Caroline’s Birth Story

I wanted to quickly share my birth story with you, we had a wonderful, positive and empowering experience thanks to this education.

I did the Hypnobirthing course over 4 weeks in February and March this year with Renee Bradfield in Perth, Western Australia. The information in the course was fantastic and my husband and I left feeling educated and empowered to make decisions about what we wanted for the birth of our daughter.

We were all set to have a water birth at the Family Birthing Centre, a purpose-built section of the hospital for a low-risk water birth, but Olivia was overdue and we had missed the cut-off of 41 weeks and 3 days. We prepared ourselves to give birth in the main hospital suite, without the water and were a bit disappointed to have missed out but happy to take the change in our stride.

We spent nine hours in the hospital the day before I went into labour, the doctors were pushing to induce us due to concerns about how long the placenta would function properly, we were 41 weeks and 4 days at this point.

We had multiple scans and conversations with doctors and consultants about what was best for our baby. It was very stressful to have the doctors tell us that they were concerned about the potential for our baby to be harmed because we were ‘leaving it too long’ and on the other hand wanting to follow through with our natural birth preferences.

Had we not done the Hypnobirthing course I would have had the induction that day as planned but luckily we had all the information we needed to make an informed decision about our baby’s welfare, the scans showed that she was in perfect health so we stuck to our guns.

I went into labour naturally that night and since we had only missed the birthing suite cut-off by 12 hours our midwife was able to negotiate with the doctors at the hospital to have us stay rather than going into the main hospital suite which was a dream come true.

The experience of having a natural water birth in a beautiful low lit room with candles and music was one I will never forget. My husband and sister were with me through my whole labour and birth as well as both my midwives. I would not have been able to have more than one person in the room with me if I was on the main birth suite due to Covid-19 restrictions and for this, I will always be truly grateful.

Olivia was born on May 13 at 8:39 pm weighing 7.10lb.

I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to complete the hypnobirthing course and put what I learned into practice. It made the world of difference to our birth experience.

Thank you again,

Caroline, Luke and Olivia