Oh we're going there! If you follow me on Twitter you can't have missed my incessant rave review for hypnobirthing and the classes I went to throughout my pregnancy.
I attended a Daisy Birthing class - ran by Charlotte Collins, from when i was about 18 weeks pregnant. For an hour once a week I was able to completely relax, think of nothing but me and my baby whilst doing some gentle yoga moves and meditation. You'll know if you've been pregnant before about how much people rattle on with their horror labour stories, the emergency c sections, the forceps, the pain and screaming, all of which are valid accounts of their pregnancy journey but maybe not the best motivation for a first time mum. Daisy works to retrain your brain in order to think more positively about labour and most importantly for me, i felt armed with knowledge and information I just wouldn't have known had i not taken part in the sessions. As an added extra, hubby and I also went along to a parenting day, and despite his initial reservations, he puts his calmness throughout my labour down to the class alone. If you have a Daisy instructor in your area, there's nothing I can recommend more for a calm birth! Feel free to drop me a message also if you have any questions!
So, as is customary after you've 'graduated' from Daisy by having your baby, Charlotte encouraged us to send our birthing story in order to motivate the other mums to be still taking part in classes. I found other people accounts so helpful and here's the one I sent in a couple of days after having my bebe.
So Cora Matilda is here! 9lbs 7oz of her 😊
I went into Stepping Hill at about 11am on Saturday at the midwifes request, she had come to do a third membrane sweep and I mentioned how I'd had a trickle of what I know now was my waters. Obviously this was earlier than I would've wanted to go in and I didn't realise at that time that I'd be staying in until I had a baby to leave with!
The first half of labour was way off what I had hoped for and made me quite panicky as to how things would progress. I had quite an old school midwife who kept telling me I didn't need her, that I wasn't in established labour because I was being very quiet, she didn't really understand why I wanted music and why I didn't want to lie on the bed etc so I was really relying on wayne to keep me calm. I can't say how invaluable the daisy parenting class was for this reason! Having wayne understand the waves of labour, helping me to focus with the daisy music on headphones for a while, reminding me I could do anything for a minute 😂 was such a great help.
At about 7.45 I begged the midwife to examine me, at this point we'd been moved to a side room and given a paracetomol as I 'didn't need to be in a delivery suite' as she still said I wasn't in labour. The contractions were quite intense at this point so I was really considering which opiate based drugs I'd be open to. We found out I was 6cms dilated and a room had become available in the birthing centre which I was really pleased about - they had speakers and the lights were dim which made such a change to the rest of my labour, I was given gas and air on the way up which helped me to calm down somewhat as I'd been getting quite antsy at not being able to be as mobile as I wanted due to the size of the room we were put in.
After what seemed like ages the pool was ready for me and I've honestly never been as happy to be in water ever! Whilst the waves of labour were still ALOT, I could relax as much as possible in between them which I think helped. At around 10.20 my body started pushing which scared me abit because I had no control over it and it wasn't what I imagined would happen but at 10.36 after two big pushes our little one arrived.
I couldn't have done it without the positive reinforcements I learnt at daisy and still can't believe I did it with just gas and air and a paracetamol!
Three years later, still cannot believe that ish.
