 Our speaker today is Abigail Hanabich and she'll be speaking on home birth, elective cesarean and undisturbed birth. She's going to give a personal account about her experiences. Abigail's passion for helping women to become empowered stems from her mother's own experience while delivering her. The process was completely medicalized to the decrement of both of them. Therefore, when she discovered that she was pregnant in her early 20s, she decided to have things as natural as possible. This led to a voyage of self-discovery and learning what would help her through pregnancy and childbirth. She feels her calling lies in supporting women to make informed choices about their pregnancy and birth and sees herself as a birth worker. She's a mother to six children, eight between two and a half years and 12 years. She's able to handle family life as well as create time for pregnant women and share to share their hopes and fears about pregnancy and birth. If you want support, she offers a one-to-one service for this. She has been spread for 12 years continuously throughout pregnancy. Currently, she's training to become a Lelech lead leader, which is a breastfeeding counselor. She feels her experience would hold her in good state for this position to assist mothers who may want to try and breastfeed their children. Her birth experiences have been diverse from hypnobathing to electric cesarean and homebaths. One thing that she experienced during one of her homebaths that stands out for her is the fetal ejection reflex. She learned when bath is not interrupted and when it's not hindered, it is a much quicker experience, less painful and straightforward. This is what inspired her to explore the subject she's going to be talking about. She hopes to share her experiences with women to help them see for themselves how bath can be different. We now welcome Abigail Beach to take us through her presentation. Thank you so much, Catherine. Hello, everybody. I'm really pleased, so privileged to be here. I'm really glad that I've been given this opportunity to talk about pregnancy and birth, a subject which is really, really close to my heart. Today I'll begin by talking about my journey that led me to decide that maybe I'm going to do things a bit differently. I'm also going to be talking about the muscles of the womb and how they will work together to help the baby to be born. I'll be sharing with you my experiences of homebath, cesarean and undisturbed birth. I first felt pregnant when I was about 22 years old, and I thought, oh gosh, I'm pretty young to be having a baby. I was kind of frightened about the birth process and worried about the whole thing really. I went to see my mother-in-law and she said, hey, don't worry, it's just like shelling peas. The seed was kind of planted by her really because she recommended this book Child Birth Without Fear and her mother had given that to her and she prepared herself mentally by reading this book with her first baby and then she went on to have three babies born at home and one in the hospital. She didn't seem like the sort of woman who would have a baby at home. She was kind of stern, a kind of restrict woman and so when she talked about her homebath and how wonderful they sounded, I thought, gosh, well, maybe that might be something for me because it's really nice to stay at home. It's your own environment where you can relax most of all and so I just felt like, okay, maybe homebirth would be for me. Anyway, I devoured this book and I kind of read everything that felt relevant to me, which was pretty much nearly the whole thing. It described, gruntly Dick Reid, the obstetrician. He described what happens to the pregnant body, what happens during the birth process and slowly but surely I started to feel less nervous about the whole thing and started kind of embracing pregnancy and not seeing it as being this big sort of frightening thing. So one part of the book is he talks about when he went out into the community to support a lady who was in labor giving birth. They call her the white chapel woman and basically he just sat there like back in the shadows watching her and she lived in a really simple home. She kind of had rags for curtains, a bucket in the corner and just everything was pretty simple and she just gave birth just quietly in the corner. He offered her some chloroform at some point but she decided she just sort of put her hand away like pushed it away and afterwards he said to her, well, why is it that you didn't cry out or why is it that you didn't want any pain relief? And she said, well, it's not supposed to hurt as a doctor. So that was interesting for him and I suppose that helped him with his studies and care of women in the future. But it really inspired me because it made me feel like, oh, this lady just saw home birth or just saw childbirth as being a natural part of life. And I thought, well, that's kind of how I want to see it. So I prepared my mind for this book and I looked on the internet to find out different things that were going to help me and then I started preparing physically. So I went to Pilates classes and there's me in the garden with my dog practicing and it was there that I met a nurse who said to me, because I said, oh, have any of you read Childbirth Without Fear? It's a really brilliant book and she immediately put her hand up and was like, I read that and I had a pain-free birth and I thought, wow, because in the book he actually talks about the fear, tension, pain cycle and how when you're sort of feeling fearful you're tensing up and anticipating what is going to happen and then you're feeling like tension and then in turn this creates pain. So I'm thinking, well, maybe if you can relieve some of that fear, I mean fear is a real natural part