I stumbled upon hypnobirthing when I was laying in the bath around half-way through my first pregnancy and I was listening to the audio book of ‘Happy Mum, Happy Baby’ by Giovanna Fletcher (I love that woman!). She spoke about how she ENJOYED labour and birth and basically breathed her babies out, and I thought I NEED TO KNOW MORE! Birth wasn’t actually something I was particularly scared of.
Of course, I had heard the horror stories, I had watched countless episodes of ‘One born every minute’ on Channel 4 and I’d even been a birth partner for my best friend when she had her beautiful baby in 2014 and witnessed her brutal induction and the lack of aftercare she received in the hospital. Giovanna said that she used Hollie DeCruz as her hypnobirthing teacher and I went straight to Google and found that Hollie had done a book on hypnobirthing – and guess what? I got the audio book ‘Your Body, Your Birth’ immediately while still in the bath! Over the coming months I listened to the book twice over and I played it on loud at night so my partner Rob could also listen – although I don’t know how much went in as he always fell asleep before me (and still does!). I did all the things that Hollie suggested in her book; I got really involved in the affirmations and the relaxations and nearer the end of my pregnancy, I focused solely on positive birth stories by watching numerous births on Instagram and started following lots of peaceful birth pages because that is the birth I was aiming for. I didn’t tell many people that I was getting into hypnobirthing – when I hear the word ‘hypno’ I become very interested, I associate that word with the brain (which is fascinating!) and meditation and relaxation which is something I feel very comfortable with as I have used the techniques for years for helping to control my anxiety and cope with chronic pain that I live with. However, I’m very aware that only a small amount of people in my circle are into the same thing or know and accept that I’m into it even if they’re not. The majority of people around me would visibly raise their eyes and scoff at whatever hippy movement they thought I was getting into next, and as hypnobirthing is ALL about positivity, I didn’t want to even get into it with them and explain what it really was. For me, it felt more sacred to do this by myself and prove to myself that my beliefs were valid rather than seek it from anyone else around me anyway. I did say in the last few weeks of my pregnancy that I wanted to hibernate away, and I asked my family and friends not to keep checking in to see if the baby was here yet – it seems mad to me that people do that to an expectant mum when she’s already waiting for that baby herself. Saying ‘hurry up baby’ isn’t sending a message to the baby, it’s putting pressure on the mum when it is out of her control and she wants to meet her baby too! It’s not like she wouldn’t tell people when the baby did arrive either! I also stated that I wanted the first day or two at home as a three without visitors, which most people respected but there was the odd few that took offence to this. I’d read time and time again that those last few days of pregnancy, and the first few days after a baby is born, are the most vital and the thought of us all getting to know each other without interruptions and as much skin to skin contact as possible filled me with warmth and I knew I had to make a stand for what I wanted as a new mum and for what was right for my new family. It didn’t actually work out that way for us, as after one night at home on our own I phoned my mum to come over because our baby was smaller than we anticipated and she needed some tiny baby clothes and smaller nappies, and we also hadn’t slept for 72 hours so that baby bubble was more a bubble of exhaustion and desperation than of peace and tranquillity! We needed support and there wasn’t anyone else I wanted except my own mum!
The days leading up to my birth were filled with relaxation, eating lots of dates (to soften my cervix – which I believe helped!) and very gentle exercise. There was also a very panicked afternoon of working out how the car seat worked and strapping teddies into it for practice with lots of shouting at Rob for getting it wrong and wondering how we would keep a baby alive if we couldn’t even do the car seat! On the morning of Tuesday 2nd April at 5 days ‘overdue’ (I hate that word!) as Rob was getting ready to go to work, I felt very mild period type cramps that came and went fairly regularly. I told him about it but said he should go to work because it could be something or nothing. I had a show around a month or more before my labour started and had small shows every few days in the last week before my birth, so I wasn’t really looking out for that as a sign like it is for some others. I bounced on my ball, pottered around our new house (we had moved in VERY recently) and got back into bed to watch my favourite ever film ‘Love, Rosie’ which is a movie version of my favourite book ‘Where Rainbows End’ by Cecilia Ahern. I felt in a state of bliss. I knew in my mind that I was ready and completely trusted that my baby knew when they would be ready too, so I was very patient. I was booked in for a membrane sweep with my midwife for the next day, I hadn’t done a lot of research into how early attempts at inducing labour can affect the whole process back then like I have now, and I’m very grateful to Lily for making her entrance when she did so I didn’t go ahead with the sweep – it’s a very personal choice but now that I have trained as a hypnobirthing practitioner, I would personally not entertain the idea and go down that route myself as I am able to make fully informed decisions. Unfortunately, this is something that many mums (including myself at that point) don’t have the opportunity to make because they aren’t given the facts without asking for them. Anyway, the period cramps were stronger and longer by the time Rob got home from work around 5.30pm and our best friend James popped round to introduce me to his sister’s puppy who he was looking after – she was so cute, and I think the oxytocin from seeing a bouncing fluff ball in my house helped the contractions! We didn’t say anything about the possibility of me having contractions as in all honesty I still wasn’t sure if that’s what it was! I was expecting my whole bump to tighten but the sensations were so low down that I wasn’t really sure what was happening! I knew Braxton Hicks (practice contractions) were something women experience so couldn’t tell if it could be that or the real deal. I cooked a huge dinner of shepherd’s pie with sweet potato mash and LOADS of veg because I thought I would need lots of energy if this was the real thing. While the dinner was in the oven, Rob and I took a slow walk to our local shop for a chocolate yogurt and a can of Fanta as I said I would like a little treat after dinner with the chocolate and I would treat myself to the Fanta after the baby was born. In my first pregnancy I was SO strict with that I ate and drank to the point that I didn’t have my favourite meal (pepperoni pizza!) for my whole pregnancy because of how unhealthy it is. At the time of writing this blog, I’m actually expecting another baby and I have eaten pizza more than once!
