This Weeks birth story comes from one of our very own instructors, Hannah Percy who owns Enhance your Birth, covering the Snitterfield (Warwickshire) and the outskirts of Solihull.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful story with us!
I became pregnant with my first child at the age of 30 and was completely clueless of what lay ahead of me for the rest of my pregnancy, labour, birth and beyond. If I’m completely honest, I had pushed the whole idea of labour completely out of my head, as if it wasn’t going to happen.
My husband faints at the sight of blood, has a fear of needles, and generally squirms in the medical environment. Labour was very much at the forefront of his mind, he was fearful. He did his research and found a hypnobirthing taster session near us run by the lovely Liz Stanford (former owner of Enhance Your Birth). The taster opened our eyes to our complete naivety about pregnancy and birth. We learnt more in a 1 hr taster than we had learnt in our previous 30years of life!
We began learning all about hypnobirthing through group classes, practice, and reading. I empowered myself with knowledge and felt more in control. I realised my birth was something I had a say over, it was my body, and our baby, not the doctors, the midwives or the hospitals. I realised medical intervention wasn’t a given, and my husband wasn’t inevitably going to faint on the floor of the labour ward. In fact it was entirely possible to birth my baby in a calm environment with a supportive and active birth partner (husband) and feel positive about the experience.
I experienced some special circumstances towards the end of my pregnancy, but the tools I learnt within the Hypnobirthing course enabled me to feel in control of the situation, and ask appropriate questions. My amazing daughter was born in April 2016. I fulfilled my desire to birth naturally in a position that was comfortable to me. The whole experience was unbelievably empowering, The moral of the story is that despite the complications, a change in birth environment, and a broken arm (not ideal) I knew it was possible to birth easily and safely.
In February 2019 I gave birth to my son with whom I achieved the most amazing calm home birth. As with my daughter the support from my Birth Partner (my husband), and my knowledge of hypnobirthing techniques was the foundation of my success. We were drinking tea in the garden the same afternoon. We felt on top of the world!
The pregnancy, labour and birth of my two children inspired me to train as a Hypnobirthing Practitioner. In February 2020 I took a step back from my day job and embarked on a training journey with The Calm Birth School.
Every step of the journey has cemented my decision to become a Hypnobirthing Practitioner. I have a real passion for wanting as many women as possible to have a calm positive birth. I want to dispel the fear so many women feel around birth and want women to feel empowered about their pregnancy and labour.
In essence, I believe women can have any number of different experiences of labour, but one thing they should all have in common is they should be ‘Calm & Positive’ no matter what twist or turn they take. Women need to be supported in their choices and feel empowered by the knowledge/information they receive from their peers or antenatal educators.
If you want to create your own positive birth you can start today!
Sign up for our FREE Hypnobirthing Videos here or get in touch with one of our instructors here
