Here is Fiona, Shkelqim and Dillon’s story. A very easy and not particularly painful established labour was about 1 hour and 40 mins. Amazing! And so different to her 2 earlier births. What an inspiring story. She certainly has her hands full now!

“As soon as I reached 40 weeks Jo emailed me the ‘Hurry up baby’ script and I booked in for acupuncture at Healthworks along with some homeopathic remedies. This was my first experience of acupuncture and a very pleasant one indeed, Catherine was amazing, made me feel very at ease and I had some noticeable changes the following morning.

At 40+4 weeks I booked a further session of acupuncture, so off I went to Healthworks for a relaxing hour and again I left feeling rejuvenated and very positive. That evening the Braxton Hicks returned and became quite strong but not uncomfortable so I decided to go to bed and try to get some sleep but to my disappointment they stopped completely. The following day around 2pm the Braxton Hicks returned but this time I didn’t get excited as they weren’t uncomfortable or regular.

At 3pm I started to notice stronger tightenings but again they were not uncomfortable or regular so I carried on as normal. I sat on my birthing ball, drank raspberry leaf tea and listened to various hypnobirthing scrips.

At 4pm the tightenings became regular and felt like a band around the bottom of my bump rather than the tightenings I had previously felt around the top of my bump. I still didn’t feel any discomfort. At this stage I stood up and began ‘pelvic rocking’ through each tightening along with surge breathing.

At 4.30pm things began to progress very quickly, the tightenings became intense and quite uncomfortable so my mum phoned Shkelqim (who was out at the shops!) to come home.

I was a little worried that I might head off to hospital too early as I hadn’t been in a great deal of discomfort for very long but my instincts (and my mum!) told me to head off and get checked out.

Shkelqim and I arrived at Whipps at 5pm to find I was 7cm dilated so I got ready to move upstairs to the birthing centre. Just as we were ready to leave triage I felt the urge to push so the midwife led me to a delivery room on the Labour Ward. All the while I had my earphones in listening to Jo’s voice on the hypnobirthing scripts and continued with relaxation and surge breathing.

Although I imagined myself ‘breathing the baby down’ I just couldn’t overcome the urge to ‘push’ and Dillon arrived at 5.40pm on Sunday 31st May, weighing 7lb 1oz!

I had two wonderful midwives with me throughout who were very supportive of hypnobirthing and understood my need for undisturbed skin to skin contact with Dillon, who had a lovely long breastfeed starting a few minutes after birth. I’m convinced this is why breastfeeding is going so well for us this time and Dillon is thriving. (I did not have this experience with my previous births and struggled to breastfeed).

Shkelqim was fantastic, keeping me both relaxed and positive. He got me though my ‘wobble’ (I became very emotional) just before I felt the urge to push and reassured me that everything would be ok.

I had hoped to use the birthing centre but in fact the majority of my labour was at home which was even better and I can honestly say that with my earphones in I could have been anywhere!

I really believe hypnobirthing was the best choice we ever made. After two stressful births I had many fears but Jo constantly reassured me and the hypnobirthing techniques certainly helped me overcome the fears.

A massive thank you to Jo, Shkelqim and my mum for making the birth of our little boy a wonderful, relaxed and joyful experience. Shemsie and Annie are overjoyed!”