Sandi, Chris & Rafe October 2021
Sandi & Chris attended a Your Journey from start to finish course prior to the birth of their son Rafe. Sandi said:
"Whilst I knew I wanted a home birth I also wanted someone who didn't favour one birth over the other. Anna's calm and confident nature put us at ease and armed us both with the knowledge we needed. When the big day arrived my labour couldn't have been more opposite to our calm home birth we wanted. I ended the pregnancy with several high risks and a breech baby. The safest way was to deliver baby by c-section. Because of the course we were able to ask the questions we needed to ask and have an informed, relaxed birth - given that I was now high risk for several reasons. Thank you Anna for giving us the opportunity to have the right labour and birthing experience for us."
Finch's Birth April 2019
We had pictured our perfect birth. You’re told “if you want the drugs, take the drugs”, “if you want to cut the umbilical cord, cut the cord”, “if you want skin to skin, have skin to skin”. We knew the birth we had hoped for and Anna had provided us with the practical steps to help achieve the natural birth we had dreamed about. Sam was to be my Oxytocin Guardian, we were both going to get in the birthing pool and I was to breathe out our baby with a room full of twinkly lights, plinky plonky music, sensual touch and calmness.
Our due date was 1st May but on the 23rd April, my GP sent me to the Royal Surrey Hospital with pre-eclampsia. After being told that I would stay in overnight to observe my blood pressure, my waters broke spontaneously and off I went to the delivery ward. Unbeknownst to me, the room I was taken to was in fact the high dependency unit. Ironically, Sam and I had missed the antenatal class that covered ‘what to do if your birth plan doesn’t actually go to plan’. It was therefore initially a bit of a shock when our birth plan went from a minimal-intervention-approach to a vast range of interventions being required; one drip in each hand, a catheter and constant foetal monitoring. All of this meant that the birthing ball and water birth were out of the question.
After 36 hours of laying on the same bed and two epidurals (the first one didn’t work) our baby boy arrived at 5.10am, weighing 6lb 4oz and we couldn’t have asked for a more fantastic, positive experience. It was not just the incredible people that we encountered to help deliver our baby, although each and every person we encountered throughout our delivery was brilliant, it was having the underlying confidence and belief that however our baby was going to arrive was the right way.
Despite having quite a high intervention birth, there was always space for us to include the hypnobirthing techniques that we had learnt from Anna and had been practising in the build up to our birth. The staff were very accepting of this. The knowledge that we were safe and having the confidence to utilise our chosen methods enabled us to relax and enjoy every minute of our birth experience.
Love Alice, Sam and Finch x
Parents First Aid Class 2019
"The course was enjoyable and relaxed to what can be difficult topics to talk about" Rachel