This is a guest post from Fritha who blogs at Tigerlilly Quinn. When she mentioned that she had been present at her siblings’ births, I was intrigued as to what those experiences were like for her. On our KG Hypnobirthing course, Katharine Graves mentioned that often young children aren’t too phased by births because adults do a great many odd things and giving birth might be just another of them. Thank you, Fritha, for sharing your story here. I am second eldest of a family of five children, all born at home. My mother is (as you might have guessed)…

“You realise that your eyelids are so relaxed they stay closed of their own accord. Even if you wanted to open them, you will find they stay shut. In fact you can try this for yourself in a minute and you will find the more you try to open them the more firmly they stay shut. Try now to open them and see how you cannot open them – they stay shut. That’s fine,” the calm voice of Katharine Graves reassured us. My body is designed to give birth efficiently and easily. I honestly tried and couldn’t. I relaxed into…

So, we met the doula we were checking out on Friday (23 weeks!) and got such a good feeling that we decided to go ahead with her. Just waiting to hear back from her now. I’m incredibly indecisive with these things, especially anything that involves money, so it was just as well we had all that time on the Megabus to and from London yesterday for the second half of our hypnobirthing course with Katherine Graves. All in all, it feels like a few pieces of a puzzle are coming together for this birth. Not that that’s a puzzle that…

“Hello, baby,” Talitha says to my bump, “Having a nice day?” She catches me off guard every time. It’s not something I’ve taught her to do but I suppose she finds it natural to include the baby in our day-to-day lives as it becomes an obvious presence, i.e. I grow bigger. Often, I find that she is the one to remind me that the baby is there. I am caught up in life with her. There are so many things happening. Her language continues to leap, she’s become obsessed with letters and their sounds, she’s potty training (successfully this time!)…