Over the past eighteen years of teaching the Calmbirth® program, what matters to me most is how people emotionally land on the other side of their experience of giving birth. After teaching hundreds of couples, I know that there are so many different ways that they are going to welcome their babies, and some of those ways may be far outside what the couple may have envisioned for their birth journey. However, if a couple feels respected and dignified as they move through the changes that happen during their birth experience, and how they decide to embrace those changes, this will leave an emotional memory, and set the stage for the way the couple enters parenthood.

Catherine Bell in her book, The Birth Map: Boldly Going Where No Birth Plan Has Gone Before, states, “HOW A WOMAN FEELS ABOUT HER BIRTH EXPERIENCES MATTERS. It matters A LOT! The birth experience (that is, how the mother feels about the birth) and the level of support received are fundamental to the emotional health of the mother. The emotional health of the mother is fundamental to the health of the baby.” (Bell, 3)

We welcomed a baby girl Lena Soleil on the 2nd of December at 1:55pm. I laboured for 12 hours and birthed within the same hour that her 6 year old brother Finn was born at (1:03pm).

Both births were very alike, contractions began at a very similar time of night, and I laboured for almost the same amount of time as my first birth. I attended the Calmbirth course with Regina back in 2016 for the birth of my son. The breathing, relaxation and visualisation techniques contributed so much to how I birthed Finn.

Sometimes birth is not what you expect, but how you decide to work with it. It is not about perfection, but showing up and giving it your best. It is about learning a set of skills that gives a couple a sense of empowerment and confidence in a woman’s innate design to birth and a baby’s ability to be born. The story of Lachlan James Chessell’s birth shows us how Alison and Gareth were able to use what they learned in the Calmbirth program paired with their knowledge of Spinning Babies techniques to facilitate the birth of their son.