Birth Story - Soraya and baby Alfred

After a lovely pregnancy, I decided to do a hypnobirthing course with Siobhan through a recommendation from a friend. I absolutely loved the course and was strict with my practice every day for the next 5 weeks. As I approached 41 weeks my midwife set up an appointment with a doctor as baby’s head had not yet engaged in my pelvis. The doctor carried out a procedure where he tried to manually move babies into my pelvis, which it would not. I was then advised that a C section would be the only way my baby would enter the world. Having done Siobhan’s course I knew that I could question this advice and I used B.R.A.I.N to ensure I had all information I could possibly have. We came to a mutual decision that I would be booked in for a C section at 42 weeks so I could have a week to see if I would go into labour naturally and if the force of the surges would push his head into the right position for a vaginal birth. I must also mention that baby was measuring ‘big’ not an exact science at all but this was why they were keen to deliver him not past 42 weeks.

In the end I did go into labour naturally 2 days after the doctor appointment, the next few days I used everything I had learnt on the course to get me through the surges, but unfortunately after 4 days of this his head still hadn’t dropped and I was only at 4cm dilated. We then decided that we would bring the c section forward a day. So Alfred Majid Peplow entered the world on Thursday the 12th of October at 4:30pm.

I used my breathing techniques again to keep calm on the operating table, and Jack reminded me of everything we had learnt. We played our own music in the operating theatre, had delayed cord clamping and Alfred was put on my chest immediately and stayed there until we were back on the recovery ward where he was weighed and checked...coming in at a very healthy 9.5lbs!

It transpired that he had the cord wrapped around his neck twice and he was still very high, so I believe we made the right decision!

I would highly recommend Siobhan’s course to anyone, it doesn’t have to be just for a natural birth as my story proves.