Written in her own words:

“The stars aligned for us when I reached out to Lauren at 39 weeks pregnant. It just so happened she was available, which was amazing! She was a recommendation to me from my women’s health physio, so I’d had Lauren in the back of my mind already toward the end of my pregnancy.

With the short timeframe I gave her, Lauren endeavoured to get to know our family as much as possible before the birth. We went through my birth preferences together and chatted a lot about my plans. My first birth had been a caesarean due to breech presentation. But for this birth, knowing what was involved in a c-section recovery, and having a toddler at home, I really wanted to avoid another surgery. I had supportive midwives through MGP and was planning on birthing at a VBAC-friendly facility.

At 40 weeks and 3 days, I went into spontaneous labour at 2:30am. The contractions were strong enough that I couldn’t sleep, but still irregular at 3-7 mins apart. By 6am, Lauren arrived at my home to support me as I was starting to struggle.

I laboured at home for about 5 hours after this, and Lauren went above and beyond to help me relax through the contractions. She helped me with lots of different positions during this time to help me be as comfortable as possible. She incorporated all sorts of tools to help me cope with the labour – massage, acupressure points, TENS machine, heat packs and even the bath at home to try to relax.

At 11:30am, I felt that it was time to go to the hospital. While my husband drove us, Lauren sat in the back seat of the car and breathed with me during some very difficult contractions.

After arriving at the hospital, I laboured a bit more. At 3:30pm, I decided to get an epidural, as it already felt like a long labour, and felt like I still had a ways to go. But even though I had the epidural, Lauren was able to help me manoeuvre into upright positions that helped the labour progress. At one point she had me on all fours in the bed, and was shaking my hips with a rebozo scarf. She also helped me find different resting positions with the peanut ball, and I was actually able to sleep while still being in a good position for my hips to open. Finally, at 2am, I was dialated to 10 centimetres!

Lauren stayed with Scott and me the entire time, and didn’t leave until baby Teddy was born at 3:35am on Sunday morning. She helped us navigate through the many challenging things that you encounter when in the hospital system and we felt so confident with her support. I have no doubt that our birth would have been very different if Lauren wasn’t there with us. She was a wealth of knowledge and a calm presence. Lauren was with us for 24 hours, and did not have any breaks. She is a superwoman and we are so grateful to have had her there.

We will be recommending Lauren to anyone we know who is pregnant! I do not know what we would have done without her!”

*Story and photos shared with permission