‘Calm, confident and focused during my pregnancy and labour’

Bryony’s birth story – by Claire

I just thought I’d drop you a line to let you know about the safe arrival of our little girl Bryony Emilia and how the Mindful Mamma course helped us. You might remember, my husband Rob and I came to your workshop back in April because we were expecting our second child and hoping for a VBAC after an emergency c-section with our first daughter (I am the lady who embarrassingly burst into tears during the introductions at the start of the day).

With this 2nd pregnancy I went past my due date and having had an emergency c-section first time round, I agreed to be booked in for a c-section at 42 weeks if I did not go into labour naturally by then. Two weeks passed, the day of the c-section came and despite acupuncture, yoga and long walks I still hadn’t had a single contraction so I sadly resigned myself to another caesarean and planned to use the hypnobirthing background music and breathing techniques during surgery.

Then on the morning of the scheduled c-section as we arrived at hospital I started to get contractions! I was moved to the delivery suite where our little girl was born the next morning (8lbs 10oz and 15 days late) naturally with no pain relief other than gas and air. The experience was amazing, I was discharged from hospital the next day and nearly three weeks later we are all enjoying our new arrival and remain elated.

To a great extent, I attribute our successful VBAC to the things I learned from you and the Mindful Mamma course which helped us to leave behind the fear I had from my previous experience of birth and stay calm, confident and focused during my pregnancy and labour. I used a lot of the tips and advice you gave us and listened to the hypnobirthing tracks almost constantly during labour – after our little girl was born the midwives commented on how calm I was and one said ‘I don’t know what you were listening to on your headphones but I want some of it too’!