Hi Jenie

Just wanted to let you know that our little boy arrived safe and sound on 1st September 

I also wanted to share my birth story with you as it’s definitely not the standard hypnobirthing story that you hear a lot of!

I was overdue so was due for induction on 31st August however, I went into labour at 2am on 29th August. I was in slow labour for 55 hours having contractions 4 minutes apart but was only 1cm when we went the hospital so came back home. We made it to 31st August and we’re still no further along despite having regular contractions so went for our induction at 9am.

I had the gel at around 11am and spent the next 10 hours progressing to 5cm with no pain relief. At 9pm we transferred to the labour ward and were over the moon to be given the water birth room as that’s what we had planned to use. My waters were broken at 10pm but they contained some meconium so a water birth was out of the question for us at that point. I then spent the next 12 hours in labour using my hypnobirthing techniques and gas & air.

At 10am the next day (01/09) I was still only 7cm so was put on the hormone drip to increase my contractions. At that point I had been in labour for nearly 4 days and was absolutely exhausted so I had some pethadene to try and get some rest and save some energy for pushing. The baby was back to back and was hitting my cervix at an unfavourable angle meaning I wasn’t dilating evenly or as much as I should have been. After an examination we were advised a c-section was required so that’s what I had and our baby boy was born at 1.50pm.

Our birth plan didn’t even come out the suitcase and we encountered scenarios I never thought would happen but I wanted to share this with you as the hypnobirthing techniques we learned on your course helped me though 4 days of labour using solely them and gas & air, only 3 hours before my section did I eventually have to ask for something else due to sheer exhaustion rather than not being able to deal with the pain.

Because of my long labour the midwives kept changing shift and each one said how well I was coping without any pain relief.
When relaying my birth story to people they always respond with how traumatic it was and even on the maternity ward the midwives were saying I had such a bad time but it didn’t feel that way to me and it still doesn’t now. The pain was manageable thanks to the hypnobirthing techniques it was just the lack of sleep which was hard.

I know this isn’t the ‘perfect’ hypnobirthing story you always see but I don’t think I would have coped half as well with everything if I wasn’t hypnobirthing. I felt in control the whole time and not once did I think I can’t deal with the pain which I was happily surprised about. I think I drove the midwives crazy with the hypnobirthing tracks on constant repeat for so long but they worked amazingly well.

I just wanted to share that with you to prove that although things went off plan for us, hypnobirthing still worked just as well and that you don’t have to have your perfect planned birth to effectively use the techniques in labour.

Thanks again, I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have such an amazing little boy here safe and sound, we couldn’t be happier xxx