The Birth Nest

The Birth Nest No more anxiety and nerves, The Birth Nest supports you to have the right mindset for birth. Hello, I am Abigail and I am creator and owner at The Birth Nest.

You will feel confident, informed and calm as you create your best pregnancy and birth experience with The Birth Nest. The Birth nest offers answers to the questions you have about pregnancy and birth. In the silence just before sleep, in the car as you drive, as you lay in the bath - belly poking through the bubbles, as you listen to the 'helpful' advice and stories your friends, family and stran

gers offer you on a daily basis. The anxiety creeps in, the doubt takes over and before you realise it you have created fear and tension and talked yourself in to a painful and scary birth scenario. So now its time to make some decisions:

Is this really how you want to remember your pregnancy? Are you actually going to let this be your experience of birth? At what point did you give up on trusting your body? And ask:

Am I ready to change my mindset for the best birth I can achieve for me and my body? Am I ready to learn how to replace the unhelpful reactions in my subconscious with amazing thoughts about how awesome my birth is going to be? Am I committed to trusting my body, which was made to create life and birth babies? Then without pausing for a moment longer, please contact me and find out how The Birth Nest's Services can support you to transform Fear in to Confidence and Doubt in to Trust. The BIrth Nest offers antenatal courses that show you how you can shape and inform your birth choices as well as relaxing therapies and treatments that support a healthy and calm pregnancy and birth. Once baby is here The Birth nest provides Placenta Encapsulation services, postnatal massage and breastfeeding support. There is also a postnatal support group 'The Bump Nest' with an on line community and monthly meet up at Seckford Hall in Woodbridge. STOP thinking that you are the only one that feels like this. You are not. When you work with The Birth Nest you will realise that actually, everything you need is already within you, you just need to change your mindset. The Birth nest, supporting Motherhood, Bump, Birth & Baby

Relax, Release and Unwind… Do not underestimate the impact of a personalised and nurturing pregnancy massage. You will f...
02/02/2025

Relax, Release and Unwind…

Do not underestimate the impact of a personalised and nurturing pregnancy massage.

You will feel AMAZING! ❤️☺️

This is a subject close to my heart as I venture back to the land of the living after the most amazing home birth 🤍For y...
31/08/2024

This is a subject close to my heart as I venture back to the land of the living after the most amazing home birth 🤍

For years I have supported decisions to birth at home and attended so many beautiful couples births. BUT services are in the worst state I have ever known them. Under staffed, over worked, culture of intimidation and coercion - the current maternity system is well and truly broken 💔

It would be wrong of me to support couples planning for a home birth without covering some of the tough topics mentioned in this post.

We know that birthing bodies are best left undisturbed and unobserved, however this rarely happens. A home birth can give you the opportunity to follow your body’s lead and with loving support around you, feel fully supported and nurtured.

With midwives in short supply and labour wards closing due to unsafe staffing levels, you really do need to plan for all eventualities and explore what your options are.

Make a plan, know your rights, understand how your body works through labour, discuss your fears and how to alleviate them, build a supportive birth team around you, educate yourself around dealing with curve balls in labour and learn tools to help you trust your body.

How you feel when you birth your baby will stay with you forever, if you can be clear what support you want and discuss your options in pregnancy you have a better chance of birthing your baby with love, respect and power! 🤍

The Birth Nest is and will be …very… slow to reply to messages this week 🏄‍♀️ 🌴 ☀️ 🍹
01/08/2024

The Birth Nest is and will be …very… slow to reply to messages this week 🏄‍♀️ 🌴 ☀️ 🍹

10 years ago this morning, I birthed my 3rd baby at home. She arrived in a hurry and it was the most powerful labour I’d...
04/07/2024

10 years ago this morning, I birthed my 3rd baby at home. She arrived in a hurry and it was the most powerful labour I’d had.

At 12.30am I rolled over to moan at my husband for coming to bed late and with that the first surge hit me and it was intense. I stood up and felt my waters gently streaming. I ventured downstairs and called to my husband to phone for a midwife.

I’m one of those women that goes from fully lucid and definitely not in labour at all one minute to ‘Leave me alone I’m in the zone’ fully in labour in the next minute. All 3 labours have been the same, spontaneous and powerful. However this 3rd labour arrived with such unstoppable force I literally had to just drop to the floor and allow it to take over me.

When I work with couples and share my knowledge and experiences, I follow my syllabus of learning and dive off on different tangents as discussions flow. However underlying all the tips and tools I speak to the subtle art of surrendering to your body. This body that just grew a human child inside of you, that you can trust now, to open and soften and release your child.

