Calmbirth Birth Story - Claire, Michael and Baby Arden - "we put our Calmbirth knowledge to the test"

In August 2023, I was told I had an extremely low egg count. We did egg collections in December 2023 and February 2024, but conceived naturally in February 2024. We sadly lost that baby, but conceived naturally again in July 2024.

My goal was for my pregnancy with Arden to be as natural / low intervention as possible from conception to birth, knowing that future potential pregnancies might require intervention. One thing I was sure of was that I did not want an epidural because I was petrified of a needle being inserted into my spinal area! Throughout the pregnancy, I kept very active doing 4 – 5 prenatal classes per week to prepare for the active labour and physiological birth I hoped for. I even had a TENs machine, birth combs, a fit ball, diffuser and calming aromatics ready to use during labour!

We did CalmBirth in early 2025 and now recommend it to every expecting parent we come across! In my late pregnancy, we used our CalmBirth strategies of keeping oxytocin high by doing things we love and applying targeted pressure on my hips and lower back to ease discomfort. Late in my pregnancy, it became clear that our daughter was small for gestational age (SGA). The hospital told us that if she was born under 2.5kg, she would need to stay in the Special Care Nursery until she reached this weight. In the last couple of weeks of my pregnancy, we had some form of scan or monitoring every day to check on her.

On Thursday 20 March (37+2), I woke up feeling ill and asked my husband if he could work from home. I kept feeling worse, with face sweats, dizziness, nausea and exhaustion aka pre-eclampsia really setting in. We rang the hospital and they suggested I come in for monitoring. Arden was completely fine, but it became obvious that I wasn’t. During the monitoring, my ObGyn Bronwyn Hamilton came to check in on me. She was scrubbed in at the hospital performing caesareans that morning. She wanted me to stay in the monitoring room while some blood and urine test results I’d had earlier in the week came back.

She walked out of the room and into the hallway where one of the midwives had my test
results. I could hear parts of the conversation and I knew it wasn’t good. I was meant to see Bronwyn the next day to discuss my birth plan in detail. We didn’t make it to that appointment! Bronwyn came straight back into the room and said that while she understood my preference for a vaginal birth, she strongly recommended that I went in for a caesarean after her next caesarean was completed (ie: in 45 minutes time), and that she had an amazing team assembled in theatre who were willing to stay on and assist. An induction later that evening was an option, but at this point I felt too sick to leave the hospital, and too weak to labour for hours.

What followed is truly a blur, involving grieving our physiological birth, getting our gowns on and prepped for theatre, a heap of paperwork, and meeting the entire team of about 14 who would be present for Arden’s birth within a space of about an hour. I actually didn’t even realise that the procedure had begun until Bronwyn said ‘I can see a full head of dark hair’ and then we heard Arden cry before she’d even left the womb. After loosing a baby and even though we had monitored Arden every day leading up to her birth, I can’t describe the relief and elation I felt hearing that first cry. We didn’t have long to prepare for Arden’s birth, but in this short time we drew on our Calmbirth knowledge. During the epidural, I closed my eyes, focussed on my breathing and told myself that I could do anything for a few minutes. Michael and the nurse held my hands and patted my back. Our anaesthetist was going to be on photo duty.

We made a plan to have Arden placed on my chest for as long as possible before any testing was conducted. We made sure that I had a clear line of sight to the area where Arden would be weighed, tested and measured. Michael communicated the results of all the testing back to me in real time, assuring me all was well. I felt included in all of these processes. I remember being able to see the ‘2.09kg’ reading on the screen where she was weighed – both a relief she wasn’t as small as the lowest potential birth weight we’d been advised of, but very clear that a Special Care Nursery stay was required. Towards the end of the procedure, it became clear that we would need to be separated before I was out of theatre. They needed to get Arden into the SCN, under the heat lamp and having some glucose.

CalmBirth had prepared us for this eventuality and so we’d already had a conversation about who would go where. We had decided that Michael would stay with Arden. Michael told every single staff member he came across to tell me that he had gone to the SCN with Arden, in fact he said he wouldn’t leave the theatre until they assured him this would happen. At this point, I was not very conscious. I don’t remember much from this time, but I do remember multiple people telling me where Michael and Arden had gone!

Highly recommend having baby, Mum and partners bags packed from about 35 – 36 weeks…I went into hospital with my phone and the clothes on my back! As emergency caesarean births go, I was actually stoked with it, despite really wanting a physiological birth.

My daughter and I were both healthy and safe, our birth team were incredible, we worked as a team to advocate for ourselves and our baby, we put our CalmBirth knowledge to the test in what could have otherwise been a really stressful situation and my recovery was relatively swift – tiny baby = tiny scar! Our tiny newborn who stayed in the SCU for two weeks and had her own line at the bottom of the weight charts (2 nd centile) has made incredible progress and is now a very happy and healthy 8 month old!