"Our little boy arrived on Saturday 10th August at 7:26pm weighing 3.85kg. His name is Toa Tamura-Maude 🙂

We had a beautiful home birth and laboured in the birthing pool. We did have to get out of the pool at the last minute unfortunately as I’d been pushing for quite a while and struggling to get Toa’s head out because he was presenting deflexed so the midwives wanted to get me in a position with a bit more gravity on our side. It only took a couple more pushes once we were out and and Toa came out all in one go! I’ll never forget seeing him for the first time. I was in disbelief!

From active labour through to Toa being born was about 7 or 8 hours. It probably could have been a lot shorter if not for a few challenges. When my midwife Georgina arrived at midday she found that Toa was posterior so with that and the deflexed head position we had a bit of hard work ahead of us (we did manage to turn him anterior during my labour). I escaped with just a small 2nd degree tear which I felt was not a bad result given Toa had a pretty big head apparently.

Eito was an incredible support throughout the entire thing. I lost it a wee bit around the transition stage but eito was a wonderful calm presence and let me hold onto him through every surge. He was great at reminding me to do my breathing throughout each stage and encouraging my affirmations.

Overall we had a great experience. It was bloody hard work and more intense than I could have imagined. But I felt a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction when Toa was born. I feel really grateful that I got exactly what I wanted- a natural birth without any interventions or trauma and of course a healthy baby!

I feel very lucky to have had amazing, very experienced midwives looking after me. They created such a calm and safe environment for my labour and Toa’s birth. Eito was my hero and I feel like both of us went into the whole thing really calm and confident which was key! The hypnobirthing definitely enabled this and set us up for a positive experience. We learnt a lot in the lead up to the birth thanks to you. Most importantly we were in a state of mind to not let fear interfere with the process. Thank you again so much for your help and the tools you taught us. It was worthwhile 100%!

Much love,

Ash and Eito"