Katie’s Birth Story

I went into labour spontaneously at 40+1. I laboured at home for several hours using the TENS machine and the shower for pain relief. I was 5-6cm on arrival at the hospital and after what was looking to be a fairly quick and calm waterbirth, baby’s heart rate dropped, which resulted in a sudden and unexpected vacuum delivery and a few days in NICU.

Baby improved quickly and we were discharged home a few days later, and he is now thriving. At one stage it looked like I was about to be rushed to theatre for an emergency caesarean, but then I was fully dilated and he was ready, so all worked out well in the end.

Although plans kept changing, we were kept informed the whole time, and I felt confident with my team. We think the Calmbirth course really helped us and we highly recommend it. The breathing techniques were especially helpful throughout and despite the last hour of labour being quite chaotic, we felt relatively calm and ‘in the zone’ while everything else was going on around us – so thank you!

We really did love Calmbirth. We found it so helpful, especially Jack as he really wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do to support me and he felt really confident with that after the course! Sometimes he would even just do deep breaths himself to remind me to breathe deeply, which would work without us even having to say anything. Little forms of communication like that were super helpful!.