I thought I would share this with you all, more so because I have been asked to by some of my clients!

I had my daughter in July 04 and I can honestly say it was a fantastic experience and I did not go through the NHS at all! Nor, did I go through the private route either as I certainly could not afford £4,500.00 to have an independent mid-wife. I was lucky enough to have a friend/colleague who was a mid-wife and said years ago that if ever I got pregnant she would be my mid-wife, so took her up om her offer.

My main reason for opting out of the NHS, anti-natel classes, reading any kind of book was because of all the years I have been treating pregnancy I listened to all the fear that women were feeling about what could happen and also I was birth partner to a friend of mine, who had her son in hospital. She was 3 weeks late and the doctors threw so much fear at her for not wanting to be induced I could see the stress mounting!

Child birth has been performed for thousands and thousands of years and is  the most natural phenomenas going. Because we know so much more science and how our bodies work, women have so much information at their finger tips and one can google anything! My only issue with the whole information knowledge is how it incurred the fear and therefore more stress throughout.

I don’t believe in the ‘what if’ as no-one knows what will happen to them tomorrow, next week, next year. Yes we can plan our lives but can anyone honestly say the life goes to plan?

I had my daughter in 3 hours, my first pregnancy and yes it could of been some luck but could also be because I did hold any fear what so ever. All I knew was the following.

1- It was going to be painful

2- It was only going to be intense for 45 seconds of the contraction to it’s peak then come down again.

3- My job was to push that baby out!

This is how I approached the birth of my child and my mid-wife laughed at me as she told me that she knew that I would get it done like I did because I was so focused on what I had to do, which was push, that from the time my waters broke to her arrival was 3 hours!

Again one could argue that being a therapist and treating pregnancy for a lot of years that I knew what I was doing. My answer to that was I so did not! All I knew was the 3 sentences above, I knew I had to trust it, believe that it was such a natural thing to do.

I am not saying that child birth is easy, I just wish that there was not as much fear attached to it and doctors need to understand that women are not machines as they seem to just want to get baby out and the whole natural approach to childbirth has been lost somewhere. It could be so much more stress free for women nowadays if we maybe had a little more positive information and less of the negative about the what could happen. I feel that this helped my luck if you want to call it that!

I was also thinking of trying to get something together to help women focus on the fun of child birth but will keep you posted on whether I ever get that together, LOL !!

We offer a lot of therapies for fertility, pregnancy, homeopathy during and for labour, osteopathy, cranial osteopathy for pain, massage, reflexology. I hope you find this interesting and would be more than happy to discuss my experience with anyone or help getting the fear turned into trust ready for the birth of a child.    Claire