Eleanor’s positive birth story
Jessica' and Peter’s Challenging Birth with Hypnobirthing
As a hypnobirthing teacher, I'm always blown away by the amazing journeys my clients go through. Let me share Jessica’s birth story with you—it's a real testament to the strength of preparation, resilience, and the rock-solid support from her partner, Peter.
The Beginning of Our Journey
I woke up at 4:45am on Thursday 14th January, contracting every 10 minutes. This wasn’t a surprise as I’d been having stop start contractions for over a week. I immediately began my breathing techniques and found each contraction easily manageable.
At 10am I had a pre-booked midwife appointment. When I arrived, still contracting every 10 minutes I told my midwife I thought I was in labour. She agreed but said she thought it would be a while before it “ramped up” and to go home, eat, sleep, and get ready, and so off I went to do just that.
The Power of Preparation
By 11am however, the contractions became more intense. I was no longer able to talk or walk through them and my birthing ball became my best friend. I spent the morning with my husband and little doggy Bertie, giving me lots of oxytocin (I am convinced this is partly why my labour moved on so quickly) Still using all my breathing techniques I was managing and hardly noticed that between 12:30 and 1:30 my contractions went from every 10 minutes to every 3 minutes.
I rang the maternity unit and was advised to make my way in with the words “honey, today’s the day you’re going to meet your baby” and with that Peter and I made the 40 minute journey to hospital.
The car ride was calm, but uncomfortable and Peter kept reminding me “you can do anything for 1 minute” (my favourite positive affirmation). By the time we arrived at the hospital I was contracting every 2 minutes and when my midwife arrived and examined me I was 4cm. An hour later I was 7cm, I’d managed purely on breathing with no pain relief and was having a “textbook labour”, which we are absolutely convinced is down to hypnobirthing and everything Claire taught us.
Navigating Twists and Turns
Unfortunately though, at around 8cm, our lovely little one began to become distressed. We listened to the advice of the professionals and decided to continue with the monitoring we had been doing which allowed me to remain upright, mobile and use the birthing ball. Unfortunately, the situation began to change and in joint discussions with the doctors the decision was made that the best thing for Eleanor was birth via an emergency c section. Although this was not something, we ever thought was a possibility, we both felt informed due to the course and knew the questions to ask that allowed us to continue to feel some control in an uncontrollable situation.
At 6:58pm our beautiful baby girl Eleanor Genevieve was born via emergency C Section. The hospital respected our wishes for Peter to be with her in NICU initially and I was able to join her a few hours later once I had recovered. Although we lost the first few hours with her I was able to have skin to skin later on and this was the most incredible moment.
Eleanor was discharged from NICU 4 days later and having her home and finally a family has been incredible. Although we can’t say the entire birth was “positive” there was so much positive that came out of it. It could not have been any more off plan if we tried, but we remained calm and in control thanks to the techniques and knowledge gained from the course.