You can learn all the techniques you like and keep all the tools you have nearby BUT it is in the doing of nothing ~ ‘no-thing’ that we witness the power of a body and mind to come together to allow birth to unfold as it should.

When you distract your mind and surrender to the flow, however intense it is, your innate birthing instincts take over, you breathe how you need, move in a way that supports the descent of your baby and find comfort and safety in places that feed the flow of hormones needed to open your cervix and birth your baby!

There was no stopping my daughter that day 10 years ago, she literally flew out of me in 3 hours flat. She took me by storm that night and gave me no choice but to just breathe and succumb to her timetable… and to be quite honest that has not changed! She’s a whirlwind who never stops talking and entertaining us with her wit and comical ways. And the art of surrendering has been useful on my parenting journey too 😂

Being a doula…I’ve attended hospital births, home births, VBACs, HVBACs, births before midwives arrive, elective cesarea...
01/02/2024

Being a doula…

I’ve attended hospital births, home births, VBACs, HVBACs, births before midwives arrive, elective cesareans, birth in an ambulance transfer, twin home birth, covid births behind face masks and via WhatsApp video@and pretty much everything in between!

Regular coercion tactics include - “Your baby is too small, baby is too big, you have gestational diabetes, you ‘need’ an induction, you are high risk, your bmi is too high, you’re too old, you’re over due, you’ve had a cesarean so can’t birth vaginally, we don’t support twin home births, you can’t have a water birth, you have group step B, your baby could die, your uterus could rupture, you must be monitored throughout, you can’t birth at home..” blah- blah etc. etc.

I’ve stood in bedrooms, toilets, corridors, birth pool, gardens, hospital theatres, car parks, birthing suites, ambulances and stairwells - All in the name of holding space for birth to happen and for women and couples to confidently ask for what they want and not be manipulated or pressured.

Now more than ever truths need to be told.

Midwives, birthing people, doulas, birth workers, families need to be heard, supported, and encouraged to speak out and stand up for the need to reclaiming birth, respecting rights in birth and demanding change in a service that is failing its employees, its service users and the next generation.

This is me, 14 years ago, immediately after the birth of my first child. 10 days over my due date and resigned to an ind...
01/02/2024

This is me, 14 years ago, immediately after the birth of my first child. 10 days over my due date and resigned to an induction the next day, my body went into spontaneous labour 🧡

I laboured for 14 hours in total. I can honestly say my experience was positive. Midwives listened and my husband and mum sat with me the whole time.

I accepted Perhidine at some point as I desperately needed to rest. I dozed for 2-3 hours then tuned back in to my body and my surges.

My waters broken late in the evening. A whole new level of urgency and pressure quickly descended into my lower pelvis.

I didn’t want to be touched. I was silent apart from some low guttural moans and heavy breathing through surges.

I remember a moment of total clarity, I opened my eyes and looked around. I felt a deep serenity wash over me. I surveyed the room, I saw my mum and my heart filled with total surrender and love, “yes, it is safe” I said to myself.

On hands and knees my baby was born. As the head crowned my body slowed to complete stillness, taking a few calm breaths I reached between my legs and touched the head. One final surge and I suddenly realised it was an actual baby! I had birthed an actual human!

My birth story wasn’t one I felt able to share at postnatal baby groups. The other mums were mostly sharing tales of coercion and manhandling. Stolen confidence, mis-information, hurried decision making under pressure, babies extracted by forceps and emergency cesareans. The other narrative was how they were just happy to have a healthy baby, that they were lucky to have had medical interventions offered.

I felt a sense of guilt about my own experience. I’d found pleasure and power in my labour. I felt supported and listened to. My amazing body had birthed a human and I was in on top of the world awe!

From somewhere deep inside my new mother’s body I was enraged, on behalf of these women I was determined to do something.

For this reason, 2 years later, I became a doula.

After a recent doula enquiry call I can’t shake the feeling my path is shifting. When people call to ask if you will sup...
29/01/2024

After a recent doula enquiry call I can’t shake the feeling my path is shifting.

When people call to ask if you will support their free birth as they don’t want to ‘risk’ going into hospital or expose themselves to “being manipulated to make decisions I don’t want to make”, you have to ask yourself ‘WTF is going on?!’

For 12 years I’ve supported couples to traverse their pregnancy and birth journey. Not one of those journeys has been without some challenge or attempted coercion at some point along the way.

Sometimes it’s during scans, sometimes when talking about midlife led or consultant led care, often when there is strong advice to take tests and additional consultant appointments. And almost always, coercion occurs during labour and birth, when a woman is at her most vulnerable.

