When Pregnancy Inspired a Career Change
I’d been working solely freelance as a Google Ads manager since I had my son in 2017 (it had been a side hustle before that). It was all I knew to be self employed with a baby and then through my next pregnancy in 2020.
Freelance suited me really well: it gave me freedom and flexibility to work around my son and on the whole I enjoyed the work.
But there was something missing!
My second pregnancy was in 2020 and like many people, I had quite a lot of time on my hands that year!
I spent many of my ‘daily exercise’ walks trying to think of something I could do alongside my freelance work that would light that fire inside me. Something that I was passionate about, that I could really get my teeth into and that would earn me money too. I started to wonder if this thing even existed.
Little did I know that it would be my pregnancy and subsequent birth that would provide the inspiration I needed!
And it came in the form of Hypnobirthing.
To give a bit of background, I didn’t do Hypnobirthing during my first pregnancy. To be quite honest, I thought it sounded weird and at that point I didn’t know anyone that had done it. So I stuck with NCT as people promised me I’d make mum friends.
Now I won’t go into all the details of that first birth but I will say that it was very very long and I felt pretty out of control.
So fast forward a few years and by now there was quite a bit of buzz about Hypnobirthing: even some of my friends had done it and had really good things to say.
So I enrolled on a course and it’s no exaggeration to say that it changed my life…in more ways than one.
As I progressed through the course, lightbulb moments were coming thick and fast.
From pregnant-related: “ah so that’s what went wrong in my first labour”
To career-centred: “could this possibly be what I’m supposed to do?!”
By the end of the course, I had a strong feeling that I had found my thing. I thought I’d better birth the baby first and then check that it wasn’t just my hormones playing tricks on me.
I felt really excited and confident as I neared the end of my pregnancy and my daughter was born in September 2020 – 2 weeks after my due date. The labour couldn’t have been more different to my first. For starters, I had a home birth, something I’d have been dead against previously. It was also a hell of lot shorter and I just felt so much more in control. It really was special and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
This was also the sign I was looking for that this new career was a go-er.
I enrolled on a teacher training course and got stuck in.
Now I can’t say it was easy doing all that training with a small baby on very little sleep. It meant a lot of weekends holed up in our box room with the baby being brought to me at regular intervals for feeds.
But I have absolutely no regrets…being a Hypnobirthing teacher is everything I thought it would be and more.
I now run group courses online via Zoom and face to face in my local area.
Working with expectant parents is just incredible. Seeing those lightbulb moments, supporting them through such an important time in their lives and then hearing about the births of their gorgeous babies. It’s an absolute privilege!
I find it weird to think that if I hadn’t enrolled on that Hypnobirthing course that I wouldn’t be doing this now.
I guess it’s true that some things are meant to be.
https://www.getbirthconfident.com