The birth of Olivia

Contractions had started over the weekend but weren’t regular and so coped ok with them then on Monday afternoon they started to arrive quicker and lasted longer by 6pm we rang the hospital and they told us to come in.

Neil was in the middle of making tea so we turned the oven off and put the bags in the car! Once we arrived they confirmed we were in labour (around 7pm) but only the early stages (1-2cm) so off we went for a walk outside round the carpark to get some fresh air, let gravity do its thing and I knew I wanted to be as mobile as possible from all the things we had talked about during your sessions. This seemed to work wonders and after about an hour and a half we went back inside the hospital and the next thing I knew I was 5cm dilated and they were moving us to the delivery suite.

Once in there I was put on a monitor but I told them I was keen to be able to keep moving round which wasn’t a problem as the monitors were wireless. They gave me gas and air to help purely with the surges and that was the only pain relief I used.

Both my husband and I were very calm throughout the whole process- something he is still shocked about, calm is not what he expected from me at this stage! However, remaining calm definitely helped everything which was to follow.

The techniques we learnt and practiced on the hypnobirthing course helped hugely with breathing, thinking about the affirmations, having a positive attitude and there was no fear involved. Unfortunately while they were monitoring us they noticed that the babies heart rate was dropping each time I had a contraction which I would have thought would have sent me in to panic mode but instead we asked questions and the staff at the hospital were amazing, from taking part in hypnobirthing both my husband and I felt comfortable about asking questions and finding out what the options might be going forward which helped us to still feel in control and prevent fear from creeping in.

After being monitored closely for a while by both our midwife and a doctor they advised that they would like to give me a c section to prevent the baby from being distressed any further. We talked about options, reasons and we agreed that this sounded like the best plan moving forward. Even at this point everything was still very calm and although it’s not what we had ‘hoped’ or ‘planned’ for our birth we knew from the course that preferences were the way to go rather than a plan and even though everything was turned on its head we were still in control, informed and made decisions that were right for us and our baby.

Olivia Kate Thomas arrived at 00.40 on 13th July via emergency c section and is completely perfect! They discovered when they carried out the section that Olivia had the umbilical cord wrapped round her neck twice which was the reason for her heart rate dropping during each contraction showing that the advice given by the doctors about having a section was completely justified.

I had to have a spinal block for the section having only used gas and air up until that point meant that I was completely aware of everything that was happening and going on. During the surgery my husband and I were casually having conversations about meeting our baby and we’re still completely relaxed and calm and we are convinced that is down to having completed the hypnobirthing course.

We would highly recommend Amber’s class to anyone who is expecting, even though we ended up having a section the skills and techniques we learnt were still used and made a huge difference to our experience of labour and birth.

It definitely made all the difference to us, honestly the classes had a huge impact on my mindset and that was what helped I’m convinced xx