of childbirth anyway. It's good to have a certain amount of it but you don't want to have so much that you're feeling so tense that you're tensing all of the muscles of your womb because that's not going to be very helpful. So she said about this book and how she'd had a pain-free childbirth experience and I thought, well, I want to know her and know everything that she has got to tell me about this so that I can try and aim for that because that sounds pretty good. So she suggested to me going to Hypno-Birthing classes because that's what she did and I didn't really like the sound of being hypnotised but I rang up the teacher and she said, you know, it's not anything like that. It's deep relaxation, visualisation techniques and some other things in between. So I went along to the classes and it was there that I learnt about the individual sets of the womb. So this really helped me because, you know, you know your womb is there, you know that there's a baby inside because you're getting bigger but you can't really see all of the muscles of the womb and so this really helped me to kind of unlock the mystery and to realise that, well, there's all of these muscles doing different things. So in the top picture, you've got the outer longitudinal muscle fibres. So they pull up comfortably and then they shorten and flex like pulling up these inner circular muscles at the bottom, you know, well, they're kind of all over but, you know, bringing them up, drawing them up and back and then that's what helps to open the muscles of the cervix and it's a very slow process and then you've got the muscles in the middle that are like woven over the whole of the womb and so you've got all of these different muscles working together and it's just amazing because they're all doing these different jobs working together for the same cause and basically when they're all working together, it's bound to feel strong. This is just a diagram I did of them all together. So they're all working for the same cause. And it's not every day that a woman gives birth. So I just had it in mind. Well, if all of these muscles are working together and they're going to be doing this really hard job, it's bound to feel pretty strong, you know, and from what I'd heard about it being the worst pain ever. Well, maybe it's not necessarily the worst pain ever. Maybe actually it's just that there's so much going on there that it's feeling so, so powerful and it probably could feel overwhelming if you didn't really, you know, understand what was happening. So I just took it like, took it in my mind to try and like work out what's going on. So they're all the muscles are like pulling them, working together and then they are tightening and making at the top of the womb that is the fundus and they're all kind of working together to bring up all of the muscles so that the baby can come out through the cervix. And then when the muscles are at the top, it gets quite thick and then if the mother is undisturbed, there's something that happens called the fetal ejection reflex, which is where they basically the baby is then like propelled out of the womb at the right point. So during the hypnobirthing, I practiced the deep relaxation. I learned how to relax my body from the kind of five down to one. So, you know, five head to your shoulders, four shoulders to your arms, three arms to your hips, two hips to your knees, one knees to your feet. So, and then after practicing that for a while, I could like relax my whole body and then just, you know, relaxing and letting my womb do the work. And then as you can see from this diagram here, you've got the uterus before the surge and then during the surge, it's actually lifting up with all of the effort because of all of these wonderful muscles doing their job. So why not just take a day off and relax and let your womb birth your baby? In this diagram, it shows the woman in the client position. She doesn't actually have to be in that position, but for this diagram, it kind of shows what's happening pretty well. She should really be in whatever position she feels is instinctively comfortable. So, with all of these different things under my belt, I kind of felt absolutely prepared. There was one thing during the hypno birthing which was a visualization technique. And so when you would start this uterine surge or contraction, you would be breathing a very long breath up into a big red balloon. And then as you breathe out, you would let the red balloon drift off across the landscape of your mind. And that particular visualization technique really helped me to have something to focus on. So, yeah, so my first pregnancy that everything went really smoothly and then, you know, slowly went into labor and the midwife came in the middle of the night. I've been in labor for about 12 hours. I've been in my rocking chair listening to the CDs that the hypno birthing lady had given me. And then the midwife arrived and she just sort of sat there and didn't really do anything. She just palpated me and then just minded her in business, which felt good. But it wasn't until like the early hours of the morning that she was like, had a decision that maybe things weren't progressing as she would like and then sent me out into the cold guard and got me walking up the stairs and just kind of took me right out of my comfort zone. And I didn't really like that. But, you know, I felt like behind me what she was doing. She's been a midwife for a lot of years. So, you know, well, things did progress quite quickly and then the baby was born. And then soon as the baby was born, she cut the cord and stuck me in the leg with the syntimetron injection. And then I just sort of decided, right, okay, I'm going to the bathroom, have a shower and then when I came back down, the