I felt like the husband I wanted to be with this birth

Story by Roy

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.

We were a little apprehensive but going through the course with Karen was really informative and very romantic. We were in a room of couples who were very invested in the process and it was special to see all these people come together and grow together. We grew a lot closer over the two days, but what we didn’t anticipate was the sense of agency it gave us moving forward.

The second birth was incredible. My wife was like a birthing goddess – she was confident, calm and let her body do the work and gave birth to a healthy baby, with no complications. There was a moment during labour where she would breathe through the contractions, and then sleep in between them.

And for me, I was heavily involved, I knew what was going on, what was going to happen, and could play a really active part in the labour. I felt like the husband I wanted to be with this labour, and it set me up to be a better Dad in the early years.

We just had our third and our only regret was not to do the Calmbirth refresher course and take some time to prepare and I can confidently say that our second birth was the better one of all three. We hope to have more and will definitely be back. If you’re reading this, don’t think about it, just do it and I promise you there won’t be any regrets.