Hello my name is Emma and I am the Founder of Love Your Birth NI. My husband and I have three children and we live in Crossgar, County Down. I would like to share my journey through labour and Hypnobirthing with you to help illustrate the profound difference it made on my life.

I started my Hypnobirthing journey when I was pregnant with my second boy. I felt dis-empowered and traumatised after my first labour and I didn’t want that to happen again.

My first birth (without hypnobirthing)

During my first labour, I was very much ‘the patient’.

I arrived in the hospital, got into bed and did what I was told. I was given an epidural, a continuous heart rate monitor was strapped around my tummy and I was hooked up to a blood pressure monitor. All of this left me restricted to the bed. It was a series of interactions of midwives instructing me on what to do next (rather than involving me in the process). It was disempowering.

My first stage of labour was very quick and before I knew it I remember a midwife putting her hand on my tummy and telling me to push. Having never given birth before and not being able to feel anything from my epidural, I could only guess what I was meant to be doing. At this stage my baby was back-to-back and they tried to turn him while I was pushing.

As he was still back-to-back after an hour I was told his heart rate was dropping so they topped up my epidural and told me I would be brought to theatre as I would probably need a C-section. At this point I went into shock and started shaking uncontrollably but did as I was told - I felt that they were the experts and I wanted to do what was best for my baby in a difficult set of circumstances.

When we arrived in theatre, my feet were put up in stirrups and the doctor checked on my baby. He had turned himself around - clever boy!

At this stage they told me they were going to use forceps as they wanted to get him out quickly and I was given an episiotomy (without being told) and they pulled my son out. He was there and he was perfect, they lay him on my chest then took him away to be checked and weighed while they stitched me up.

I was in the hospital for three days, he would latch to my breast then fall asleep so they were worried about him feeding, I hand expressed and syringe fed him. After a tricky few days, we went home. My recovery time was long, my stitches had to heal, I struggled for weeks trying to keep him awake long enough to feed but we got there in the end.

My second birth (with hypnobirthing)

When I became pregnant with my second baby I felt terrified at the thought of going through all that again but thought that was just the way it had to be. At 32 weeks we went to an ‘active birth’ class at the midwife-led unit where I had been receiving my care.

The midwife running the class mentioned the word ‘Hypnobirthing’ but didn’t say much about it. When we went home my partner and I decided to look into it more and discovered Katherine Graves Hypnobirthing and started to do daily relaxations. My partner read scripts to me and I practised my breathing. Leading up to my birth I was sceptical that it would work but I kept practising. 

My labour started on my due date at around 6pm on Thursday 24th January 2019. I remained at home, was calm and breathed through my surges and even managed to sleep!

We got up the next morning and pottered around our house and took things slowly. I even had a lovely long warm bath. We got up and my partner got me a panini from my favourite local cafe and we chatted. We put on a movie and he went to run me another bath but just as I was about to get in I realised my surges were about two minutes apart so we decided to drive to the hospital isntead.

When we were in the car my surges slowed right down and I was worried that they were going to send me home again. We arrived, parked and started getting out of the car, I had to stop as I was having a surge. In the 100 yards or so between the car and the hospital door I had four surges meaning the baby was nearly here!

I remained calm and my partner reminded me of my breathing. We checked in and a midwife was amazed that I was almost ready to give birth and congratulated me because I was already 8cm.

She then told me to get dressed as she was going to put me in a wheelchair and bring me upstairs. I tried to get dressed but my surges were so close together now that I couldn’t do so. To avoid me giving birth in the triage room, she put the sides up on the bed and started to push me towards the lift (my partner following behind with our bags!). We got into the room for no longer than 5 seconds and my son’s head was out! No pushing, just breathing.

There were two midwives in the bathroom filling the bath as I had initially wanted a water birth. One more big breath and there he was, I couldn’t believe it!

