About Us:
My name is Sarah, I was born in 1976 and am wife to Ian and mum to four wonderful children.
I graduated from the University of Greenwich in 1997 with a BSc(hons) degree in Psychology. I then embarked on a 5 year long career in Pharmaceuticals. My varying roles included working with the processing of clinical trial data from a multinational breast cancer trial, market analysis (namely within the fields of oncology and nephrology) and Pharmacovigilance - collecting Adverse Event (safety) reports from hospitals and GPs around the country and reporting on to regulatory bodies around the world. My time spent in these roles has given me a sound knowledge of conventional medicines and treatment.
In 2002, following the birth of my first child, I developed an increasing interest in Complementary Medicine and its use in pregnancy and childbirth after seeing and experiencing for myself the remarkable, yet gentle, effects it can have.
My first child was a planned homebirth that ended in a hospital transfer after a very long posterior labour, one epidural and some syntocin later my 10lb baby was born safely.
Second time around we booked another homebirth but unfortunately I was hospitalised with pre-eclampsia and my 9lb 12oz baby was induced in hospital.
My third and fourth births were managed entirely homoeopathically and through the use of HypnoBirthing® techniques I managed to give birth to two 11lb babies at home with no more than a birthing pool for pain relief. I can’t tell you how magical it was to give birth as nature originally intended, enveloped in water in the safety of my living room with my husband and wonderful community midwives for support. Throughout the labour I remained calm and in control and my babies birthed themselves quickly, safely and easily, just as birth should be. You can read the story of my last HypnoBirth below, my third baby’s story was featured in the Green Parent magazine (click to view the article).
Since their births I have treated all of my children homeopathically and have witnessed the amazing healing of an umbilical hernia, reflux, colic and glue ear (otitis media) - not to mention the toils and troubles of teething! Homeopathy works!
My Own home water HypnoBirth Story:
My fourth baby was born peacefully in my own home in the spring of 2007, another big 11 pounder! Again I used HypnoBirthing and Homeopathy and it was another wonderful, easy, quick and joyful experience.
I had spent all day and early evening gardening and after putting my 3 older children to bed and relaxing in a lovely lavender bath had settled down to watch television with my husband. My labour then began to play out something like this:
10pm: I began to really hope that the Braxton Hicks I was feeling would turn into labour so that I could get out of doing the school run the next morning, not an easy chore with 3 small children and a ginormous bump!
11:30pm: I packed my husband off to bed as I wanted him to get some sleep “just in case” things progressed.
11:45pm: Two laboury (but not painful at all – just tight) surges (HypnoBirthing speak for “contraction”) later and a feeling that “this is it”, I called my husband back downstairs and asked him to fill the birth pool as I was pretty hopeful I was in labour and the pool took around half an hour to fill.
12:15am: Now 80% sure I was in labour, but as everything was still very mild I dithered for a bit about phoning for a midwife as the surges seemed to be every 3minutes (indicative of quite advanced labour) but not remotely painful and I didn’t want to look a fool if it was all a false alarm and everything stopped! eventually I asked Ian to call the hospital to request a midwife.
12:30am: Finally sure I was in labour, with surges now every two minutes, I was still coping well with just my “slow breathing” (a type of breathing taught in HypnoBirthing for use during labour) and now the birth pool was really calling to me, so I got in and put my CD of HypnoBirthing Birth Affirmations on (a CD given out in HypnoBirthing classes full of positive imagery about labour and birth), I must admit at this point I thought I had around 4 hours of labour left.
12:45am: I began to start “the birth moo” (a deep guttural instinctive noise indicating the baby is on its way!) and much to my husband’s relief the midwife arrived and began to unpack her equipment.
12:52am: My membranes released (HypnoBirthing speak for “waters breaking”) and were quickly followed by my baby’s entire head (but no tears!) – at no point did I actively push the baby out, my body did all the work whilst I remained relaxed and focussed on my breathing.
12:54am: I moved into a squatting position and felt the whole of my baby’s body slither out and then instinctively reached down under the water to lift my newborn baby up into my arms.
By 4am we were all tucked up with our other children, in our own comfortable bed, a new family of six! Just as nature intended every birth to be: calm, comfortable, easy and safe.