REAL BIRTH STORIES is a unique set of DVDs about having a baby. Made by parents for parents, the series tells of the stories of five couples, all first time parents who met at an antenatal class at their local hospital.

REAL BIRTH STORIES isn’t an instruction manual or a medical “how to” guide, but our own personal stories, told simply and plainly. The stories chart each step of life’s most incredible journey from pregnancy to childbirth to early parenting.

REAL BIRTH STORIES are honest, funny, heartfelt and surprising, but always informative. We are telling our stories to help prepare you for your amazing adventure ahead! We really hope you enjoy them.

About The Parents

We are five couples who met at an NHS antenatal class when we were expecting our first babies.

In terms of our professions we include a teacher, a manager, a social worker, an antiques dealer, an IT worker, a website designer, an actress, an engineer and two film-makers.

Nobody knew each other before the class and in fact, we didn’t talk to each other much during the class. But what united us was the fact that we were all terrified!

After the class, somebody suggested we meet the following week for Sunday lunch at the local pub and that was it, a friendship was born.

Several months later, we decided to make a film telling our own stories of our birth experiences and so Real Birth Stories was born.

“Looking back on our experiences of having a baby, we realised that much of our fear came from simply not knowing what to expect when you give birth. A more open and honest account of actual events would have better prepared us for the journey ahead.

So, that’s what we decided to do – to tell our own stories of having a baby to help allay the fears of other prospective parents. By telling our stories step-by-step, exactly as they happened, with no jargon and no sugar-coating, we hope this will help make having a baby the magical experience it should be.

We hope you find them useful!“

Signed, The Parents

Why Did We Do This?

We only had two ante natal classes: a two-hour workshop on labour and a one hour talk on breastfeeding. We also had a short tour of the hospital delivery ward. But that was it!

We came out of the classes reeling. Too much information was crammed into too short a time which meant that we were all left confused and frightened.

We all turned to books and the internet for information, but this made it even worse.

All we wanted was to know what to expect. We had so many questions, but finding straight answers was proving hard to do: What are the first signs of labour? At what stage of labour do you go into hospital? What happens exactly when you arrive at hospital? How painful is natural labour? What is it actually like taking the various types of pain relief? What happens when you have a C-Section? How soon do you leave the hospital?

In our NHS antenatal classes, no-one had even mentioned what happens when you return home with a brand new baby. None of us had any idea how to change a nappy, or how to make a baby bottle, or how to establish a routine and a thousand other things that would have been really valuable to know!

And that’s why we made Real Birth Stories.

We didn’t want to make an instruction manual for the perfect birth, as there is no such thing as a “perfect” birth! Everyone has a different experience and so we simply wanted to tell our own personal stories exactly as they happened.

We are really proud of Real Birth Stories as we believe we have made something that we would have wanted when we were pregnant. We hope other parents-to-be agree!