Sienna's birth as told by her mother:

"The birth went as well as we had hoped!"

On Thursday I had some cramping which was coming and going (and was different to what I had experienced in the previous weeks so I thought it was the start of something). On the Thursday night contractions started and came on pretty quickly. After a couple of hours, they were coming every two minutes so we decided it was time to head to the hospital.

My labour didn't stop or even slow down on the journey to the hospital. Once there it was about 4 and 1/2 hours and then the pushing started which took about 45 minutes and then we got to meet our little girl. I took no pain medications and delivered the placenta naturally. I also didn't require any stitches. I was very proud of myself! I cannot begin to tell you how much the Birth education philosophies helped during my labour. I started my breathing from the start of the contractions and kept it going right up to the very end.

There were a couple of contractions where I didn't do the breathing and it was very clear during those contractions that I would go into fear but having S there reminding me to breath got me back into the right state of mind. S has raved about the birth classes and has said out of everything I did to prepare for the birth - the birth workshop was by far the best thing.

"Thank you so much!"