On the way back from the shop, the surges became so intense that I could barely put one leg in front of the other when they came over me and it seemed like the longest journey I had ever walked! We ate dinner between contractions, and I filled myself up ready to feel content and ready for action. The time between dinner and going to bed are a bit of a blur now, I think we just checked that everything was ready for the hundredth time in case we needed to make a run for it in the night. I had my heart set on a home birth, especially after watching the many beautiful videos on Instagram, but Rob wasn’t comfortable with it from the beginning, and we had looked around our local hospital’s maternity led unit and I was very happy with the environment and the birthing pools and felt confident that we were meeting in the middle by birthing there instead. We went to bed but laying there wasn’t comfortable or natural for me as my surges became more intense and regular and around 11.30pm I got up and started to run a bath. That’s when my beautiful and healthy dinner ended up wasted in the toilet from both ends as my body COMPLETELY emptied itself ready for birth. I knew this was a normal stage of labour and didn’t panic – it made me excited that something was happening! Surely, I wouldn’t throw up (and have the runs – TMI?) if this was a ‘practice’ run. I had a ‘contraction timer’ in my Babycentre app so while the bath filled up and I got in, I timed them and between 11.50pm and 12.07am I had four really strong surges in the bath. I laid there breathing through the surges as they came and went and eventually, I asked Rob to join me in the bathroom as I didn’t want to be alone. I still wasn’t sure these were real surges as the sensations were so low down and I was still expecting my whole bump to do something! Something they can’t tell you is how you’ll experience the contractions as everyone is so different – some feel it all in their back, some all over, some low and others hardly at all! I left it as long as I could manage on my own, Rob was yawning his head off while he sat on the toilet lid next to me and when I got out of the bath that is when the control started to very slowly slip away from me and the hypnobirth I had envisioned for so long began to change a bit.
I had read numerous things about the transition stage, and I know that is the time when the body and hormones change and temporarily the birthing mother can feel like it’s all too much and that tends to be when they say ‘I can’t do this’. I KNEW that stage was real, and it meant that was when we should have left for the hospital (or actually before this!) but when I was in it, I didn’t recognise it! That is why, in hindsight, I wished that I had included Rob so much more in the education about the stages of labour because he would have recognised that I in transition and about to enter the ‘down’ stage of labour, but he actually panicked more because he could see me worrying and losing the control I had before. This is why it is SO important for mums to have a birthing partner to watch and advocate for them. As I stood up from the bath a small blood clot fell out and we both thought that blood was a bad sign (little did we know how much more blood was to come!) and that’s when Rob made the decision to call the hospital. I still breathed through my surges, and I wanted to stay at home longer so when the triage midwife on the phone said she thought we should leave it a while longer before coming in, I was quite happy to agree. Rob however was not happy, and he persuaded the midwife that there was lots of blood, and he was bringing me in. As we got me dressed and ready to leave for the 20-minute journey to the hospital, I felt the urge to begin pushing. My body was taking over and instead of putting trousers on and sitting in the car, I should have been adopting comfortable positions for my baby to move down. The journey was painful for Rob and me! I was still extremely nauseous and travelled with a bucket and toilet roll while trying my hardest not to push and lifting myself up in my seat because it felt like I was sitting on the baby’s head. What should have been a 15 to 20-minute journey was more like 45 minutes as I asked Rob to drive so slowly because I felt very ill in the car – I ruined the only part that Rob was really excited about: having an excuse to drive super-fast to the hospital like they do in the movies!
