which I couldn’t have in London because the anaesthetist wasn’t available). Just after 4pm, the anaesthetic came in, so by about 5pm the epidural had taken effect. 

I was examined again and I had gone to 10cm on just the gas and air. Once the epidural was in place, I decided just to sit on the bed for a while as I was really tired but I felt so much better as I had stopped the gas and air so didn’t feel woozy. I felt like I could talk and ‘join in’ and that felt great. 

Once the epidural had been in place I felt like I needed to start pushing - they said we will start at 5.50pm but by 5.40pm I was ready to go. I sat forward on the bed and pushed for 30 mins and our 9 pound baby came out! Along with a massive placenta!