baby was completely dressed and, you know, I hadn't seen that happen. So we kind of missed out on this space and time, which was only probably 45 minutes, but I think it had a knock on effect. And I, you know, I hadn't, excuse me, hadn't really researched that stage of labor. And so when she said to me, we'll give you that in case you have a hemorrhage. I just thought, well, God, I don't want to have that. So, yeah, I was grateful. But I later found out that this syntimetron injection is like a fake hormone or a synthetic hormone and it blocks the love hormone that is flowing between the mother and the baby immediately after birth. So that hormone is really quite important for the mother and baby to feel because it's really going to be beneficial for them when they're beginning their breastfeeding journey, for example. So I decided, well, the next time, if I feel pregnant again, I probably wouldn't be so hasty to give that. So with my second pregnancy, everything was quite fine and running smoothly and, you know, I was just eating healthily, doing the things that I'd practised before. And then it got to 37 weeks and then the midwife said, well, you have a breech baby. So I asked her what that entailed and she said, well, it means your homebirth is out the window and you'll be in a hospital with your legs up in the stirrups and basically a pretty managed delivery of my baby and I thought, well, I smiled sweetly at her and then I kind of went higher and I thought, well, this can't happen. The thought of it just seemed awful and I thought there must be another way. Surely it hasn't always been like this but I learned that a lot of breech birth skills have been lost over the years and actually cesarean birth is quite common for, you know, breech birth and that's what they wanted for me. They wanted me to look in at 37 weeks for a cesarean but I declined and I preferred to wait. So I waited till about 42 and a half weeks and it was a very long story which I'm happy to talk to anybody about if you would like to email me but cutting a long story very short, I decided at 42 plus five days to have an elective cesarean and I just kind of had to get my head around it but in a way of health myself, I made a birth plan so I wrote on that I wanted skin to skin. I wanted to practice a lotus birth which is where the baby is left connected to the umbilical cord in the placenta and then to make it more of a gentle transition was my reasoning behind it and my husband thought I was mad but I just, you know, I prepared myself and I took in some articles so that they could see what it was all about if they didn't know and took in a washing up bowl with a colander and the herbs and salt that were needed to sort of help this placenta afterwards and it does sound a bit crazy but it, you know, for me at that time it felt like I needed to have these certain things in place to help me feel comfortable about having this major surgery. So, you know, the baby was born really well and they gave it to me and we had immediate skin to skin and then the midwives one had the colander with the bowl underneath and put the placenta in there so it was all a very interesting experience and then up on the ward we post-lept which is what I wanted and it was, you know, I felt pleased after the bath I felt really, really happy that I sort of had all of my wishes respected and the midwives were fantastic and they were just really supportive even though some of them didn't understand and some of them were just like, throw that thing out but, yeah, it was a really great experience and I think it helped in the long one. So then with my third baby they really wanted me to go to the hospital because, you know, there would have been a scar on my uterus and they were like, you know, there were those risks associated with that so I thought, okay, well, if there's risks I better read up about them and get myself informed so I read up about them, got myself informed and decided, well, I still really would like to have a home birth so I negotiated this with the midwives and put it all in place so on the day that, you know, I went into labour it was quite a jovial occasion I had a friend there who acted as my doula like this person and I had her there and then I had my four-year-old and two-year-old daughters and then, you know, my husband was there in case they needed to go and then the midwife arrived and she had a student midwife so it was all lovely and we had balloons up and it was just a celebratory occasion which is, you know, how I wanted it to be a normal part of life I wanted my children to see that and expect that even though they don't remember now I think somewhere deep in their being they probably will so, you know, everything runs as a way of preparing my children as well I should note that throughout my pregnancy I came across these home birth books that were, you know, children and families preparing for this I had pictures and a storyline was like the mother's going to be like a cat or roaring like a woman so I thought, well, I'd better do that so, you know, in the throes of labour mooing like a cow, roaring like a woman I really do think that that actually helped to like open everything up and just for everything to be much smoother and for me to have something to focus on not like screaming out just about doing these animal, primal noises and so, you know, that was a really, really wonderful experience to have and then after the birth the student midwife said, well, it was so lovely to see a woman just giving birth without any medical intervention because she actually hadn't seen that but she'd only seen births in hospitals so this was like her first home birth that she'd been to so a couple of years after that I tend to space my children out every couple