In an interview with Natural Childbirth's Elizabeth Jones, I was asked about daisy, family and PND ...

Here is just a short extract

By Elizabeth Jones 07 Feb 2012

Julie Long founded Daisy Birthing in 2004 and since then has gone from strength to strength. Having had five children herself, trained as a HypnoBirthing practitioner and in pregnancy yoga, Julie was in an excellent position to launch her unique approach to antenatal preparation. Daisy Birthing offers antenatal classes which combine traditional active birth with unique birth movement sequences, affirmations and relaxations. It is a complete antenatal education class ideal for any expectant mother with instructors across the UK.

Q: In a nutshell, what is Daisy Birthing?

We are very much a new take on traditional methods. Both our birth and baby programmes offer a multi-sensory approach (which is always the most powerful way to learn) to antenatal education and baby calming. We use movement, massage, relaxation, visualisation and a style of brain dance, to help mums-to-be understand how to use their bodies in labour (regardless of whether they are midwife led, consultant led, at home or on a bed) and new mums understand their babies primitive and calming reflexes.

Q: In what way is Daisy Birthing different from other birth preparation courses?

We are one of the only movement based courses out there which places a key emphasis on learning through muscle memory linking birth education to a key movement, sequence, affirmation or breath (such as rotate to dilate) so that becomes inherent and can quite simply play out on due date …. like getting into a car and just knowing how to drive! This allows mums to do exactly what they need to do in labour, and that is to bypass the conscious part of the brain thus minimising the chance of an adrenal reaction.

We also work the hidden birth muscles; Practical Parenting and Pregnancy Magazine featured us in February 2012 for emphasis on muscles such as the psoas and piriformis, rarely mentioned in other birth courses but essential for a birth!

Q: How did you come up with the idea?

I had been teaching around 100 women weekly using traditional pregnancy yoga, HypnoBirthing and also delivering pregnancy massage. It was clear to me that the mums having the best results were in fact the mums using all three methods and yet

a) this was costly for them and

b) the methods often conflicted (pregnancy yoga is all about the movement whereas HypnoBirthing theorises that movement can be distracting).

So I decided to create my own programme, taking into account my love of dance and fascination with muscle memory learning. I also wanted to ensure the programme was ‘all embracing’– I found a lot of the traditional yoga postures intimidating, having a very over reactive psoas (due to a past trauma) and thus being very closed in the hips. The more investigated my physical limitations, the more the role of the psoas became pivotal to my own programme! The result programme all mums can enjoy, whether suffering with Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction (SPD) or closed in the hips due fear of birth!

Q: Why did you decide to retrain in holistic therapies in 2001?

My first husband left me and I needed something (as if a full time job and two toddlers wasn’t enough) to get me through! Thankfully my finger landed on the right page of the collage prospectus; otherwise I could be a plumber now!

Q: You have five children, how do you manage to juggle the home-work balance?

Working late into the night, trying to maintain a sense of humour (not always possible), embracing the fact mine is a business and not worrying if my two year old shouts whilst I am on the phone to a client AND most recently, trying to surround myself with good employees!

Q: I have read that you suffered with postnatal depression in 2005, how did you overcome it?

Way to slowly, as in fact it took around twenty months for me to seek help and for a diagnosis to be made (2005 was diagnosis but I had been suffering since the birth of my third daughter in 2002). By this point a lot of people close to me assumed it couldn’t possibly be PND as surely this happens in the first few weeks? In fact what I had was a culmination of postnatal and prenatal depression (as I fell pregnant with my forth child when my third was just four months old), which became progressively worse as the months developed.

People assume PND is always about mums struggling to bond but for me it manifested itself in PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and over bonding to the point I was terrified something would happen firstly to my baby and then in fact all my children and my partner. This was not helped by the fact my third daughter was blue lighted to hospital on Christmas Day, aged just six weeks, suffering with gastro enteritis.

I am not just talking about fear of cot death but in the end fear of them even getting into a car with someone else. I remember ringing my husband in tears because my children had gone to my mum’s for the day, and she was, horror horrors, taking them on a twenty minute drive down the A14 to the beach. At the time they were six months, twenty months, five and seven. He couldn’t understand why this had left me in such a trauma – surely this was nice for them and after as he said, my mum wasn’t a geriatric driver and had taken them places hundreds of times before?  But I was convinced she would have an accident and I would lose them all.

When I finally broke down in the GP’s surgery (having kept up an exceptionally together façade in front of friends and clients) and told her I woke every night to picture my children gone and then worried all day that I would bring it about because I had dared to think it, she hugged me and told me it had a name 'anxiety induced death phobia'. Possibly caused by Post Traumatic Stress from the breakdown of my first marriage.

I was given anxiety suppressants, which work on serotonin levels but for a while just chose to have them, sitting in the cupboard, to prove to everyone that I did have PND. For whatever reason at that stage in my life I wasn’t ready to get better.

Finally I started taking them and things improved rapidly – as did my own curiosity in how touch therapy, movement and massage can aid serotonin – I use these techniques now in anxiety work with clients and in fact they are forming a corner stone of our new self hypnosis inspired module out this year.

To read the rest of this interview visit www.natualchildbirth.co/uk