I was able to achieve the natural labour and birth I had always dreamed of thanks to Sandie and HypnoBirthing.
Being a Registered Midwife and a highly anxious person I knew I needed to prepare myself antenatally for the most calm experience possible, which led me to HypnoBirthing and then Sandie.
Sandie’s calm and positive personality coupled with her wealth of knowledge made me feel both at ease and empowered. Each session with her left my husband Brett and I feeling more relaxed, prepared and excited for our baby’s birth.
At approximately 34 weeks our baby was still in a breech position which was making me more and more anxious. Sandie used her HypnoBirthing skills and knowledge to do a breech turning visualisation exercise with me. A few days later at my antenatal appointment our baby had turned head down!
Around 6pm at 38 weeks pregnant I began having surges. From the very start my surges were coming every 5 minutes and lasting 30-45 seconds. I used our birth ball to bounce and breathe through the surges while Brett put candles and affirmation cards around the house.
Around 12pm my surges had increased to 45-55 seconds in length and were more intense than earlier. By this time I was using the shower while Brett did some light touch massage on my back as well as giving me gentle words of encouragement and helping me to focus.
At 12.30am Brett called our midwife to tell her we were heading into hospital as I was feeling increasingly anxious and unsettled. I am usually a very prompt and organised person; I wanted to feel like our birth space was set up how I wanted it for our baby’s birth and being at home didn’t enable me to do that. We arrived at the hospital where I instantly felt less anxious and more “ready” to have our baby.
Brett set our room up with lots of candles, affirmation cards and a few pictures to help focus me and started our birth playlist which was a mix of hypnobirthing tracks as well as other meditative and relaxation music. I continued to use the birth ball, shower and light touch massage until around 8am when I got into the bath.
I absolutely loved the bath and found it helped me to relax and rest between surges. Because I was so relaxed I was very focused on and aware of my body and “knew” when I was fully dilated as I could feel my baby’s head moving down with each surge.
At 12.32pm, 18 hours after my first surge, our beautiful baby girl was born. I had done it! I felt so happy, proud and empowered as well as deeply connected with Brett. The hours following her birth our baby was so calm and alert and we had the most perfect first few hours as a new family.
HypnoBirthing enabled us to achieve the peaceful, calm and natural birth we wanted. We cannot thank Sandie enough for everything she did for us!
