Breathing and meditations helped birth our calmbirth baby

We had three hours in the delivery suite relaxing and cuddling and feeding and loving our baby, and I don’t think anything else in life can come close to the intimacy and quietness of those hours immediately after birth.
I am so pleased we did CalmBirth and were able to bring our little girl to us safely and with love. That’s it for our little family, thank you for helping us to complete our family just as we wished.

It  was positive birth experience but it went so fast that I felt I didn’t get to really apply everything we had learnt. It was also tricky to do a lot of the things leading up to the birth with a toddler who doesn’t need much sleep. We don’t get much time together so practising things couldn’t really happen without us foregoing sleep.

I think it helped me to manage better at home and I was able to remain calm until transition which coincided with us getting to the hospital pretty much. This was better than with my first labour where I was definitely panicking early on when it hurt so much, but I felt that I had more time to get into the mindset then. I was glad not to have the morphine this time. We decided on Calmbirth for our second baby after missing out on it with our first who was born just after lockdowns in 2021. My first labour was induced and relatively short, but I found myself panicking a lot and ended up having morphine which made me feel a bit disconnected from the labour. I wanted to avoid this for my second labour. I was about 32 weeks pregnant when we completed the course, and honestly just spending some time alone without our amazing toddler was an enjoyable novelty for us! In terms of the stages of labour, pain, and pain relief etc, I felt like there was a lot of recapping from what I’d researched before my first labour, my husband Alex definitely found that he learnt a lot and felt more empowered by just understanding the process a little better. It also gave us a nice opportunity to reflect on our first child’s birth, and how we might like this one to progress.

I used the meditations a few times a week following the course and found it helpful when my mind was swirling at bedtime. Having given birth before I found that I was a little worried because I knew how hard it would be and was building it up in my mind a bit!

After a stretch and sweep at 41w, I went into labour at 41+2. I had a bloody show all that day, but I think that a long bush walk, carrying a toddler for parts of it certainly helped labour come on! I made dinner for us and my mum who was staying, probably in early labour but thinking it was just late pregnancy discomfort. Around 6pm it was apparent that I was in early labour and while Alex finished making dinner, I used my gym ball and watched ABC Kids with our toddler, with contractions about 10 minutes apart. We had dinner and about 7.30pm I decided to shower and get set up in our bedroom.

I laboured with my lovely playlist, with low light and aromatherapy spray on my ball, while my husband sorted out our little boy’s bath and bedtime. I called the hospital at 8pm when contractions were around 5-7mins apart and they recommended paracetamol and some sleep. I lay down but the there was no way that I was going to be able to rest. So, I got back on the ball and began using the TENs machine until around 9pm when I called the hospital because my contractions were about 3mins apart and I was starting to struggle. We packed ourselves up and headed in. Alex was great and just calmly got us on the road and all I had to do was get in the car. By the time we got in the car contractions were about 90secs apart and the drive is about 25mins. This is when I made the most use of the breathing and meditations. Whoever decided to put a lot of speed humps around the hospital has a lot to answer for!

We had to wait for a security guard to show us up, and by then I was struggling to walk and talk. We went straight to the birthing suite, and I was so lucky that the midwife I had been seeing was on shift. She suggested I use the toilet before they did an examination, but the contractions were back-to-back and it was a real struggle to get on the bed, and I probably should have declined! They got the bath ready while I laboured leaning on the bed, using the TENs on max. I started to feel like pushing would be imminent and hopped in the bath. I was starting to panic a bit and couldn’t figure out how to bear down in the bath when I was floating and yelled out ‘I don’t know what to do’ and hoped that this was transition! I got out of the bath and my waters broke and I made my way to the bed with stops to push. I leant over the back of the bed and with a couple of contractions decided I wanted it over with and our little girl was born! A 14 minute active labour.

We had three hours in the delivery suite relaxing and cuddling and feeding and loving our baby, and I don’t think anything else in life can come close to the intimacy and quietness of those hours immediately after birth.
I am so pleased we did Calmbirth and were able to bring our little girl to us safely and with love. That’s it for our little family, thank you for helping us to complete our family just as we wished.