Here is a lovely story from Kirsty & Alan! They prepared for the birth of Rory by attending some fab TCBS classes with Tracey Harper from Birthing Calmly in Hertford, Hertfordshire.
“My waters broke Tuesday morning but no surges. I decided to carry on with a ‘normal day’ my parents came to visit, we had a good house clean and a lovely lunch. After they left I had an afternoon nap with some clary sage on my pillow to try and get labour started.
Around 6.30pm we went for a walk, I had a few “niggles” but nothing like a proper surge. We got home and watched a funny movie and with still nothing more than a couple of twinges I got into the bath with my MP3 birthing rehearsal on. The relaxation worked and within 30 mins I was having surges every 3 mins lasting almost a minute!
The midwife arrived around 10.30pm and labour was happening in force! Surges were now 90 seconds apart and very intense as baby had gone back to back and was struggling to descend – I was 3cm dilated. Struggling to cope with the frequency and intensiveness I opted to get into the pool. Quickly realised it wasn’t helping and that I’d need to be more ‘active’ so we got out and practised the standing / hugging poses you showed us for labour which worked! They got the baby back in the right position and into the birth canal.
From there I want to say it was all far easier! The surges were just pressure which was difficult to manage from a not bearing down perspective but not difficult in terms of discomfort. Things progressed quickly and around 1.30am I was feeling him crowning and knew his appearance wouldn’t be long. Cue quick rush to get the birth pool warm and ready again! I got into the water around 3am and was ready for the second stage. There genuinely was no pushing just breathing. I was very cautious of going slowly to allow my body time to stretch so was quite happy allow him to pop back in between surges! By this stage with the surges finally a good distance apart I was far happier and even joking with the midwives between them! ☺️
Rory was born around 4.20am, weighing 7lb, after a lot of grunting with my breathing. I had an easy natural third stage less than an hour later and the whole thing was done with no pain relief whatsoever!
Alan was absolutely fantastic throughout and really helped practice everything we’d learnt in class.
Thanks for giving us the confidence and skills to have the birth we wanted!”
To see how you can create your own calm birth please sign up to our video course here. You can try before you buy with our free classes here.
To find out more about TCBS Instructor led classes, find out if there is someone teaching near you here!