of years but that's just the way it is for me so a couple of years after that I fell pregnant with my son and he was born actually a couple of weeks earlier than my other children they were normally born around 40 to 41 except for my second but I rang the midwife when I was in labour and she said no, no, no, you're not in labour you've got weeks and weeks to go, yeah just carry on with your normal life so I kind of, you know, went shopping it just had so happened so all my children had this illness and my husband had this illness we went shopping and I ended up having strong contractions so he had to do the shopping in his ill state and wasn't very pleased so what ensued was we had a bit of an argument in the car on the way home and I was like, that's it I've had it now, we're going to get a divorce and then we've got home and he was having to do all of these doing all of the putting the shopping away sorry I don't know what happened there he was having to put all of the shopping away and carpet clean and everything ready because the midwife would be coming and I was just in the bath I was like, I'm in the bath and then my three children were there one of them was helping me put water on my tummy when I had a contraction the next one giving me raisins the next one giving me water so it was a kind of normal part of life and everything was going on and you know my husband was really in a bad mood well I'm just going to get on with giving birth and you'd be in your bad mood so I was like getting on with it and after a while I rang the midwife and she came around and all the children went to bed so it was just me and the midwife she wanted to do a vaginal examination kind of nearly immediately and as soon as she came in my first kind of question is when I meet the midwife because sometimes you meet the midwife and you've never met her before so it's kind of like having a stranger come into your house even though she's coming in to be like your support person and to help you it still is somebody you've never met before so I'm kind of like trying to suss out what she's like and so one of my first important questions for me is have you ever given birth before because I need to for me I need to know that she's experienced what I'm experiencing so when I did do this vaginal examination and I was like well can we wait a little while and she said well the baby's not engaged so yeah we'll wait an hour so in that moment I was like right I'm gonna go to the toilet and I went to the toilet and I kind of locked the door so I just wanted to have my sort of sacred space just with me and my baby and then within a couple of minutes I had a strong contraction and another one and it just felt like things like were moving and I felt like he'd moved right down knocking on the door and said well we're gonna have a shift change now and the new midwife's coming she's only been there like a little while but anyway this new midwife came and she came and said hi and she said I'm just going back to the car to get the things out and during that time she was at the car I had a huge massive contraction and then something came out and I felt down and it was like a water bag and I called around the corner midwife midwife are you there and she wasn't there and I thought oh gosh I'm gonna have to give birth without her here and then she arrived to pack in and I said something's come out and then she said I'll get towels she got the towels came back in and then a contraction just seemed to take over my whole body and then I sort of leaned back and the baby propelled out of my body and it was a kind of shock but it was like just quick I had no control over it and that was the fetal ejection reflex that happens when you're pretty and uninhibited all of the concoctions hormones in your body and the endorphins and the oxytocins all working together and just to create this a gorgeous amount of hormones to make so that the baby's just going to be born so that was wonderful and that was my unborn and it was just a great experience and afterwards we ate honey cake and we ate chocolate and we had tea and it didn't seem to impress on me any of it any of the fact that she had to write all of these notes just really lovely the sacredness of birth was not impeded on us all excellent so I thought if I fall pregnant again I'll do that with my fifth baby well it didn't kind of go like that it was all different because I think so I missed a night sleep because I was anticipating the baby coming like after I was having a whole day of contractions I thought it must be tonight and it didn't happen so the whole of the next day I kind of waited anyway the midwives came there was one midwife and a student midwife as well and I just didn't click with them I clicked with the younger one but the older one I clicked with I'm not sure why but that just sometimes happens with people in life you don't always click with everybody so I just went into my zone and I lit my candle in my bathroom which was where I was when I gave birth to my son and I just tried to get into my zone but then every 15 minutes the midwife wanted to come in and check on me and you see because I'd had a cesarean like a couple of years few years before they wanted to check me every 15 minutes I was like yeah of course I'm really happy for you to do what you have to do do what you have to do and that's fine but then in hindsight I realised that perhaps this small like invasion of my previously did set me back quite a lot during this labour because I was already quite tired and you know so I kind of used up all my resources and then when it came for the baby to be born it took quite a long time and then when she, you know I was having the contractions my head had come out and the midwife had to do this special