Who am I kidding (apart from myself) that this is just the way it is, that somehow it’s what people should accept 🤦🏼‍♀️

I’ve started listening to the Podcast by & Birth Activist, and I feel my doula vibes revving up. I’m feeling angry and inspired all at once.

Please have a listen to the podcast, whether you are a birth worker, midwife or birthing person.

Don’t miss the opportunity to free yourself from the middle lane, from cruising into labour and birth without the understanding of what you might have to face in the NHS in 2024.

You Are The Expert In Your Birth StorySo many opinions, guidance, suggestions, deadlines, decisions. So much pressure to...
23/01/2024

You Are The Expert In Your Birth Story

So many opinions, guidance, suggestions, deadlines, decisions.

So much pressure to attend appointments, agree to tests, listen to professionals

You are expected to understand medical terminology, trust people you’ve just met, wait for hours for a 5 minute appointment, be grateful for important people’s opinions and time, not ask questions or doubt the opinions given and never ever suggest you know best for you and your baby.

REALLY? I mean in what other area of our lives are we led blindly by others without question or answers to our questions. And I mean full answers, based of facts and research - up-to-date research that is.

This is bonkers.

You have RIGHTS

YOU can decide how you want to birth and what if any tests or appointments you attend

You can have a doula

You can have an independent midwife

You can educate yourself and free birth

YOU ARE THE EXPERT

Around 1/3 of pregnancies underwent Induction Of Labour in the UK in 2021. Some maternity services had rates as high as ...
22/01/2024

Around 1/3 of pregnancies underwent Induction Of Labour in the UK in 2021. Some maternity services had rates as high as 50%

Rates for Induction have soared over recent years.

If you reach 39-40 weeks of labour it is likely that your midwife or consultant will offer you an induction. Even if you have had a simple, uncomplicated pregnancy you can expect the induction chat.

Evidence shows that non medical reasons for induction can lead to increased risks of intervention during labour and poor outcomes for both mother and baby.

A client I spoke to recently said that at her 36 week appointment she was asked if she wanted to book an induction for 39 weeks. No medical reason, first birth, heathy pregnancy, no risk factors…

When you are induced your body is not following a hormonal pattern that builds labour slowly.

You are not releasing endorphins to match oxytocin, thus creating a cycle of natural pain relief from the discomfort of your surges.

Your cervix is not gently moving forward, softening, shortening and thinning in its own time. Nor is it dilating at the pace that is right for your baby (Sometimes it’s not dilating at all)

Your microbiome is not responding to the hormones of birth and shifting naturally to match what is required in your cervix.

Occasionally, induction is the right decision but the medical reasons are few and should not include “Our best guess is you have a big/small/overdue baby”

Please read and inform yourselves if induction is offered. Sara Wickham has an amazing book you can read or listen to. There is research a plenty around why induction is linked to an increased risk of instrumental birth and cesarean sections.

Protect your birth and your baby.

Contact me if you would like to book a session to talk about your options.

Babies are born when they are ready, there is no alarm clock set.An estimated due date is a best guess, a suggestion, a ...
28/08/2023

Babies are born when they are ready, there is no alarm clock set.

An estimated due date is a best guess, a suggestion, a rough guide.

In the weeks leading up to labour the body and baby take delicate steps and undergo hormonal and bacterial changes to optimise the conditions for the journey of birth and to assist the transition from womb to world.

It has now been normalised to be ‘over due’, to expect to be offered a membrane sweep, an induction, to be routinely scanned, monitored and measured ‘in case your baby is ‘too big’, ‘too small’ ‘distressed’…

At what point did women’s bodies stop being capable of birthing babies? At what point did women become convinced or coerced into believing what ‘experts’ tell them?

When did the professionals forget that ‘informed’ means you tell people everything, all the outcomes and how their suggested intervention increases risk that didn’t exist before they got involved?

We should realise that most maternity services are understaffed, under pressure, have guidelines that need refreshing with up to date research and demoralised exhausted staff that wish they could deliver more person centred care. ~ Care Quality Commission Maternity Survey 2022.

There is enough information available now for women to be able to understand every aspect of pregnancy and birth, to inform themselves and feel confident asking questions and declining interventions when they feel it is not in their or the baby’s best interest.

But still it is sometimes not enough when faced with decisions and pressure in the birth room.

Please prepare as much as you can and remember birthing at home can be as safe and for many safer than going to hospital.

🤍 Get in touch if you want to talk honest pregnancy and birth planning 🤍

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Ipswich
IP30RE

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