Tahnee’s 4 hour Water Birth – Visualisation was key

Hi Nadine!

Nice to hear from you, I’ve been meaning to write. It’s going well! Our beautiful little girl, Tahnee Belle Clementson was born on the 9th of April. I went into labour on the 8th, which was my due date, who does that!? She’s clearly more punctual than her mother ?

The birth was pretty great, 4 hours, water birth, no pain relief or intervention other than syntocin to expel the placenta because the midwife was worried I had lost too much blood, but by that stage, I didn’t care what they did as I had my lovely baby in my arms and she was healthy and gorgeous and perfect.
Unfortunately, I can’t say it didn’t hurt…..aaaand… I must admit most of my breathing was out the window once I was in the midst of the intense contractions, but I definitely relaxed deeply in between every contraction and was able to use a lot of visualisation and harnassing of beautiful energy to get her down and out.

The midwife was pretty surprised and impressed at how well we did which is a nice feeling.
I strongly believe that all the visualisation and prep we did leading up to the birth was the reason I only had four-hour labour. I was actually in ‘false’ labour for 2 weeks leading up to the birth and I really believe that if someone had of checked my cervix during that time they would have found I was dilated well in advance, as I had spent so much time visualising softening and opening and preparing myself physically and mentally.

It was all pretty funny really, we had this hospital bag choc-full of aromatherapy and homeopathy and music, massage tools, yoga mats, coconut water and my 2 pages typed birth plan, all of which Paul carried up & downstairs all night, to the hospital, home for 30 mins then back to the hospital, the poor guy looked like a camel carting around everything I had prepared & I don’t think any of it came out of the bag! Haha,

We’re actually disappointed we didn’t get to do our dancing and kissing and hip-swaying, it was pretty much straight to transition phase and pushing! But I must say all of my friends are very jealous, you really can’t ask for much more than that! (well ok, an orgasm would have been nice….;)

Thanks so much for all of your advice and tips. I still tell everyone that the money I spent on that course was by far the best investment of our whole pregnancy.
I plan on writing down an account of the birth sometime soon as I want to make sure I don’t forget the details (we were going to film it – the video camera was something else that didn’t come out of the bag ? so let me know if you’d like me to send it to you. I’m more than happy to share my story with others if you think it’s helpful.

xxx