Once at the hospital, we didn’t even have time to get a parking ticket or get the bags out of the car. We went as fast as we could to the labour ward where they assess and triage you. My only fear surrounding birth was giving birth on the labour ward at our local hospital. I had been a birthing partner for my best friend there years before and to me it was an unpleasant environment and she was really neglected by the staff before and after her birth, and I knew this isn’t what I wanted for myself. The midwife who we spoke to on the phone was waiting for us at the front desk and she asked me to do a urine sample for her. On the toilet the only liquid that came out of me was pink and red and that alarmed me, so I shouted for Rob and the midwife, and she came in very calm and said “I can’t test that, it’s all ‘show’”. I told her I was pushing and she said, “You’re a very clever girl” (patronising or what?!) and said to get me into the room across the hall – I tried to waddle across the corridor without my trousers up because the pressure of my baby’s head was unbearable to pull my underwear and trousers up again, but she told me to hold on to my dignity. As I was naked from the waist down and trying to cover my modesty, a man, probably another expectant Dad, walked past the open bathroom door and looked horrified – poor bloke! As we got into the room opposite (room number 8!) they finally helped me out of the trousers that I REALLY didn’t want to be wearing and TOLD me they would examine me to see how far along I was – another thing I’ve learned since my birth is that I was never ASKED if it was okay. I had all of my choices removed from me as soon as Rob took me to the hospital. I was too embarrassed to tell any of the midwives that I was using hypnobirthing because I had been so secretive about it during my pregnancy, and that was my BIGGEST mistake. I had been my own advocate since starting my hypnobirthing practice and when I came to the big event, I didn’t have the confidence in myself and my choices to speak up for myself. I was more than capable to having that baby in my own way, but I didn’t have the confidence to say ‘NO’ to anyone. “They know best” I thought and let them take control. Of course, they have been birth thousands of times before and are medically trained so in more ways than one, they do know best. But they didn’t know my body and my wishes because I didn’t communicate with them. I asked if the pool was free, I knew they had one birthing pool on the labour ward and I was clinging to any possibility of the birth I desperately wanted. They said it was free, but there wouldn’t be enough time to fill it as it takes so long. I weakly argued that they didn’t know how long I had left, and they looked at each other and one of them agreed and left the room. I knew she had absolutely no intention of filling up the pool for me! I asked a few times if I could be taken to the midwife led unit instead of labour ward too, but in reality I knew this baby was about to be born and I agreed that there wasn’t time.
My midwife established that I was fully dilated, and she apologised to us for telling us not to come in when Rob argued with her on the phone an hour before. She said that as long as I was feeling the urge to push to make the most of each contraction and go for it. I started doing the ‘down breath’ that I had practiced every time I had done a number two on the toilet for the last two months and I could feel my baby coming down without pushing too much. However, my midwife said “No, don’t breathe – chin to chest and push really hard, make the most of that contraction”. So, waving goodbye to the last of my self-confidence and hypnobirthing that I been building up over my pregnancy, I did as I was told (I’m SO annoyed with myself now!) and I pushed my baby out so hard that she came out within less than 10 minutes of pushing and she tore me all the way out, internally, and externally. In between contractions Rob tried to comfort me, I was distressed because the midwife was stood at my feet shouting “push, push, push, keeping pushing!” and after each surge passed, I shouted back. Sometimes shouting “fuck!” at the ceiling, or “I am fucking pushing!”. I had been prepared for dimmed lights and music or silence in a birthing pool, so this bright environment in a room that was no bigger than a broom cupboard, laying on a tall bed on my back and pushing with my legs akimbo was so far from what I had visioned that I became really upset. At one time the midwife told me to try going on to all fours and I knew this was a better position, but she had her head and the baby heart monitor so close to my back side that I felt really uncomfortable. If she had taken a step back then it may have worked better, but the pressure of a baby moving through the birth canal feels like a huge poo and I was more worried about pooing or farting in her face than anything else, and it was really distracting. When I said this, she said “you won’t poo”, but it wasn’t enough to calm me, so I turned back over. The contents of my stomach and bowel had been so violently ejected from me earlier in the evening that she was probably right about not pooing, but it still didn’t feel okay! Once my baby’s head started to emerge, I asked Rob to take a photo and each time they emerged more and more, he took a photo so I could see later. Once the baby had crowned, it came out like a child emerges from a water slide on a rubber ring! My waters went everywhere, filling up the midwife’s utensil pots that she had laid neatly on the bed and all down the front of her.
