I began attending Colleen’s yoga classes when I was around 14 weeks pregnant as I wanted to keep my body moving slowly and to connect with other local mums to be, and it was the best decision I made. Everyone I met was lovely and I have learnt so much from Colleen and everyone else along the way!
I then decided to do the Bloom and Flow hypnobirthing course with Colleen. Me and my husband attended together, and we learnt more from Colleen than we could have imagined. I originally wanted a water birth, but after as my pregnancy progressed I had some complications. After the hypnobirthing course it helped solidify our birth plan with much more certainty, as we now had higher levels of amniotic fluid, a 95th percentile baby, and gestational diabetes.
My husband especially felt way more informed and helped make the decision with me to opt for an elective c section. I was also suffering with anxiety at this point and didn’t want to risk a natural birth with the complications we had, I just wanted baby to be born safely.
At my 36 week midwife appointment I requested an elective c-section. I was offered an induction at 37 weeks as an alternative, but I had already decided an induction was not what I wanted. My midwife and Darent Valley hospital were supportive of my request and I was booked in for an elective c-section at 39 weeks.
I carried on with my weekly pregnancy yoga classes for the final few weeks of pregnancy, and baby stayed put until then to arrive which was great! We had a nice calm night before the birth, just the two of us.
The next morning we had a lovely drive in to the hospital listening to our birthing playlist. I was second on the list at Darent Valley for an elective c-section, so spent a couple of hours waiting. The whole time we were waiting for theatre I had my hypnobirthing tracks on whilst my husband kept me calm too using all the techniques we learnt from Colleen. As we did some more of our own research we knew what to expect in theatre so that I was as calm as possible for the birth of our baby and 5 minutes after my epidural we met our baby girl Mila Sanghera-Phillips at 12:09 on the 25th June weighting 8lbs 1oz.
We spent four days in hospital recovering. This was because I had some bad after pains on day two, and was sick on day three. I wasn’t rushed to leave and felt well looked after.
We can’t thank Colleen enough for making my pregnancy much more enjoyable and for giving us the information we needed to make the right decision for us, as I honestly can say my birth was extremely positive .
Thank you again for everything Colleen we are over the moon with our decision and had such a positive birth and have you to thank for that and I can’t wait for you to meet Mila
