Hospital and Home Birth Stories 🌱 This episode is with the very Empowered Woman, Mother and award winning Hypnobirthing Practitioner Shari Lyon 💜
I love, love, love listening to Hypnobirthing stories. And this episode left me feeling a whole lot of goosebumps! Have you ever had real fear surrounding birth, do you have fear around birth. Its hard not to with the fear that is out there and surrounding us as parents.
Shari growing up was told by her mother that if she birthed her naturally, she would have died. This is not uncommon to be told this from our parents. This comment come though with all the right intentions yet for Shari this stuck with her for her life. Tucked away with this information in her subconsciousness it finally come her time to become pregnant. And then the time for her programming to come out. Shari also had a big fear of needles so this was a double whammy for her, for then she had to face her fears. So a good friend told her about Hypnobirthing, Shari was a bit apprehensive, wondering how on earth do you birth a baby while under Hypnosis! Yet they explored this idea and attended their first class, then over the weeks Shari describes ‘my whole perspective on birth changed’. Having this explanation in detail on her body in birth, what it did and how it worked. This understanding gave her a new connection to the feelings in birth. Things started to change for Shari and she gained much more confidence in her body and in birth.
Shai went into labour before her EDD. Surges started during the night, nice and far apart which allowed her to rest well. They were booked into the birth centre, yet the midwife was not on duty that night and so the birth centre was not open as there was no other midwives available. They got to the hospital and her awesome husband and doula managed to wrangle them being allowed in the birth centre room as long as they did not birth into the pool. Apparently they had a great deal of time alone as the midwife was very busy. 30 + hours later, Shari was feeling very tired and went into a phase of wanting drugs, and her husband again stepped up to help her through what looked like transition. He coached her through and bought her back to 5 minute intervals. And from there baby was born into her husbands arms. Team work like this will set things up for a great second birth!
Shari talks about how she then become a Hypnobirthing practitioner, and how she wanted to share this with other families.
We then talk about her next birth journey, home birth with her daughter who is now three years old. Keen to make sure that home birth would happen Shari describes doing lots of natural labour inducing from 38 weeks, her fear for this pregnancy was going over 42 weeks and having to go through hospital. He labour kicked in at 41+1 weeks and Shari talks about the early experience. From the moment her son got picked up from a friend, the labour really kicked in. In this birth she made sure that she kept up with her movements. Shari spent a considerable amount of time lounging in the pool, if you check out her video below you can see how zen Shari looks in the lush Australian tropical day! So picture this, her sister is in the kitchen baking a cake, her partner in the lounge with Shari doing some light touch on her back, candles and crystals that were placed around the room. All of this she visualised and this was happening well into the birth. The more intense the surges the more relaxed she felt. Shari even describes falling asleep right before she was born! The membranes did not break until baby was nearly out and the birth was quite quick and wonderful. This time Shari enjoyed the physiological third stage and baby took to the breast straight away.
Two beautiful stories that just got my self feeling just in love with empowered mammas!
We talk a little about Sharis new project she is birthing