Positive birth story 💛

💜💜 I wanted to share my experience in the hope it helps other mums to be. I had a wonderful pain medication free water birth and prepared using this hypnobirthing book. The main thing that helped me was the breathing exercises and knowing that once I’d done x4 of them, the contraction was over and I’d get a little break to compose myself before the next. I also found it really useful knowing what happens to the body during labour and being aware that if I was calm, that would help things progress helped. I stayed at home for as long as possible and in a ‘UFO’ position (knelt on the floor mostly) and when I arrived at the hospital I was 5cm dilated. I then got in to the pool which also provided some relief and we had a playlist of our favourite music to put on. Very quickly I felt ready to ‘push’ and started to use my down breathing. My daughter was born after around 15 minutes of this stage. Overall it was a lovely experience and although there was pain and discomfort to manage, I felt in control and the experience was calm for me, my husband and our baby. I hope this story helps other ladies know it is possible to have a relaxed birth experience and I’d also recommend having a birth preferences sheet prepared so that you can feel settled in knowing that should things change or not develop as you’d hoped, you’ve got things written down as to how you would like to manage these changes. People will say you can’t plan labour because so much can change along the way, but I believe you can have preferences ready and can try to stick with these and that having this plan for varying eventualities can help you feel calmer in what can feel a scary prospect in to the unknown (especially the first time)! Best of luck and apologies for this being a long post! I hope it helps someone though 💜💜 x
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Aw it sounds amazing and perfect jus like my second birth! I just wanted to ask, with the down breathing....did that actually work? I've been practicing on the loo like they recommend and literally nothings happening ,🤣 my last 2 babies I pushes when I was ready and was just 4 pushes. I'm stressing thinking down breathing might end up taking hours and hours lol

To be honest I did what felt natural to me in the moment and that was doing the ‘down breathing’ and panting really 😂 and also pushing (even though I know they say you don’t need to push as such with down breathing). It was still very quick though x

Aw wow what a beautiful experience ✨✨✨ thank you for sharing Kathryn 👑💛💫

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It was also at the initial height of covid in April so there was anxiety from that as well. I really just wanted to share to hopefully balance out some of the scary birth stories people hear before they have their own babies. I hope my story means some women feel that it is possible to have a calm experience and to end up with nice memories of it all ❤️

@🍂 yes the book would still be helpful because it doesn’t focus on having a water birth and that’s just one option. It focuses on knowing what happens to your body, breathing exercises and other coping strategies, positive affirmations and being in a UFO position (upright, forward, open) so you can do all of this on dry land as it were! Being in the bath early on is helpful though and I did this at home before going to hospital too. Good luck! x

Just got round to reading this, sounds like you had a lovely birth. I hope to have to same experience 🙂

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