Our son Tyler was born on 10th October, which was about 6 days after his due date. I’d been doing a fair bit of acupuncture (by Heather Bruce, who was awesome and I would highly recommend) and massage. I am sure both contributed to my state of mind leading up to the birth ” I felt fantastic and ready to go. Where it all started was hypnobirthing ” I am so grateful that I found your classes and I can’t thank you enough. Everything else seems to have flowed on from there.

The birth was amazing and couldn’t have gone better. My waters broke in bed the morning after Simon’s sister’s wedding (excellent timing by the little man!) and I slowly dawdled my way in to the Wesley hospital at their insistence. No surges or anything at this stage and they wanted to check me out. After a bit of HR monitoring they said bub was fine and sent me home again with instructions to come in for induction if nothing happening by the next morning. I was very conscious of not letting them get their hooks into me but I knew I’d go into labour naturally before they did.

My mum and Simon were with me during the entire thing and it felt like a team effort the whole way through, which was awesome as I had such great support.

I had my first surges about 8pm, and it was starting to pick up pretty quickly so we went in to the hospital around 9pm. Everything was still very comfortable but slowly creeping up in intensity, and I think I went into heavy labour around 11.30pm. Tyler was born at 3am.

My regular obstetrician wasn’t on duty so we’d been a little concerned that the replacement guy wouldn’t be up with the play on our birth plan. Didn’t need to worry, as we ended up with a bodyguard! We were so lucky to get the midwife we did. She gave birth to her own babies in the 80’s (I think?) with hypnobirthing, and was fully trained up in numerous aspects of natural childbirth. She did the bare minimum of monitoring and interference and basically just left us to it. When things were heating up the obs still wasn’t there and she let us know that she’d call him “when she could see the whites of the baby’s eyes”!! All was fine and she ended up delivering the baby herself with the obs in the corridor. I don’t think he was too happy but he was nice enough to leave us to it.

The birth itself was amazing ” I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a true hypnobirth as I don’t feel like I got into the zone until quite late in the process, but I know that trying to get there was valuable in itself. Ann choreographed the crowning / stretchy / ouchy bit perfectly ” no tearing! I watched it all in the mirror and felt very in control. When he came out I was the one who caught him and he went straight onto my chest. No injections and no yukky stuff, delayed cord clamping, and no problems with the placenta.

Tyler was just over 10 pounds ” very tall and lean with a big head! Just goes to show if you do it right and leave your body to it that it’s likely to be fine.

Angela and Simon, Keperra, Brisbane