Introducing Phoenix Jessiah Thompson to the world! Born at 1:13am on the 17th June and weighing in at 3.06 (6.7 lbs) and 50cm (19.6 in.)

I went into labour 10 days later than my due date at 3:30am on the 12th of May. Contractions came on pretty quickly and were 2-3 minutes apart almost immediately. I stayed at home and had the midwife come by at 6am…we decided to wait until daylight to see if it backed off but at about 9am I couldn’t wait any longer, so we headed to RPA to the birthing centre. I had told my midwife I wanted to go as natural as possible and to have a water birth. I had a birth plan written out and ready to go!

On the 11th of June, we welcomed our little boy into the world.

Unfortunately he didn’t want to come on his own at 41+4 so we needed to be induced despite all of our natural methods of trying.

I am a practising GP and my wife is a social worker. I’m writing this in the perspective of a partner but also as a health worker. We first heard of Calmbirth through our relatives who raved about it, and we chose to take up the course in the Southern Highlands as a little babymoon before our second. Our first birth was magical but given our health backgrounds and also our personal journeys, we didn’t have a sense of agency throughout the process largely because we didn’t know. We can’t fault anyone but ourselves with this for the first time and everybody gave their best to us. But there was still something missing.

Jared and I are happy to announce the birth of our baby girl Riley. Born 11/4/24 at 11:35am.