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My 3 Natural Births

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from a lovely lady who had really enjoyed the 5 Days to a Better Birth Challenge. She said she would love to hear more about my own births. Specifically, she wanted to know more detail about how I used my own techniques to birth, my three children, naturally, and if I had any tips about how to navigate the Irish hospital system. 

So I thought it might be really useful to share more of that detail with you today. Make a cuppa and get cosy :-)

My first birth, like for most people, had the biggest impact on me and shaped my whole birthing experience. It was in 2009, and not much has changed in the Irish hospital system (apart from Covid!), in so far as the staff are blooming awesome, but sadly for them and for us, they are desperately understaffed and there is a growing tendency to treat birth as a heavily medicalized event. Therefore, giving birth in Ireland (and most of the Westernized world) can currently be a little tricky to...

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Baby Nico's Birth!

On Sunday 25th March, I was blessed to deliver my third baby, a beautiful boy, into this world. I'm delighted to let you know that I had, once again, an active, short and kick a*s rockstar birth! It was fast and intense at times...so let me share my experience with you:)

On the days leading up to Nico's labour, I had been keeping myself really calm, happy and active. On the Saturday, I went for a lovely long walk, getting myself up a few gentle hills! That night, I went to bed after my nightly bath, super relaxed, and at 2am I woke up with a start! I jumped out of bed as my waters had started to release...but only a little bit. After a quick trip to the loo, pretty much immediately, some very mild contractions started, along with a bit of a 'show'. 

Excitedly, I knew that the journey was starting, so I popped back into bed to get as much rest as I could. The surges were there, but were really mild and I nodded off every now and then. I...

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How can Yoga prepare me for labour?

Good question! It's one I get a lot :)

So I would break this into 4 areas - Physical, Mental, Breath and Community.

Physical:

I'm not a believer in doing very little exercise just because you are pregnant. In fact, if you exercise for about 30 minutes a day, it is proven to help you have a more comfortable pregnancy, a shorter and therefore easier labour, and a faster recovery. So a 'shorter and therefore easier labour' should bring music to your ears mamas-to-be! Focusing specifically on labour and birth, prenatal yoga will help you stay strong, toned and open, therefore making your labour easier and more manageable, and helping you have the strength and stamina required to keep you upright for as long as possible. Sometimes, and of course not all the time, labour can be a long process particularly for first-time mamas, whose bodies haven't gone through the experience of childbirth before. The majority of first-time mamas who come to my classes in Dublin, can be quite surprised...

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So what was your birthing experience like?

Hmmmm, there is nothing quite like discussing your birthing experiences to get the emotions running. What should be an empowering and joyful journey for all women, is increasingly becoming a very challenging experience, certainly in Ireland. This is in part due to a serious lack of resources in the hospital environment...putting it bluntly...there ain't enough midwives for the birthing population and the hospitals are having to cope with so many more births than they were designed for. Plus, structurally in Ireland, we do not have the set up to offer choice to women to birth more in the community.

I sat down with Psychologist and mother of 3, Allison Keating from Bwell Clinic, to have a chat about it all!

I truly hope you enjoy the discussion and find some useful nuggets of info in there for you.

Please do share the video via the links on the left and I'd love you to subscribe to the new YouTube channel. If you enjoyed the chat, please give us a little thumbs up!

For more...

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Georgina's inspiring Birth Story

birth stories Jul 02, 2016

Hear from the fabulous Georgina about how she used her Yoga positions to avoid interventions and an induction. It's such a wonderful story! Enjoy...

So I went for my regular check up on Wednesday and they weren't too happy so they sent me into hospital to check the fluid surrounding baby. I went into ER and they kept me overnight. In the morning I had a scan which revealed low amniotic fluid, so they decided to induce me. They broke my waters and contractions ensued. Baby's heartrate kept dropping when I had a contraction so they were continually monitoring baby and I had to stay on my left side glued to my bed...not ideal and most definitely not what I wanted after all my yoga! They took me off to the labour ward after 2 hours but the contractions weren't regular enough to be considered 'proper labour'. So they started talking about the oxytocin drip - oh no!

Armed with my Yoga knowledge, I knew if I could get up and do some of your super yoga moves, I could get my labour...

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