manoeuvre to help her to be born and then her breathing was really fast and she seemed a bit shocked and you know I was feeling quite shocked and then you know we went up to bed and then the midwife said well after she said well after you know well we may have to go to the hospital so she said well just see how it goes so I just had skin to skin with the baby because I know that helps to stimulate the baby's breathing and she just she was absolutely wonderful she was such a professional midwife because I hadn't really had it before where the midwife just checks all of you and to make sure that you don't have any tears or anything so I remember with my first baby I'd had a tear and the midwife hadn't noticed it she didn't check afterwards so this midwife did check and then she waited like throughout the whole of the night and just kept coming in every hour or half an hour to check on the baby's breathing and then you know from midnight till five in the morning the baby's breathing regulated and so we just could stay at home but I just remember feeling after the birth just so like awful and they often say the midwives oh you may well feel like you've been hit by a train well actually I really did I really felt it I felt like I used up all of my physical and mental resources and I thought my gosh I've really done myself in I've had too many babies and this is what this is what I've got now and I thought well that's it for me but then as I process this by talking to friends and you know close friends I realise that actually you know I'd missed all of the sleep and you know different things you know having lots of different midwives like shift changes all of that impacts on the woman so and I did feel pregnant two years after that and I thought oh my gosh I'm going to have to go through that and I kind of I kind of had to process it you know but because by this point my knowledge had increased as I'd moved like through the pregnancies and births and then back into motherhood and then into pregnancy again I took things on board which you know I'd experienced that had helped me and then discarded the other things that hadn't so I just kind of felt like well maybe I should just be responsible for pregnancy seen as I found it quite stressful going to these midwife appointments so that's what I did I decided well I'll just seek out a midwife when I feel like she's going to give me more than she'll she's going to take away so I spoke to different organisations like AIMS the Association for Improvements in Maternity Care and I spoke to birth rights to find out what my rights were doing this sort of thing I talked to other mothers who had been in a similar situation so I did not have any appointments with a midwife but I did go and pay to have a private scan to find out whether the centre was because I'd had this previous cesarean and I wanted to make sure it was a way of you know from the top of the cervix so then you know the pregnancy was pretty straightforward and just really lovely actually and no stress at all it was just I had a lot of other stresses going on in my life but my pregnancy it was just absolutely wonderful and much nicer than any of the other pregnancies but then this was my own final sort of decision after giving birth to five children already it wasn't something I just took lightly so I kind of woke up noticing that I'd been having contractions all night and then in the morning I kind of just got up and got on with the day we were in the process of moving house so everything was getting packed away and I was just like relaxing and getting on with just concentrating on my own self for a while which was lovely and so then by the time the sun went down my contractions started getting stronger I had a doula friend there with me and she helped build me this pillow of cushions that I could just lean into and then everything was just getting stronger and I was just like having to really like work with the contractions and just go with them and my mind was like feeling strong and talking to me like this is fine this is how it's been before then I got to the transition I thought this is where every woman gets and I never used to like to call it transition but the contractions have changed to be all around your womb to more like your changes to be more guttural and then it's kind of pushy feeling and you can kind of feel it within yourself if you kind of listen into your body I was like oh okay I think I'm going to call the midwife now so I rang the midwife the local hospital and they were like they hadn't heard of me they were like okay we'll send someone so in an actual fact I got into my zone again and I felt quite confident again and the contractions had changed and then within like a short amount of time you know I gave birth to my baby and then about 45 minutes afterwards the midwife arrived in time for the placenta so I was pleased with that because the placenta always kind of made me feel pretty anxious I don't know why but I didn't feel so confident with that part of birth but she was lovely she came in and she gave a biology lesson to my eldest daughter showing her about the veins in the umbilical cord and something I sense something had changed like in the atmosphere it was like the sacredness of birth had like turned into something else um however you know it was it was good that she was there and I just I just changed it I noticed that it had changed into this thing where she was having to like fill in all this paperwork and you know check everything off like that but you know it was it was this birth it was just wonderful you know it was such a good experience to have sort of everything had culminated in this experience for me because I really felt then that perhaps this would be my last baby and to have had