Abbie attended pregnancy yoga in Dartford in her first pregnancy, she went into labour naturally at 36 weeks and had a calm, pre-term birth.
On Saturday morning I woke up thinking I’d weed so rushed to the toilet but the juices kept coming! I went to lay down to see if it was my waters when my partner spotted that I’d lost my mucus plug, so we called the midwife team to ask if we were to come in. As no-one came back to us immediately we carried on with our day, ready to divert to the hospital with our notes if needed.
Early afternoon we still hadn’t had a call back so called again and they said to bring a bag as we’d be there for a while if it was my waters (where I was still leaking all day, so the baby’s nappies was a life saver to use to stop the leaking as well as some puppy pads!). We arrived at the hospital around 6pm and had to head over to the maternity triage.
That’s when they told us I couldn’t have a home birth, a pool birth or go to the birth centre. I would be staying in the labour ward until baby is due, I had to be hooked up to monitors, and that they would induce me within 24 hrs if my labour hadn’t started. This was all the total opposite of what I wanted and was really hard to get my head around where I’d written detailed birth preferences for EVERY situation except being pre-term (I was 36+5 on the Saturday! So the two days difference really put a spanner in the works).
Labour naturally progressed thankfully without any induction, poking or prodding from any hospital staff. They respected my request to be left alone so got extremely in the hypno-zone! Hypnobirthing along with the up breathing literally was a godsend! The only comfortable way to get through contractions was sitting on my birthing ball and practicing the above! I was fully dilated on that alone and only went onto gas and air when baby started to move down into the birth canal. Our little boy arrived on 15th October around 8.30am and stole our hearts immediately!
Thank you so much for your yoga moves, visualisations and reminding us that WE make the decisions of our birth experience! All your pregnancy yoga classes moves were tried and tested to see what was working for me and REALLY REALLY helped right from the start to get me through this magical experience!
I cannot commend you enough, and would highly recommend you to any pregnant mumma who wants more than the “fearful” and “painful” birth we are led to believe is what it will be like!