"Our experience was nothing but magical!"

Firstly Dan and I had absolutely enjoyed being apart of your February Hypnobirthing classes on the Gold Coast! We couldn’t believe how much information we had taken from them that we had never been informed of or what doesn’t get spoken about often enough! We had also invested in a doula (downtobirth) after attending the class just for that extra support.

Expecting our first baby girl on March 28th things went a little like this!

On the 20th of March at 4:00 am I woke to have a bathroom break as we get closer we check the toilet every single time we go (lol) and this morning I had seen a small amount of blood, and then started to have my “show” losing my mucus plug. From then on my surges had begun, feeling calm and relaxed really focusing on my breathing in the early stages which I think really helped keep my mind strong as they picked up, we had then laboured at home feeling so completely relaxed in trusting my body and baby that we were completely align and safe, my surges towards late afternoon had began being consistent in length of time lasting 1 minute but not necessarily getting consistent in the rule of “3 minutes about for 2 hours” I went with my instincts and how I was feeling at about 6:30 after being in the shower my surges were getting stronger and that is when I felt it’s time to go to the hospital, we left our home and arrived at gcuh at 7:30 where we handed our birth plan and asked to have a midwife on board with hypnobirthing , we had a lovely guy who understood our wants, but unfortunately for us to stay at the hospital because my surges weren’t the typical “3,2,1” they wanted a vaginal examination we declined a full examination but did agree to a check without any foreign objects that could potentially effect my membranes, at that point I was told I was 2-3 but after doing our class also being okay with that because I knew things were progressing in myself I was given the option to go home or stay for 1 hour and see how we went we chose to stay, we had declined being attached to any monitoring and just using the Doppler to check bubs heart beat, once we had gotten to a room I decided the waters is where I felt best comfortable so the shower was it!

Within 30-45 minutes my surges were getting so much closer together and stronger to the point within the hour I felt the “pressure” wanting to push feeling, at that point I knew I was so much closer to meeting my baby, I was starting to transition! It was clear as I had started to find a more comfortable position and I was beginning to be deep with my breathing we had requested at that point to get into the bath and moved to a birth suite our midwife was lovely but following his “midwife in charge” we were not able to enter the water unless they had done an examination (we did try and refuse) but at that point we had just said okay as I was really needing to get into the bath at that point, I was then told I was 9cm and cleared to enter, once I had emerged in water WOW did I feel calm and started being able to pull myself back in with breath work, it was time to start bearing down and breathing my baby out, indications for that were from what we were taught “shaking and overheating” I thought I was melting (lol) but also trusting in my body my surges had then spaced out with gaps of 10-15 minutes for me to regain some energy! And then each surge I used all I had an breathed down deep where I could feel my baby girl starting to make her way, this process went for around 1 hour but I felt safe calm and connected to my baby she was happy and healthy, within that time I knew it was time to meet her with my final surge I could feel her making her entrance and at 12:14 am on the 21st our little blessing Scarlett Ann was born! Our experience was nothing but magical! We cannot thank belly2 birth yourself Shari for helping us bring our magical birth to I life completely natural physiological birth using only breath work, water and a tens machine as pain relief!!

After her birth we chose to delay cord clamping where she was able to receive all the goodness from my placenta until the cord was white in colour, also after one hour of being attached Dan had cut the cord and I went to the bath room for gravity to help me birth my placenta!