I own a tens machine and offered it to a friend who’s pregnant to borrow. She said ‘thanks for the offer but I didn’t use one in my first labour so I think I’ll keep it simple for this one too.’ We had our first pregnancies at the same time and she had a calm non medicalised birth (the birth I wanted) and I had an induction, epidural and major tear.

After reading this I felt down / ashamed / defensive – not great. So I did a thought download and picked up a number of unintentional thoughts: she’s judging me, she knows herself and her body and I don’t – these and similar ones like it were where my brain went first. But by writing these down I got to the deeper beliefs – , I’m not good enough to have a calm non medicalised birth and I’m judging myself for not being good enough to have the labour I had the first time around.

I’m clear on my C line (Reading the words she wrote in response to my offer) and my F line (ashamed) and I have a number of thoughts. But do I use the first thoughts that came to mind when the C occurred or the secondary (deeper thoughts) to run my unintentional model?

I’m also not sure on my A line? As the only action I took was to notice I felt crappy / was feeling jiffy / defensive / ashamed and start running a model to inquire why?

Here’s my intentional model
C – read worlds above
T – it’s possible I can be as confident in my ability to birth naturally as she is
F – determined
A – do the work (meditate / visualise / work with practitioner on birth trauma) design life so its calm during pregnancy and prioritise self care. Hire a doula.
R – create a confidence in my ability to birth calmly no matter what happens