CONGRATULATIONS! 
Victoria and her husband welcomed their beautiful baby girl on 23rd May. 

Victoria sent me this to share with you all. 

“I imagine a lot of people might consider our birth experience to be a negative one. But we honestly look back on all of it with no regrets, feeling that we made the birth our own, the start of our little girls story, and we rocked it! 

We loved Jenie’s hypnobirthing class and finished the final session feeling confident and excited for the arrival of our baby! Before the class we had thought I’d birth in a hospital because “that’s what everyone did” but Jenies class empowered us to make the decision to birth at home – we organised a pool, set up our affirmations and prepared the space to welcome our little one. As you’ll read below, our baby wasn’t born at home in the end but I definitely feel that planning a home birth helped me to own the birth, to visualise the experience and to know how I’d ideally like the birth to be. After my 40 week appointment my midwife recommended that I have a growth scan due to my fundal height increasing a lot from the previous appointment. The estimate from the scan was that our baby was 11lb 4oz! The consultant recommended the hospital for birth and an induction. We decided that was a route we were comfortable with once we had all the information, despite being disappointed not to have the home birth we’d planned. I had the pessary induction on Wednesday morning and loved spending the day at home knowing we would meet our baby soon! The surges started around 3pm, and because we had prepared for a home birth I felt really confident welcoming the surges at home. I rested and pottered around the house, and breathed through each surge. By 11pm I was using the tens machine and felt it was time to ring the hospital. They were happy for me to come in and I requested a VE on arrival, I’d managed to get to 6cm and the midwife was so surprised, the breathing techniques Jenie taught me kept me so calm and focused during each surge. My husband set up our room with our LED candles, made it dark and cosy and repeated my affirmations with me whilst I held onto a lavender tissue. It was a wonderful private experience, the midwives really respected our space and left us for most of the night to use the tools we’d learned with Jenie. Over the next few hours my surges became more intense and I requested a further VE, I was at 8cm but with bulging waters that were stopping the baby’s head from fully engaging. After four more hours at 8cm I was finding it hard to make decisions. My husband was an amazing advocate for me, using the BRAIN questions and making sure we were in control as much as possible. We decided to have my waters released, and saw there was Meconium in the waters so baby was monitored initially with remote monitoring and then with a monitor on her scalp. I quickly progressed to 10cm and pushed for two hours before requesting the consultant to examine me because I was very tired and uncomfortable. Our baby had turned back to back and due to size was unlikely to be able to be born in that position. Again my husband supported me, used BRAIN and decided an attempt to turn the baby was our next step. This involved a spinal anaesthetic and episiotomy, and although our baby was able to be turned the little monkey kept on turning back again! After three attempts we knew the best and safest option was to birth our baby by caesarean. Our little girl was born at 14.17 on Thursday weighing 10lbs 3oz. Our midwife made sure we were still able to have optimal cord clamping, skin-to-skin as soon as possible and my husband to announce the sex of our baby! We both cried lots of happy tears when she arrived! 

We’re home now, recovering well and our little Zoë is amazing! We wouldn’t change our birth experience for the world – Jenie helped to prepare us for all eventualities so we felt able to make the right choices and get the best outcomes for all three of us. We are so grateful and would definitely recommend hypnobirthing with Jenie!!” 

Thank you for all of your help and guidance Jenie! As I say above, without your class we wouldn’t have had the amazing experience that we did! I’ve attached a couple of photos of Zoë as well ????