"I looked into hypnobirthing as I wanted to have a natural birth. I'm the kind of gal who likes to go into things prepared for every outcome. After much research we decided to embark on our hypnobirthing journey. I use the term "we" loosely, the other half was apprehensive to say the least. He literally thought it was going to be all angels, crystals and hippies dancing barefoot around fires! Eventually, I managed to convince him to try the first session. This was on the condition if he hated it, he didn't need to attend the others. Also, if he did this then he wouldn't have to do group NCT classes, we were onto a winner! He actually sat on the other 3 sessions without having to be persuaded, so he must have got something out of it!

My waters broke on Sat 8th Feb at 8:30pm in the evening. By the time we fought our way though storm Ciara and arrived at the hospital "just to be checked over" (fully expecting to be sent home), there was meconium present in my waters. While I was still holding on to the hope of my natural water birth, I knew that baby needed to get out safely and within the next 24hours or so. I'm not going to go into explicit details of the birth. Lets just say after 22hours, no water birth and all of the really good drugs, I ended up having an emergency C-Section. If you could have picked a polar opposite birth to the one I wanted, then this was it!

I had read so many stories of ladies who had gone through this sort of experience and felt traumatised afterwards. Almost as if they have been robbed of a natural birth. I personally feel like the birth of our daughter was a positive experience in spite of the fact it didn't go the way I would have liked it to. At each stage of the labour I felt informed and in complete control. I was able to work together with my midwife and doctors to make informed decisions on the best way forward for me and my baby. Without having done the hypnobirthing course with Jennie, I think my experience would have been completely different.

Jennie- Thank you for giving us the tools to have a positive birth experience when the odds were against us. Thank you for making us both feel comfortable in the sessions prior to the birth. A million thank you's for going the extra mile and checking in on us while I was in labour, it was nice to see a familiar face! The cherry on the top you being the first person to see us in the postnatal ward!

Thank you From Emma, James and Alice Minnie xxx"