all of these experiences and then to come to this final sort of pinnacle moment of like you know taking responsibility for everything about the pregnancy and most of the birth um was a really empowering thing to experience um and I feel just so wonderful about it and just sharing these stories it just makes me feel very very happy um so to surmise I think you know pregnancy and birth should be really received as an opportunity to spell any fears that you have you know and just to you know if you want to get informed about what's happening then do you know you don't have it all on board just take the things that you think might help you you know birth doesn't necessarily have to be seen as an illness um you know and what I've noticed is that relaxation if you don't do anything else relaxation is the key um so yeah learn about what happens to the body if you want to learn about what happens during pregnancy and childbirth and you know the corollary of that is like after the birth you know look you have your beautiful baby and it's just a wonderful thing to like keep this in mind that you are going to be meeting your baby your baby is going through all of this as well um and and if you if you can just be confident in your choices and and communicate with your midwife you know tell her tell her your fears you know ask her questions um if it doesn't seem like she's got time just write it all down so that you know you're getting out there and you know talk to other women who have had similar experiences because you know it it is going to help you to get the birth that you want and then afterwards it's going to be much better for you so to conclude you know I just wish that any there is any pregnant women listening to this or any women looking to become pregnant in the future I just implore you to trust your instincts um as you you know partake in this absolutely wonderful journey that epitomizes the sacredness of birth and pregnancy um this beautiful baby here looking at his mother you know he's not really interested in getting his weight checked or being measured he's looking at her face you know he's memorizing every characteristic that makes up his mother's face you know um falling in love with her for the first time and you know over time he's going to be able to identify her face amongst a sea of people so why not come to this moment alert, awake and excited to meet your baby thank you so much for listening make a bless you all. Thank you very much Abigail for that wonderful presentation and for sharing your positive stories and your experiences with midwives so there are few questions that people are asking and the first question is from Caroline she said I missed out on that bit of the injection on your thigh affecting the lab hormone please can you clarify? Yes so what I recognized is that as soon as I was given the injection or you know a few minutes after I was oblivious to the baby and I kind of just wanted to go up and wash off the blood and myconium of me where you know and then I noticed in other births where I hadn't had that and it was all about just wanting to be with the baby so I just thought well why was that and then I just realized that perhaps having this synthetic hormone that's like trying to replicate this love hormone or I'm imagining that I think that's what it is doing it kind of blocks the love hormone because you haven't put into you so it's kind of blocking what's going on you know it's interfering with what's going on in your body and so I just didn't want that this amazing concoction of you know hormones that I talked about is going all around in your body caring you and then your baby for this point where you're actually finally meet and yeah to block that with something else I mean unless it's medically necessary I would say too Very good there's another question from Linda Linda asks what messages do you have for midwives? I feel so grateful for midwives because I feel like without midwives you know it would be a pretty awful place for women giving birth because especially now I mean I talk about trusting your instincts but it's it's hard it's challenging in this world for women to trust their instincts with all of these other things going on like media and TV you know but for me having seen my own mother like learning about her experience with me I kind of felt like I really wanted to go and do things completely differently but in answer to the question sorry I'm digressing is that you know it should just be woman centred and as much as possible I hope that midwives can carry on you know following their calling and making it woman centred even in the face of adversity when they're having to do all of this paperwork I hope that they can just still find the courage to do what it is that they wanted to do from the beginning yeah. Alright then let me take the last question or comment Professor Goma is asking why don't you try to apply your experience with another group of women? Yes that's right I do whole pregnancy support groups but I would like to kind of reach out a lot more and do different things perhaps with university students as well and to you know so I was going to say if any of you want to contact me these are my details here so if you have any further questions please I'm always happy to answer anything you know about pregnancy and birth. Alright and just to read some comments that people wrote Margaret wrote forward leaning Linda wrote masterly in activity another person wrote it's important to listen to your baby Professor Goma acknowledged and thank you for sharing your experiences Abigail this has been truly awesome thank you thank you thank you very much for that and for those who have further questions please contact Abigail her contact is right there on this last slide.