This is what I was born to do
Even though this is a happy post and I'm still smiling about it all I'm probably going to cry writing it. I've got so much passion and emotion for what I do and when I connect with a couple and am able to help them at any point in their pregnancy journey it just swells my heart.
In the last 4 weeks I've had my first 2 Mamatoto babies born! The first was my hypnobirthing couple who had a gorgeous little boy and the second was a dear friend from back home (dear God I miss Wales so much!) who had her beautiful rainbow baby.
My hypnobirthing couple were just amazing from the first meeting, they worked together as a team so well! As they are quite young it became apparent they were getting a lot of 'advice,' from various people, not all of it helpful! So it was amazing to be able to teach them techniques that would make this advice bounce off them with a smile on their faces! I felt really emotional after our final class as I knew the next time I saw them they would have had their baby! And sure enough a few weeks later (a couple of weeks before their due date) I had a message saying baby J had arrived in the most perfect way! I was on cloud 9 for them! It wasn't just the fact that they'd had a great birth, it was the fact that they knew their rights and their choices and completely rocked their birth. I was lucky enough to be invited into their happy birth bubble when they were at home and it was great to see that their hypnobirthing traininng was still having so much of an effect, these were some seriously chilled out parents and 1 amazingly chilled baby! Mum even mentioned she was ready for another one!
My friend's story wasn't as straightforward as my hypnobirthing couple's. I've know Miss S for over 15years and as soon as I met her it just lept out how maternal she was and what an amazing mum she would make. She excitedly told me she was pregnant a few years back, her 12weeks scan came and went without a problem and then at her 20week scan she and her husband were told the absolutely crushing news that their baby Chip had spina bifida and was not meant for this world. Miss S and her husband chose to have a medical termination and baby Chip was born sleeping. Following on from this, Miss S endured a heartbreaking miscarriage. Fast forward a few months and Miss S reached out to me and told me she was 26weeks pregnant! She explained that after how medicalised Chip's birth was that she wanted this birth to be as natural as possible. This is where I thought hypnobirthing could play a massive part in helping her. Not long after Christmas I sent Miss S a 'labour pack' of things I'd found useful whilst hypnobirthing on my last birth. And the day after she recieved it she went into labour and birthed her beautiful boy in water and without pain relief! No one could have deserved a perfect birth more than Miss S and I cried when I found out about her birth.
As cheesy as it sounds (and I'm cringeing as I type this) I feel like this is my calling. If I can help couples through their pregnancy and birth journey and have a positive effect on them then that is the highest high I can feel. When I was growing up I also said I wanted to do a job that made a difference and the biggest difference you can make is going right back to the start, to birth. Because it's not just babies that are born, mothers and families are too.
Rach x
