Birth story - Rosie and baby Ralph

I was relatively lucky in that my first birth was quite quick and straight forward in terms of how births went.

That being said I was very keen to try hypno birthing in the hope that my second birth would maybe follow suit.

From the moment I started watching all the videos, suddenly everything made sense. I gained an insight to how my body would work giving birth, but also techniques and ways to give birth in a natural and relaxed way.

From pretty early on I toyed with the idea of a home birth, watching the videos confirmed to me that it was the best route for me to go down. It seemed like it would be the most relaxed.

I was gutted when my due date passed (my first arrived on his due date so convinced this one would to)

On the Monday morning I had a midwife appointment, being 2 days over due I felt a little disheartened and fed up that baby hadn’t made an appearance.

Whilst at my midwife appt the midwife offered me a sweep. I decided to have one and thought no harm in trying it. I went home and felt okay.

As the evening progressed I felt like I had bad back ache (this happened 3 nights previously but never progressed) so I wasn’t holding out much hope it would happen. I went up to bed about 9.30pm, but I couldn’t really sleep, just was uncomfortable.

Fast forward to 11/11.30pm and I was definitely have surges and suddenly really regularly!

I woke my husband went downstairs, got the blankets sheets etc down, lit candles and played some music.

My husband rang the hospital at midnight , and informed them I was definitely having 3 surges every 10 mins and very intense! They informed us they would contact the on call midwife and would be with us shortly.

Half hour later I knew that things were very intense, I tried to focus on up breathing and breath through each surge, I could feel a lot of low back pain and my husband did a bit of massage to try help.

I was worried there weren’t any available midwifes, so made my husband double check with the hospital that someone was coming! I didn’t like the thought of getting in the car to the hospital so when we were told someone would be there shortly I was relieved!

The first midwife then turned up at 1am.

All pressure was in my bum and I knew I was ready to have this baby.

At 1.13am I welcomed my little boy into the world!

The second midwife arrived 10 mins after the birth. My birth was extremely quick and almost without a midwife there!

I managed to have my homebirth and no pain relief.

It was lovely to know I didnt have to go to hospital, my 2 year old stayed asleep upstairs and I was in the dim light of the sitting room enjoying our new addition.

I watched the whole hypnobirthing videos in the lead up to my birth.

I must admit I didn’t adopt all the techniques, partly because it happened so quickly! But the up breathing really helped me through each surge.

I found the whole course very insightful and gave me such a greater understanding of birth. I knew to go through each surge knowing I was one step closer to meeting my baby.

I would recommend the course to anyone, even if you don’t use all the techniques , it helps to give you knowledge of all aspects of birth and helps you go in with a greater understanding of what you options are.

And anyone who can’t decide about homebirth, I would 100% recommend it, being in my home environment made a speedy birth a lot less scary!

If I’m lucky enough to have any more children in the future I would definitely use hypnobirthing techniques again!