Birth story - Clarissa and baby Patrick

*Trigger warning* - Using of the word contraction.

I found out about hypnobirthing when pregnant with my daughter back in 2019. I really enjoyed watching all the videos, practicing the breathing and meditating. I also felt confident about the whole process once I got to know what could happen on each labour stage.

My first labour was already quite quick (4.5 hours from 1st contraction) and very straightforward so once I felt the 1st contraction we came straight into hospital. For the first 2.5 hours contractions kept coming every 3 to 4 minutes and I was able to manage them without any pain relief and concentrated on the up breathing.

For the last hour I could feel that things were progressing as contractions were far more intense. I decided to take paracetamol and also used gas & air.

Things moved quite quickly as suddenly my waters broke (more like exploded) while I was still in the antenatal ward. At this point I thought I was just going to have the baby there as I couldn’t walk and had the urge to push but the midwives managed to put me in a wheelchair and ran through the hospital corridors until we got to the labour ward.

Baby Patrick was born literally 1 minute after I got there. No major tear, only one stitch needed.

Giving birth to both my children was so empowering, an amazing experience, and hypnobirthing was a BIG part of it.