This is me aged 27 pretty much straight after the birth of my first child.
This was the start of it all. The start of a journey that led me through 2 more births, into parenting 3 children and the beginning of understanding myself more.
I was so afraid. I was so uneducated about birth. I had no idea about the ‘system’…I didn’t know what the Uterus was or what it did. I didn’t have a clue about my hormones and their role and above it all, I didn’t have the faith in myself.
A Hypnobirthing course I went on changed things for me dramatically.
The majority of the labour was pretty calm and manageable. I didn’t want any drugs and I didn’t have any. I didn’t feel excruciating pain and I felt confident & as in control as I could be but looking back I can remember an air of impatience. I wasn’t quite able to enjoy it as I had expected to.
This birth was not ‘perfect’. I had a forceps delivery in the end which was the absolute last thing I wanted.
That smile you see is pretty much plastered on. I was exhausted, so much so that I could barely move.
I remember feeling sad after a while and wondering what I had done wrong. Why hadn’t my birth been as perfect as I had wanted it to be? Why did I feel so exhausted and like I had failed? Many reasons contributed to those feelings.
Admittedly it was the space I was in at that point. But it was also the hypnobirthing method I had chosen to follow, from which I had gleamed a rose-tinted, picture perfect idea of what my birth would look like and when it hadn’t transpired I felt let down, I felt sad, I felt silly and ill equipped.
These feelings did soon pass and I began to see the bigger picture. I can’t tell you if it was hours, days or weeks but eventually I began to realise that what I had seen and experienced during that labour was a glimpse of another side of me. I had witnessed my strength. I had encountered my power. I had shook hands with my future self. It was this pregnancy & birth and all the prep, teachings & learnings that had come from it, that had opened (just a little) a door to my destiny.
I know, so deeply, that if I hadn’t have done Hypnobirthing I wouldn’t have had the calm & manageable labour that I had experienced but I also know that the course I did, didn’t prepare me for what had happened in the end.
This is why, I feel so passionate about YOU accessing the right type of course. It is why, whether you do an online TCBS course or an in-person one, you will learn about pain, you will learn about how to apply the tools in different situations, you will learn about ‘navigating the system’, you will learn and talk about the things that I wish I had know as well as all the amazing things that I did know. There will be no elephants in the room or questions out of bounds.
Your labour toolbox will be overflowing and those tools will come out and be set to use whether your birth is straightforward or whether it navigates away from the ideal.
You cannot guarantee one certain type of birth but you can prepare as best you can for any type of birth.
