This week’s story comes from Becky Baker who very kindly sent her story to us this week. Settle down – it’s a beauty!
“My little baby girl, Mabel, was born on 2nd August at 6.36am, weighing 6.13lb! I still can’t believe how lucky I am to have actually got the labour I had wished for.
I started having surges at 4am on the 1st, but they were roughly about 10 minutes apart and were bearable, so I went about my day, trying to stay relaxed and a little active, pottering about indoors and listening to my affirmations.
By about 7pm when my husband got home my surges had intensified and became more frequent, so we put the tens machine on and I breathed through each surge using the Calm Birth School breathing techniques. By 12am they had ramped up again and some were 3-4 minutes apart, so we decided to go to hospital.
We went straight to the birthing suite, where they measured that I was 4cm dilated. I continued to use my tens machine and kept using the breathing techniques learned. I tried gas and air, but it made me feel sick and as if it was getting in the way of my breathing, so it was left down to my tens machine and my trusty breathing techniques to get me through each surge!
By around 5am I was measuring 7-8cm and my surges had really ramped up again. At this point I decided to get in the birthing pool and, as you’re not allowed the tens machine in there, it was down to just me and my breathing techniques to get me through that last hour and a half…
It felt like I wasn’t in the pool long at all before it was time to start pushing. I don’t know how I did it, but at 6.36am, with one last push, Mabel was out and I was told she came out swimming into the water! My little water baby!
She was so calm and still is a very calm and content little bubba. What an amazing experience. I truly believe if I hadn’t gone down the hypnobirthing route I don’t think I would have believed I could have done it without pain relief, but the affirmations were going round in my head the whole time. My birthing partners (my mum and husband) were also repeating affirmations to me and reminding me I could do this and to stay focused.
Thank you to the Calm Birth School and to Suzy Ashworth for making me believe I could do it, and teaching me to have full trust in my own body to birth my baby naturally and peacefully. Thank you!”
