Myself and my husband had a previous traumatic time during the labor and birth of our daughter. I had to undergo an emergency caesarean as she was back to back and in an awkward position and failure to progress. When we found out that I was pregnant a second time round I panicked and wasn’t happy about the whole situation of giving birth again as the first time was so vividly traumatic. So I decided to do something about the birth of our second baby, that something being HypnoBirthing. I looked on the internet and asked my midwife who put me in contact with Bernie Allport (we couldn’t have asked for a better HypnoBirthing teacher she was our godsend!) After completing 5 weeks on her course we both felt completely confident and at ease with the up and coming birth of our baby, it had completely changed our perception of labor and birth and we were so excited about the whole thing. I went into labor the morning after my baby shower (timing!), it started off with mild irregular waves at 3am in the morning and I carried my morning/day as normal eating and drinking, not entirely sure if this was it! I felt confident that it was when the waves got more regular and stronger. I spent a lot of time in the bath at home whilst my husband poured warm water over my tummy and recited HypnoBirthing affirmations. We also listened to the CD and my husband talked me through some of the techniques we had been practicing. At about 5pm that evening I decided to go into the hospital to see how far dilated I was, and, to see if I could use the water pool. As I was classed as a VBAC, they put me as high risk but I also had consent from my consultant to labor in a pool and give birth if everything went smoothly. They examined me in triage and said I was only 1cm dilated so we decided to go home and try some visualization techniques and nipple stimulation so I would dilate some more. At 10pm we went back into the hospital to use the pool at which I was 5cm. I labored in the pool with dim lighting and playing some chilled out music on our iPod to relax, still using HB techniques throughout. My water broke at about 2:30am in the pool at which point my midwife asked me to get out to be examined. My midwife wasn’t trained to deliver in the pool so we decided to stay out and give birth on the bed. I was birth breathing for about an hour and gave birth to our gorgeous baby boy at 3:33am. We both felt that the labor and birth was completely different to the first time, we were both a lot more relaxed and confident with a more natural approach thus giving us an amazing experience thanks to HypnoBirthing and our tutor Bernie! Also a big thank you to Mickey Mongan for helping to make it  possible for us to have our natural and overwhelming spiritual birth experience we wanted so very much.

-Nikki Dedman, UK

Back to Birthing Stories