I love feeling in control. I like to have a plan A, B and C, but when these plans are not effective in the way you want them to be, or a ‘birthing tool’ doesn’t work or maybe you forget what you are supposed to do when you reach a certain stage of your birth can create a situation when you feel out of control, start to panic and both you and your baby can experience an unpleasant stress response.

When you need your tools most at the time when you birth your baby and you find they unexpectedly no longer work, or you forget how to use them can have a negative impact on your thoughts, your thinking, your birthing experience. If you do have a negative experience when you birth your baby, and after you look back and assess what went wrong, you start to question yourself why, what I should and should not have done? Was I not good enough? This can get us into a state of overwhelming confusion, guilt, disappointment, sadness, and anger.

We then start to judge ourselves; self-analyse and question where did I fail, what would have happened if I did this or that when that happened?

We end up getting caught up in knots and then struggle to ‘move on’.

But we don’t need a negative experience to come to this. When you are in that moment, be patient and let it pass. By waking yourself up from this tangled state can pull us back into reality and we recognise that this feeling of panic is only being created by your own thoughts, which means you can get them out of your system and continue with birthing your baby in the calmest possible way.