My story…

Hello…my name’s Alexia and once upon a time I used to be the type of person that hated being around kids. I had absolutely no maternal instincts whatsoever and even though I thought that one day I may want kids, I could never really imagine myself WITH kids. For a while I could rationalise that now wasn’t the right time because I had this career that I was building blah blah blah. But time was ticking on. And at some point I would have to make a call; did I or didn’t I want to have kids?

And then I got pregnant.

I FREAKED! To put it mildly.

It hit me like a kick in the stomach. The best way to describe my reaction was utter shock, mixed in with a massive dose of fear and terror. Shock because it wasn’t planned; fear and terror because the whole idea of being pregnant was utterly terrifying, especially the giving birth bit. I went on to lose the baby in my first trimester and even though the loss was unbearable, a tiny part of me was relieved. I knew then that I had some head trash to resolve; this wasn’t a healthy maternal response. I later found out that I had this thing called tokophobia; an extreme fear of birth.

This kick-started an obsession in me to sort my head out and figure out why the idea of pregnancy, birth and motherhood freaked me out so much. At the time I was training in some new therapeutic techniques so I decided to practice on the mess in my head. In the year that followed, I made brilliant progress and was noticeably less anxious and stressed; a calmer, more confident version of me was slowly stepping forward.

Then I got pregnant again.

This time it was different. Instead of being this completely terrifying thing, it was now a mixed up bag of joy, happiness, terror and fear. I realised that I did actually want to be a mother, but I still had loads of unresolved crap to deal with on the pregnancy and birth front. And now, it was all showing up!

My first trimester was chaotic as I bounced between feeling happy at the thought of being a mother, but totally freaking out at what stood between me and holding a baby. I decided early on to opt for hospital birth with plenty of drugs and have a C-section as my plan B. But that was not to happen.

Things took a turn one day on one of my therapy training courses when we were asked about our fears. I didn’t hold back and shared all my childbirth fears. Looking back I realise how lucky I was to be in such a supportive environment. Not only was I among a group of people who could actually help me overcome my fears, but someone on the course mentioned that birth didn’t have to be painful and that it could actually be pleasurable. I didn’t believe her at first. I’d worked out that my fear of pain was one of my biggest fears around birth. She told me to check out hypnobirthing, which I did.

My research into hypnobirthing was a welcome education and importantly, I learned the link between fear and pain during birth; fear creates pain in the context of childbirth. This led me to one conclusion; if I cleared all my fears, then I wouldn’t experience pain and it would all be OK. And so began my next intense phase of head trash clearance. I approached this like my life depended on it, because on some level that’s what I felt, and I spent my second trimester meticulously working through all of my fears and clearing them one-by-one. It took a while, let me tell you! By month seven of my pregnancy, I decided to ditch the hospital birth idea and have a natural, home birth. My childbirth fears had completely melted away and I was finally in a place whereby I could truly embrace my pregnancy and my upcoming birth. I was a different person.

I remember the day my waters broke and realising that this was it; I was about to meet my baby. I was so excited for what lay ahead. My home birth was beautiful, painless and magical, and lasted just under six hours.

When the time came around for me to be pregnant again, things were different. In the intervening years, I built my therapy business and worked on simplifying the therapeutic technique I used so that anyone could use it, not just the therapy professionals. I called this the Head Trash Clearance Method and started a podcast The Head Trash Show to help people to use it to clear their head trash.

When I found out I was pregnant again, I was curious to see what state my fears would be in; was I still fear-free? Well, yes I was, at least from the fears I had before. But life was different and I was older (geriatric actually!), so I was subjected to lots of fear-based messages from health care professionals. Now I had loads of new fears; could I repeat my first birth experience? What if I have complications? What if the first time was a fluke and this time it hurts? This forced me to put on my fear-clearance gloves once more. I was still a total pain wus and I was determined to avoid the kind of birth you see on TV.

Thankfully, as well as being a lot more experienced at clearing head trash, I’d also learned a load of new therapies and techniques for healing the mind and body, so I had some new stuff to add to the mix to help me too.

So, what happened?

I did it again. And this time it was even better. The birth of my second daughter was pretty magical. And yes, it was pain free. In fact it was better than pain-free; I felt euphoria, which I was NOT expecting! I was delighted; my first childbirth wasn’t a fluke and I knew that my approach actually works.

When word got out about my journey from fearful to fearless, I started being approached by pregnant women asking me how I did it. I didn’t realise how many women were actually so fearful about birth. I thought I was the weird one! It got to the point where I decided that it would be easier and quicker to write a book than to reply to all the emails I was getting. The book led to the Fear Free Childbirth podcast as I couldn’t wait to finish the book to get word out. I quickly realised that not all women can afford the one-to-one time needed to help them move past this, so I created other ways to help them. The Fearless Birthing Academy is my online programme that helps women to work through their fears and prepare for their positive birth experience, and my collection of Fearless Birthing Meditations are audio clearance sessions that tackle specific pregnancy and childbirth fears.

Today, in addition to working one-to-one with women, I also train birth professionals in Fearless Birthing so that they can help women in their community too.