Four weeks ago, on 11 October, I gave birth to my wonderful baby girl. She took her time to arrive as I was already 41+6 weeks pregnant. We started talking with the birth centre in St. Mary’s about an induction and your advice to question any invasive procedures was very useful. I did not want to have an induction as this meant that I could not give birth in the birth centre and that labour would likely be longer and harder. I was willing to have a conversation with the labour ward though to have clarity about the pros and cons. It is very hard to get any transparency and the words: “If you decide against an induction you would go against our recommendation” is still sounding in my ears as it scared me a little. Thankfully our baby saved us from this tough decision and arrived a day before we had scheduled the talk about induction. To be honest with you, labour was not pain-free, but in hindsight I really think that the hypnobirthing techniques helped me a lot. My husband and me were practicing the relaxation techniques, but I think we could have practiced a little bit more – especially the breathing as I felt that during labour the right breathing helped me a lot, however, it was really hard to maintain. I started off having surges at 5 o’clock in the morning. I finally decided to wake up Rodolfo at six. We phoned the birth centre to inform them, but obviously it was a little early to come in. I had a bath and tried to relax as much as I could. At 11:30 we finally went into the hospital. At this point I was still not convinced that I was ready, but it turned out that I was already 7cm dilated! I entered the birth pool, which was a great relief! I had a really big urge to push, but the midwife advised that baby was not ready yet. It was very hard not to push! I am wondering what would have happened if I had not held back. Clearly your instinct is telling you something! My water broke after a few hours and it turned out that it was full with Meconium. Out of this reason I was quickly transferred to the labour ward. After what felt like four or so surges, Anna Isabel was born! She is thriving and a really happy baby (obviously with the occasional tantrums), and we feel very blessed! I would like to thank you for your guidance and for teaching us the hypnobirthing techniques. As I said, labour was not pain free (and actually at the time I thought the techniques were not working), but I believe the techniques contributed to labour only lasting 9 hours from start to finish. Also, the midwives told me how impressed they were with my pain threshold! How could I otherwise have stayed at home until I was 7cm dilated? But most of all, I think you took away my fears before birth. Whilst I know that some friends from our NCT group were almost in panic of what was going to await them, I always knew that I was going to be fine! I wish you all the best, Ursula