It was 15:20 on the 25th Jan and we had arrived at 15:00. One of the midwives said ‘that’s how you have a baby!’. We got into the birthing pool afterwards and I gave my son his first feed in there. He was 8 pounds 2oz and I had no tearing this time. I kept thinking about it afterwards and I couldn’t believe more people didn’t know about Hypnobirthing.

When people asked me about my labour and I said I did Hypnobirthing most people gave me a strange look. I felt so empowered by the whole experience and I wanted more women to feel this way so I decided to train to be a Hypnobirthing teacher. And so, Love Your Birth NI was born.

My Third birth

When I became pregnant with my third baby I already knew that I wanted to have a home birth. I had read so many books about birth and hypnobirthing and had been teaching hypnobirthing myself for quite a while, my last birth was so quick and straightforward and I feel like going to the hospital kind of got in the way!

I mentioned homebirth at my booking appointment and there were no issues, the midwives seemed delighted, as my pregnancy progressed things were put in place for my homebirth and I did my relaxations and breathing exercises every day.

I woke in the morning at 5:15 to a pain in my tummy that I thought was trapped wind. I didn’t think much of it and got up to go to the toilet and got back into bed. I then felt the same sensation 15 minutes later and 15 minutes after that and I found myself doing my Hypnobirthing breathing through it. I woke my partner to tell him I thought something might be happening and he went downstairs to put the water heater on and got up with our two boys when they woke. By 8am surges were between 15-12 minutes so I messaged my mum and my partner brought our youngest to nursery and dropped our oldest off with my parents.

I then messaged my wonderful Doula to let her know things were starting but I was managing well.

I had a bit of a leak of my waters so I rang the maternity ward and they said they’d like to send someone out to check babies heartbeat and to check we were both ok. She came out half an hour later and everything looked good, after she left I noticed that my surges had slowed right down to about 22 minutes between each one- it shows you the powerful impact observation has on labour!

I went back up to my bedroom with my lavender diffuser and Hypnobirthing music and soon I was back to the previous intensity. I had a nice warm bath then a nice lunch of homemade soup my mum had given us.

I bounced on my ball in the living room for a while and tried to watch a funny film but I couldn’t concentrate so went back up into my room. Soon after that things started to ramp up quickly and my surges jumped to being about 4 minutes apart so I asked my partner to phoned our doula and the midwives. They all arrived within about 45 minutes and the midwives did some obs then went into the kitchen and left me to it. My partner was in and out getting the pool ready and I was happy bouncing on my ball and breathing through my surges.

At about 5pm things ramped up again and I started getting two very strong surges close together then a longer break followed by a less intense one. I really wanted to get into the pool but I was worried that if I got in too early things would slow down. At about 5:30 one of the midwives asked my to pee on a stick to check my urine and in the short distance from our living room to our downstairs loo I had five really strong surges so I decided to get into the pool. I told the midwives that I felt nauseous and I vaguely remember them asking if I thought the baby was close to being born and me saying no.

As soon as I got into the pool I instinctively started bearing down and told them that she was coming out! The pressure was really intense as my waters hadn’t gone, just a small leak early on. I had two surges really close together and her head was out and she was still in her sac! I was breathing her out, I started to feel a little overwhelmed but my partner helped me to focus and reminded me of my breathing. I asked the midwives for some gas and air but two surges later and she was out. No time for the gas and air this time. She was born in her sac at 5:56 pm, I caught her in the pool and brought her up to my chest. I couldn’t believe it, I felt absolutely incredible. I tried to get her to latch on in the pool to help the placenta come away but she was too slippy and she didn’t manage it. We waited a good 45 minutes for the cord to go completely white then cut it and she went to daddy for some skin to skin while I got out of the pool.

I birthed the placenta about 20 minutes later over the edge of the sofa and our beautiful baby girl latched on to me like an absolute pro.

Having a home birth was the most amazing experience, I am so glad I have been able to experience it, it was so calm and exactly the way I wanted it to be, I can’t imagine birthing any other way now.