A reference written from a first time Dad for Dads:
My wife and I first met Sarah in 2018 when we were expecting our first child - we decided to look for an independent midwife because our experience of both NCT and community midwives wasn’t good.
At the end of our first meeting with Sarah we knew she was exactly what we were looking for - her experience and general demeanour gave us an immediate sense of comfort and relief. Sarah was able to take the lead, talk us through what to expect from the pregnancy journey, answered all our questions, explained everything in a calm and positive manner, tracked everything in one document and totally put our minds at ease about the whole process of giving birth.
For me, Sarah was able to do four vital things:
- Educate and empower both of us – our confidence grew with every single visit from Sarah leading up to the birth. The reassurance of knowing what was normal and having measurements done on a regular basis was amazing. I could physically see the difference in my wife - an inner strength began building after every session which was a joy to watch. It was also incredibly useful being able to discuss the pros and cons of birth preferences at leisure, and in the comfort of your own home
- Helped me understand how best to support my wife - I am a complete control freak by nature but with Sarah taking the lead / walking us through the process it meant I was able to relax, listen and work out the best possible way to support my wife leading up, during and post birth. I cannot tell you how much of a relief that was to me personally because I was able to filter out a lot of the pregnancy noise and focus on what truly mattered. As an aside, I would thoroughly recommend a book or audio book by a chap called Mark Harris – birthing for blokes. That book taught me that male strength (during the birth process) comes in the form of strong silence with physical contact rather than taking control of the process.
- During the birth - my wife will be the first to admit that she is a complete “wuss” and yet she made it through birth (water birth) using only gas and air. I put that down to the fact that my wife was highly determined, educated about every part of the birthing process and totally supported by Sarah and myself. Having Sarah in the room meant that the other midwives were bought up to speed quickly on our preferences, she was a constant intermediary (filtering any information that we didn’t need to know about) and was fully engaged in supporting my wife as a birthing partner. All of the above meant that I was able to focus 100% of my attention on supporting my wife and not be distracted by anything – that made for a magical birth experience and means I am in awe of my wife for what she managed. That will stay with me for the rest of my life.
- Post birth – having daily visits from Sarah as soon as we got back from hospital meant we could take one step at a time. Sarah focused our minds on just taking 24 hours at a time and was able to check daily progress along with providing a heads up on coming events such as growth spurts and grizzle days. However, the biggest benefit of Sarah coming around daily was checking and spotting developments - examples included our little baby boy having a tongue tie which meant he couldn’t breast feed efficiently, not something spotted by the hospital. In addition, Sarah saved us at least three trips to A&E where we were concerned about a few things but after some checks and calls to her network of friends, no action needed.
Overall we had a fantastic birth experience and our little baby boy is healthy, relaxed and growing like a train – he is three weeks old now and we have got that fine balance between looking after his every need but also trying to have some form of life together and with others.
Last but not least - I have to say that when I first found out about Sarah’s costs I bulked a little but having now gone through the experience I can tell you it was worth every single penny – my wife and I agree that it’s the best money we have ever spent and would thoroughly recommend Sarah to anyone looking for some help, hence writing this reference. She is an amazing midwife and very special person and we cannot thank her enough in making this such a wonderful experience for us.
Best wishes
Gavin