Birth Story - Hannah and baby Charlie

I wanted to say a huge thank you to you for your hypnobirthing techniques. We welcomed the safe arrival of baby Charlie at 7.43am on 22nd Jan weighing 7lb 2 in the birthing pool at Torbay Hospital.

The labour didn’t go quite to plan having hoped for a natural birth at Newton Abbot birthing centre but it was as close as we were going to get! I was so prepared with listening to your positive affirmations, yoga room spray and my husband reading the relaxation scripts to me every evening during the pregnancy. I felt so positive and couldn’t wait for labour to begin.

My waters went at 4am on 21st Jan at 39 weeks 4 days with labour unfortunately not starting, therefore I was booked for an induction on the morning of the 22nd which I wasn’t pleased about and desperately wanted to avoid. But we used our BRAIN and decided to go ahead as there was a significant risk of infection to us both if we left it more than 24 hours. Anyway, after a long day of waiting we went to bed at 11pm still not in labour. At midnight I had a mammoth contraction and instantly knew it was one. This then turned into back to back contractions, only a few minutes apart for 3 hours. The midwife came out to assess me at 3.30am to discover I wasn’t only in active labour, I was actually 8cm dilated.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a build up of discomfort and didn’t have time for tea lights but I listened to your MP3 and the breathing techniques helped massively. I do not know how I would have got through this speedy labour without that, so simple too, in for 4 out for 8. Charlie was born 3 hours after we arrived at the Hospital. (This was Torbay as at this point as we were almost 24 hours after waters breaking) The water in the birth pool was a huge relief and I had some gas and air through the pushing phase but otherwise coped with just breathing.

Thank you so much for what you did for us. We took a private session with Siobhan which covered everything we needed to know and we were both so positive about our birthing experience throughout and felt prepared and in control!