Gratitude and blessings to you Nadine Ilsa O’Mara for your loving guidance and support during my pregnancy.
I am so blessed to have come across Nadine through my local yoga studio (Yoga & Health Collective Mona Vale). In that first class I had tears of joy rolling down my cheeks in awe and adoration of the language Nadine used to describe pregnancy and a type of calm, ecstatic birth that I yearned for, but in my experience, had not been spoken of. The words resonated within every cell in my body and the essence of my soul. I had found my teacher, my guru. Nadine spoke about pregnancy as an opportunity to prepare for labour and the birth experience as something to welcome and the result of such preparation. What, I actually had power and a say over the birth experience! I needed to know more and Nadine was the key to such knowledge.
Pregnancy as an opportunity to prepare for motherhood is such a fundamental thing, which is often overlooked or worst still, forgotten. We study and prepare for almost everything in our lives. For a woman, nothing is more important or more sacred then that journey into Motherhood. I believe that every mamma-to-be needs a teacher. If you are looking for the most incredible, amazing, generous, loving and nurturing soul to help you on your birth journey, I highly recommend Nadine O’Mara.
I personally had an extremely traumatic birth 7 years earlier with my daughter. I was excited about the prospect of being a mamma to a newborn again but the impending birth was extremely frightening. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I just knew I couldn’t trust the hospital system as I had developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD) from the ordeal. I wasn’t going to repeat the journey and expect a different result, I was going to strike out in a new direction, change absolutely everything to ensure a new outcome. It all started with signing up for yoga during my 12th week and from there I just followed Nadine’s advice and my own intuition.
I am so grateful to Nadine, not only was her advice and expertise as a yoga instructor, she births educator and birth attendant so thorough and well explained, she also knew all the best allied people to see, including Sheryl Sidery who was my midwife, who I also cannot thank enough. Every step of the way Nadine had good, natural advice. Not wishy-washy-hippy natural advice (although, I am sure she would also have plenty of that too). The She Births course is based entirely on scientific studies and is a collation of that science. I’m a bit of a nerd (a scientist and an accountant) and I even borrowed the studies for a few weeks and read a number of them and incorporated the compelling results into my pregnancy and birth plan.
The She Births course was amazing. I don’t know what I would have done in labour had I not attended the She Births course and done prenatal yoga. The two parts gave me all the skills and things to do during labour. If you are pregnant now and can only imagine yourself lying on a bed panting, just like in the movies – STOP READING and get yourself booked into a She Births course and prenatal yoga right now. There is a much, much better way. The truth is that you can have a wonderful experience and actually enjoy giving birth. Planning and preparing scientifically increases the chance of having the dream birth you want. Having the “no plans” plan for pregnancy and birth gives you results like what happened to me the first time around. I needed to put the best possible plan in place and work hard to try to achieve that plan. Without Nadine’s advice, I would not have known how to go about this or what to do.
I had planned on having a home birth, but, when my waters broke there was meconium in the waters and I ended up going to hospital. The beautiful part is that, thanks to all Nadine’s help, I had overcome my PSTD and had a drug-free, beautiful, blissful, ecstatic birth of a baby boy weighing 4.01Kg on his due date. The paediatrician who witnessed the birth spoke to me the following day and said that she had never witnessed such an amazing, calm birth. She thought it was incredible, as did I and my partner Josh. I credit this to the work that I did, but had I not had someone to teach me what to do, then deep down, I just know I would have ended up with another caesarean.
Nadine, I cannot thank you enough for my beautiful birth story. I am so grateful that the universe sent you to guide me, like a beautiful mamma earth angel to watch over me. I appreciate you and adore you so much for what you gave to me. As I read through the words I’ve just written, they just don’t do the gratitude that I have for you justice. Forever grateful, Nat O’Donnell