Feeling empowered despite a challenging and unpredictable birth

By Mel Page

I wanted to write and say thank YOU so much. I attended your Calmbirth class in Bowral in September last year with my partner Stefan and I found it incredibly informative and very, very, useful during my labour and birth. We had a gorgeous baby girl named Agnes, born on the 10th of October, delivered naturally and completely drug free. (Apart from two panadols that I had about half way through my labour!)

I found the whole experience of my labour and delivery to be utterly incredible and amazing! The techniques and understanding of the physiology of my body that I learnt at Calmbirth really helped me through the 22hours of labour, as well as Stefan who was amazing, very supportive and a huge legend!

I was also inspired by one of the women whose video you showed us during the class, we made an orange cake during the labour, which was a very welcome and satisfying treat after the birth!

About 45 minutes after the birth everything went a little awry, my placenta was stuck and I ended up having to have emergency surgery to remove it, and lost about 2.8 litres of blood.

This is partly the reason why I am writing, as the other very helpful thing I took away from the Calmbirth program was the idea that every birth is unpredictable and different. During the epic recovery from the blood loss, I found this thought incredibly useful!

It is perhaps tricky to explain, but thinking about this idea gave me a more positive perspective on the experience. There we’re times when I felt a little sad that I couldn’t really walk without feeling I was going to faint, or it was difficult because holding Agnes was tricky and exhausting, but I kept thinking , this experience was still incredible, and you never quite know what might happen, but I was lucky I had an mazing staff of doctors and midwives looking after me, and Agnes was extremely healthy and an excellent baby!