On Monday the 29th of July, Zach and I welcomed out beautiful baby girl, Hazel Muehlke-Taylor into the world. I experienced an all natural, drug-free, vaginal breech birth. It was an incredible experience and HypnoBirthing helped me listen and trust my feelings and intuition. It taught me to trust my body and trust that Hazel would come the way she needed to, at the time she was ready to.
Although I am very healthy and manage my condition well, I was considered a ‘high risk’ pregnancy due to having type 1 diabetes. Due to my condition, there was quite a lot of coercion from the doctors to follow a very medical and intervention based birthing plan. All of the scans and bloods showed we had a very healthy and active baby. Had Zach and I not discovered HypnoBirthing, our experience would have been very different. Instead of electing an induction or c-section, I educated myself on the studies to do with type 1 diabetes and risks that could be posed to the baby and found that there was no conclusive evidence suggesting why many of the interventions are done on type 1 diabetic mothers (unless of course that results of the growth scans or bloods show a need to intervene).
When I went into spontaneous labour at 38 weeks and 5 days, what challenged me most was the stigma and fear behind the risk of breech birthing, rather than the breech birth itself. As a matter of fact, when Zach was on the phone to you Michelle – the midwife in the room said to me that she had a c-section with her child as there was no way she would risk her child’s life with a breech birth. Keep in mind, this was whilst I was in labour trying to make this decision for myself. Thank gosh that Zach and I had each other for support and also that we were able to get advice from you, our student midwives and our families.
My active labour lasted two hours and from when my waters broke, Hazel was born within 17 minutes. I don’t have anything else to compare it to but I found that the breech birth was quick, relatively pain-free, the medical team had to take a hands-off approach and let gravity help my baby out and best of all they were not able to induce me or give me an epidural. Funnily enough, we were due in for a clinic appointment the day after my spontaneous labour whereby we would have been made to have a c-section, so trusting in Hazel was the best choice as she knew what she was doing coming when she did.
I would love you to share our wonderful birthing experience with The HypnoBirthing Collective groups and will recommend HypnoBirthing to all mothers! I can’t think of the right words to express my gratitude to you and overall admiration and appreciation.
After our first class, Zach and I left feeling educated, informed and interested. The course allowed Zach to really understand how meaningful and important his place as a partner in the birthing experience could be.
Attending the classes helped us to create a stronger connection with each other (which I did not think possible as we are already so connected!) and our baby. After using the daily relaxation and techniques multiple times a day – I am now able to relax at a moments notice! That skill alone is worthy of doing your incredible classes.
Again, thank you so much Michelle for everything you have taught us. We would love to stay in contact (and have already decided that with our next baby, we want you as our doula). If you come across any other type 1 diabetics in your classes, please don’t hesitate to send them my way.
Lots and lots of love,
Rose xox