Our beautiful baby was born at 5.02am, weighing 7lb 5.5oz and she was a GIRL! We didn’t know her gender before that as we had kept it a surprise, and when they placed her into my arms I wanted Rob to tell me what we had. When he pulled the towel back, her cord had fallen between her legs and we both thought boy, but the midwife lifted the cord and said, “check again” and we both couldn’t believe that we had a girl. We knew straight away what her name would be, and we had our perfect Lily with us at last. We had delayed cord clamping and the cord had fully drained when they allowed Rob to cut it a few minutes after she was born. I opted for a physiological third stage and my placenta came out maybe five or ten minutes after Lily was born. It was huge! A warm, wet lump of flesh (sorry!) being pushed through an opening that had just been torn by a baby was probably worse than actually having the baby, but it was over really quickly, and Rob took photos of the placenta too. The midwife couldn’t believe how big it was. I really wanted to initiate breastfeeding straight away, but I was still dressed on my top half, and I hadn’t put a feeding bra on because I wasn’t prepared for that birth, so it was too awkward and I just cuddled her instead. I spent the next hour being stitched up internally and externally and I hadn’t had any pain relief, so the midwife did give me a local anaesthetic injection.
During the repair procedure, I started losing more blood than the midwife was happy with and she pulled the emergency buzzer to get some assistance. Lots of flustered bodies in blue and white uniforms barged into the room and I could sense panic. Eventually, my midwife explained that I was losing a bit of extra blood and she just needed a hand rather than a real emergency response so one of the midwives stayed to help with holding a light and various sterilised bags of equipment to “give me a new vagina on the NHS” as my midwife joked when she was finished. She then put her finger up my backside without any warning (maybe she did that so I didn’t have a chance to expect it and tense up, but it felt EXTREMELY degrading) to assess if I had anal tears or haemorrhoids (I didn’t thankfully) but they inserted a suppository up there too for good measure without my consent. She said it was a slow-release pain relief that would help with the pain from the stitches in a few hours when my oxytocin began to dip, so I probably would have accepted if she offered, but it was another choice that was taken from me. I absolutely am not saying that my midwife wasn’t amazing – she was! I’m so grateful to her for helping our daughter into the world. I just know that I will advocate communication with care givers to anyone I know that is expecting a baby, because how can a midwife facilitate the birth we would like to aim for when we enter hospital scared and inexperienced like I did? I just accepted the situation and thought “I did labour perfectly well so it’s just important to get my baby here now”. If we enter calm and educated on our choices, we can communicate with the midwives and other care givers and work with them while they work with us in return. Despite not standing up for my beliefs and my choices, I still immediately thought to myself “I just did that. My body and my baby worked together with the amazing power of my mind, and it was the most amazing and exhilarating experience of my life!”. I laughed and said “hypnobirthing does work” and my midwife said “it’s amazing, I used it with my last birth” and that is the first moment I kicked myself – if I had just spoken up, I know she would have taken a step back and listened to me because she had that experience of hypnobirthing herself! I was literally on cloud 9 for a few weeks after birth and I do put that partly down to ensuring I had a relaxing and positive pregnancy and outlook on birth. I walked around with rose tinted glasses on, looking at all women I knew that had birthed babies before me with pure admiration at what they had achieved. Birthing a baby, however it happens, is the single best experience in the world. I have no words to explain how I feel about hypnobirthing – it just works, and I am adamant that it can be used for ALL births. As expectant parents, we are powerful and when are armed with education and confidence, we can take on the world!
I want to be real and honest about pregnancy, labour and birth and that is why I’ve included the photos below. The first picture is my body when my labour first started. I thought this would be the last bump selfie I took so made the most of it. The second photo is me the day after returning home from hospital with mesh maternity knickers and a sanitary towel bigger than Lily’s cot mattress. I had the ugliest nude feeding bra and my socks pulled up but I wanted to capture the moment to look back on and share with my friends (and now the internet!) to show how broken we can feel while also being absolutely on top of the world.
I was in a bubble from the moment I entered the hospital to the moment we left with our new bundle of joy. I sat in the back seat next to Lily in her car seat on our way home, and I made Rob pull over 10 minutes down the road so we could check she was still breathing because she was sleeping so soundly. That fierce love and protection that I felt in the back seat of our car (while sitting on an inflatable donut cushion) for Lily has stayed with me every single day and the day she was born was the making of me as a mother and that is the best thing I have ever been!
Love, Amy x