Just before lockdown, I had a lovely cuppa and chat with Anna from the Daisy Foundation. We’ve known each other since she began running her Daisy Birthing classes in 2013. While we’ve been in quarantine, Anna’s been running her classes on-line and keeping all her mums in touch with each other during this difficult time. Sadly, she’s decided to stop her classes after the summer, so August is the last chance for you to experience the uniqueness of her Daisy classes with a birth preparation workshop and a breastfeeding workshop.
How long have you been running Daisy Classes?
It’s now about 7 years.
What made you choose doing birthing classes? Was it an experience of your own?
It was my own experience, having my own two children. It took a while to leave what I was doing in the NHS (I’m also a speech and language therapist) and retrain to do this. But it had been niggling away in the back of my head for a long time.
I just found the whole experience of pregnancy, of labour, the whole thing so life changing, so fascinating, that it was like planting a seed, it was growing in the back of my head and I kept thinking actually this is something I want to pursue. My own experiences of antenatal classes as well. The classes I went to didn’t actually prepare me for my labour and birth in the way that I wanted them to. So I think both of my experiences didn’t exactly go the way I would have liked them to have gone and looking back now, with the knowledge that I’ve now got, I could have had a different experience. So it’s kind of what I wanted to give to other women really, a chance for a positive experience. I’m not saying mine was negative, I still had a positive birth.
So I decided to take the plunge, left the NHS and did a lot of research around what I wanted. I knew I wanted to run antenatal classes, to be a teacher, an educator. I looked at a lot of different classes and then when I stumbled across Daisy and instantly it just resonated with me and I thought this is how I wish I’d done that, so this is what I want to do. It just had all the things that for me make a great class.
Do parents-to-be generally come to you at the birthing class stage and then move through?
Yes, they come all the way through with me until roughly the end of the first year. My wrigglers classes usually stop when they’re about one. For me it’s always been about supporting women through that early tricky stage, that first year. Some people don’t find Daisy Birthing and they come to me once the baby’s been born. What I’d love is for people to come and find me when they’re pregnant and then go through the whole journey with us.
Do they come as couples to Daisy Birthing or is it just mums?
Daisy Birthing is a women only class but I also run couple’s workshops so there’s options. There’s a huge workshop that we run, Daisy Parent, which is pre and post natal it’s 15 hours worth of information, half of which is ante natal and the other part of it post, looking after your baby, baby calming and safety.
I also run a smaller Active Birth workshop, so a lot of women come to Daisy Birthing to learn all the techniques and practice it and then bring their partners to an Active Birth Workshop. That way the partners get the same information so that they’re on the same page, and it means they know what techniques their partners are using and can support them rather than standing around feeling a bit lost. Some women just come to the workshop, so there’s loads of different options. But Daisy Birthing is our real key class and that is designed to be women only because it creates a safe space where week on week you can say whatever you like in the class, feel however you feel, make friendships with the other women.
How many weeks pregnant are they when they come to you?
They can start at any time from 14 weeks and carry on right up to birth. In fact I had two ladies in labour in my class! Which was slightly nerve wracking and quite exciting. The other ladies tend to get quite excited about that actually. I had one lady whose waters broke in the class. So mats had to be discarded! She came back for her second baby as well and I said ‘you’re not going to do that to me again are you?’
You can start any time, from early on, 14 weeks, it just depends how many classes you want to do. You can do one block of 6 weeks if you like and that would give you everything you need to know. But if you can repeat the blocks, so if you do two, even three blocks of six weeks then you keep building momentum, keep practicing the techniques. The way that Daisy Birthing works is through repetition and building somatic memory. So it’s building muscle memory, alongside hypnosis. I’m wiring in positive affirmation around the birth so that on the day they instinctively know what to do, breathing techniques and deep relaxation to use without having to think consciously about it, which is what we want. The more subconscious that we can become in labour, the better for your body in labour.
So are all the class giving birth around the same time?
No, they’re all giving birth at different times. So NCT is different in that all couples are giving birth at around the same time, which is how our workshops work. For the workshops, we encourage people to come at around 30 weeks so they are all closer together. In Daisy Birthing, I’ve got women in various stages of pregnancy, which actually works really well because they’re all talking and sharing their experiences as we go along. It’s not a problem that they’re not necessarily giving birth at the same time. Usually some of them will be, so then when they move into baby classes they tend to regroup again.
Do some groups become quite close?
I have a lot of groups that do get very close. I try to facilitate that, so each class has a closed WhatsApp group, where they’ll arrange to meet up and support each other through pregnancy. Once they give birth, that’s when the WhatsApp group springs to life and you’ll have messages at 3 o’clock in the morning “Is anyone else up feeding?” “yes, I’m here too”
It’s such a lonely point in the middle of the night.
Some women come back again and again with second and third babies. I’ve had third timers now. I’ve had people say “One of the first things I got excited about when I got pregnant is that I was going to be able to come back to Daisy classes again” It’s more than just learning the techniques, it is just a lovely way to switch off, to relax, to just have that time for yourself each week, in the company of other women, having a laugh.
It must change the atmosphere being only women, do you feel like they ask more questions and open about their fears?
It is definitely a different dynamic, it feels like a really supportive space. It’s not just about me giving support and encouragement, it’s very much about encouraging peer to peer support.
If you’d like to book in to either of Anna’s remaining classes, please contact her here: https://thedaisyfoundation.com/teacher/anna-hayes/
You must be logged in to post a comment.