I tried to practice the hypnobirthing as much as I could before hand and
made sure this was part of my birth plan.

I listened to the river dawn music at home once my husband was awake (2am)
having been in labour since 9pm.

I felt pretty calm although tired. Once we got to the hospital there was
quite a bit of discussion about labour ward Vs midwife led due to my age
and other risk factors. They wanted me to have continuous monitoring too. I
agreed to switch to labour ward if I could have a birth pool and said no to
continuous monitoring at that point.

We set up some lovely candles and put on the River Dawn music. I got in the
pool at around 12:10. The midwife who I'd been seeing came to visit me at
12:30 and commented about how calm it was and how present I was. I had my
little girl at 1:08pm. I didn't use any pain relief and I was very glad to
have not used gas and air as I really wanted to be more aware. I lost a
fair bit of blood and decided I didn't want to do a natural placenta
delivery so I got out to do that after a good while in the pool.

Everyone who came in commented about how calm it was and the midwife who helped me deliver said in my notes about how well I was doing. I found it hard to
apply the visualisations that much because things were progressing very
quickly but my husband with some prompts helped me to focus and keep calm
when I started to loose focus and feel less in control.

We then had the music on for hours afterwards and even now I find it
comforting. We named our daughter Arwen River Nightingale Williams

Lucy Williams