She Births® was a lovely transition from work to parental leave. It was relaxing, informative and fun and allowed me to concentrate on being pregnant and our imminent birth. I particularly enjoyed the way Nadine effortlessly involved my partner in the day and afterwards, we practised the meditations on our CD together.

We had a wonderful birth experience despite it not going quite according to our birth plan. Hearing Nadine’s soothing words in my head during the birth allowed me to trust and relax my whole body. Listening to the Blissful Birth meditation during my labour enabled me to progress quickly and to the surprise of the midwives, I gracefully breathed our baby down and enjoyed calmly introducing Matilda to the world. I really enjoyed our birth and thank Nadine wholeheartedly for giving me the confidence to birth naturally. It was an amazing experience, empowering and liberating.

Here is our longer birth story: We had 6 nights of pre-labour which were exhausting. We tried every natural method in the book but none got me over the initial pre-labour stages and indeed some actively put me to sleep?! My waters broke on night 4 and by morning 7 were we a bit concerned and went for a check-up at the birth centre who had a room.

We were very excited and when we arrived at the centre it was sad to see that there was some meconium and so the birth centre wouldn’t let us stay and transferred us to the delivery suite. I’m amazed at the difference in attitude for such a short walk down the corridor and it was really great to have Susan Ross as our Doula, who was practical, calm and able to let us know what the options were and give us a head’s up on what the Dr’s were going to say next.

There was a lot of faffing about but the upshot is that we agreed to syntocinon and monitoring.
I was able to keep breathing and the midwives were very surprised at how calm I was during contractions and appeared to think that this was a reason to up the dose rather than acknowledging that we were having three strong contractions in 10 minutes and were therefore in established labour and we could leave the dose as it was. Again Susan was great at negotiating this with us.

The monitors didn’t really work with the position that I wanted to be in and again there was a lot of concern about the baby’s rate. It kept falling off and that is when they would come in and say they thought the baby was in distress. We all thought the baby was fine and when the trace did work it seemed to be suggesting that. All the time I kept focusing on breathing and thinking about letting go, relaxing and I could hear your words from the meditation tape in my head encouraging us both to relax and trust each other and my body.

The Dr, however, wasn’t happy and wanted to put a clip on the baby’s head or take blood? We said no and finally, Susan came up with a plan of getting me to be on the bed for 20 mins so they could get their scan and we could get on with it. I hadn’t been able to lie down all week but I knew we could do this. I asked Silas to play your Blissful Birth track and Si, me and Susan meditated whilst the midwife found herself in the middle of the room with no one to talk to and finally left us to it. 20 minutes later with a perfect trace, they admitted that everything was fine, and clearly found the whole thing bizarre.

During the mediation I was calm and focused and enjoyed listening to your words again, the waves were all part of it. Then I really had to get off the bed and my legs went all shaky and I needed the toilet. I went and all of a sudden got this urge to push, this was a really different feeling.

I called Silas in and told him and he was calm and supportive. The midwife didn’t believe that I could be ready to push and again Susan just said go for it. Again I remembered low tones and really tried to keep things low and also remembered about waiting and breathing her down rather than rushing. We moved to the room and I went on all fours. And Tilly was born 35 min later and we breathed her down and she came out really gracefully.