As soon-to-be first time parents, we wanted to do everything possible to give our child the best start in life.  When we started to look into hypnobirthing, the concept made sense and reading the reviews on Tracey’s website made us sure that this was the right thing for us to do. The course was really informative and we met some lovely people!  It was nice to do the course together as a couple.  Tracey has a great teaching manner and we felt like we could ask all of our stupid questions without being made to feel like total morons!  Tracey takes the hypnobirth concepts and applies her experience to make them fit real life; this is what makes Tracey worth her weight in gold – she makes the theory actually make sense. We did practice the techniques and were using the rainbow relaxation CD daily in the final weeks leading up to the birth.  We also used the affirmations a couple of times a week.  We planned for a waterbirth and even chose a birthing centre which was 15 miles from home to increase our chance of having a pool available! After a stop-start beginning to the labour, my waters went at 8pm on Saturday.  As Tracey was acting as our doula, we contacted her to let her know how things were progressing.  The plan was to stay at home as long as possible, however, within a couple of hours I had started bleeding and losing clots.  The first person we contacted was Tracey (we even sent her photographs – talk about above and beyond the call of duty!) who advised us to contact the hospital.  The hospital wanted us to come in and Tracey arranged to meet us there.  It was a bit of a scary time and it was so nice to pull up to the hospital and see Tracey waiting there for us and have her take control of the situation.   More blood loss whilst at the hospital meant that we were classed as high risk and therefore a pool birth was out of the question, as was a delivery in the birthing centre.  Instead we were transferred to the hospital.  Tracey went out of her way to talk to the hospital staff and explain that we had planned on a hypnobirth and asked if we could make the hospital room as much like a birthing centre room as possible with dimmed lights and a quiet atmosphere and even went as far as asking for the midwife who would be most open to that type of birthing experience! Having Tracey there meant that Jonathan and I could concentrate on using the hypnobirth techniques to bring our baby into the world.  I do believe that having Tracey there was fundamental to the fact that we delivered our beautiful baby daughter, Charlotte, with the help of a TENS machine and some gentle encouragement.  The midwife said that I was the calmest mother that she had ever seen – including those who had had epidurals!  It was lovely to see Charlotte alert and ready to feed within minutes of being born.  As a first time Mum it was great to have Tracey there to give some tips on breastfeeding such as positioning and making sure Charlotte was latched on properly, just the basics, but this helped to get us off to a great start. Tracey – thank you doesn’t even begin to cover it.  We couldn’t have done it without you!  You will always have a special place in our hearts.