Cameron Thomas Kirk arrived in the early hours of Tuesday 8th February (12:38am) weighing 5.10 lbs. He was pretty quick about entering the world as I had no real early signs of labour. I spent most of Monday out shopping locally and then at a neighbour’s house drinking tea, with no sign of any pains.

At about 9pm in the evening I started to have quite strong abdominal cramps which became regular very rapidly. I found the only comfortable place to be was on the toilet, while breathing deeply and concentrating on filling up my balloons and releasing them, my waters broke (membranes released!) at about 10pm.

 Lewis was very calm and called the hospital where they told us to make our way in as they wanted to check me over, although they did say it was likely that we would be sent home. My surges by this point were minutes apart and pretty strong.

After making his packed lunch Lewis and I drove over to the hospital at around 11pm where we were sent to Triage and looked over by a surly midwife! It looked as though we may have to deliver the baby in the labour ward instead of the birthing centre due to lack of staff. Luckily for us one of the mothers requested she be moved from the birthing centre to the labour ward, freeing up a midwife in the birth centre for us at the last minute.  Once in the room Lewis got the hypno birthing music going whilst the midwife filled up the birthing pool.  The midwife who attended us mentioned she had delivered both her children using hypno birthing so she was very understanding.

The atmosphere was very quiet & chilled with low lighting and just me, Lewis & Jenny our midwife.

 At this point I was lying on the bed taking deep breaths from the gas and air and focusing on breathing through the surges. As soon as the birth pool was ready I climbed in and Lewis sat next to me pressing on my shoulder and doing a little light touch massage. The midwife had a look under the water and said she could see the baby’s head crowning, this was about 12:15 pm. 

I had only been in the pool for about 10 minutes when a strong surge saw our baby’s head appear, Lewis got to see him with the mirror. In what seemed like no time at all I was picking our beautiful little boy out of the water and clutching him close to my chest. He looked a little bemused and then took a deep breath and gave his first little cry. He immediately seemed very calm and was happy to lie in my arms in the pool while we waited for the cord to stop pulsating. We still had the relaxation music playing in the background which seemed to keep him (& us) calm too. The whole experience lasted just over 3 hours from start to finish, it’s lucky Lewis didn’t spend too long preparing his sandwiches!



We spent the rest of the night in the birth centre and were ready to go home the next day. We both feel the hypno birthing made a real difference to the labour and birth, in fact, the midwife told us we were the first successful hypno birth they’d had in the new birth centre!



We’ve now almost made it to the end of our first week as parents without too many sleepless nights. I am breastfeeding Cameron and so far it is going really well. The link below will take you to some pictures of our little fella, he is very cute!



Finally, Thanks to Kat for her brilliant classes which allowed us to have such an amazing birth experience.



Nicola & Lewis X