Freya - surge timer for labour

Review by eFreeware

Freya times surges rather than contractions, and it coaches you through each one while it counts. The Positive Birth Company built it for people using hypnobirthing, so the language, the breathing prompts and the audio all sit inside that approach. If that is the approach you have chosen for your birth, the app is speaking your language from the first screen.

It is a paid download at $6.49, with no ads and no in-app purchases, so what you get for that price is the whole thing. The app has been on Google Play since December 2019 and currently sits at a 4.7 average from 491 ratings, with more than 50,000 installs. Those numbers suggest a settled, well-liked tool rather than a novelty, and the developer has kept it updated, most recently in August 2026 with bug fixes and improvements.

What I find most interesting is that Freya is doing two jobs at once. It is a practical timer that produces a record of your labour, and it is a piece of audio coaching that tries to keep your attention on your breathing rather than on the clock. It treats the timing as almost a side effect of the coaching.

Timing surges without staring at a screen

The core of the app is a timer for surges, with coaching audio playing while it runs. The point of the audio is to keep your mind on your breathing through each surge, so the counting happens in the background while you follow a voice. There is also a gentle expanding visualisation you can breathe in sync with if you would rather have something to look at than something to listen to.

You can choose between a 4-8 breathing pattern and a shorter 3-6 one, which the developer describes as more manageable. If counting distracts you rather than helps, you can turn it off entirely. That flexibility matters, because the right pattern on the day is not something you can predict in advance, and having both options built in means you are not locked into one rhythm.

Every surge you record feeds into a log, which shows how frequently surges are coming and how long each one lasts. You can open that log at any point during labour to see the pattern building. The app also tells you when labour is established and when contacting your midwife may be sensible, which is the kind of prompt that takes one decision off your plate at exactly the moment you least want to be making decisions.

The log can be shared with your birth partner, midwife or doula, so the people supporting you can see the same picture you can. After birth, you can download your surge history as a keepsake. I like that the record serves two purposes: it is useful information during labour and a document of it afterwards.

The audio between surges

Between surges, Freya offers calming visualisations, gentle music, positive affirmations and guided meditations. The idea is that you are not simply waiting for the next surge but actively relaxing through the gap. The developer says relaxation boosts oxytocin, helping the uterus work well and making labour quicker and easier. That is the hypnobirthing rationale, and it is worth treating it as the app's stated reasoning rather than a guarantee.

You are not stuck with a fixed playlist. Tracks can be skipped, reordered or removed so you hear what you want when you want it, and if the built-in audio starts to feel repetitive you can play your own music through a third-party app while Freya continues to time surges and coach you through them. That combination is a thoughtful touch, because it means the app does not have to win an argument with your own taste in music.

You can also pick from four birth coaches and add clips of encouragement from loved ones to your playlist. Having a familiar voice in the mix is a different proposition from a stranger's, and being able to build that in is the feature I would expect people to value most after the timer itself.

Siobhan Miller, who founded The Positive Birth Company, provides the coaching as a hypnobirthing expert. If you already follow her approach, the voice and the framing will be familiar territory.

Using it before and after birth

Freya is not only for the day itself. The guided relaxations and affirmations can be used during pregnancy to prepare for birth, and the developer's reasoning is straightforward: the more familiar the audio becomes, the more effective it is likely to be when you actually need it. Regular listening is presented as a way to feel less anxious and more confident as the due date approaches.

The breathing techniques, mindfulness exercises and the habit of taking time out are also pitched as useful after birth, whenever you feel you could benefit from some deep breaths. That extends the app's life well beyond labour, though the tools themselves stay the same. You are not getting a separate parenting feature set; you are getting the same calm-down toolkit applied to a different stage.

A personalised birth announcement is another option for sharing your story. It is a small extra rather than a reason to buy, but it fits the tone of an app that treats the whole experience as something worth marking.

What you need before the day

Freya is a paid download. For a tool you may only use intensively for a matter of hours, that is a reasonable shape for the purchase: you are not being asked to subscribe to something you will cancel a fortnight later.

There is not much to set up in advance beyond getting to know the audio. Because the app lets you skip, reorder and remove tracks, and because you can import voice notes from friends and family, the sensible preparation is to build the playlist you actually want before labour rather than assembling it between surges. The same goes for choosing between the four birth coaches and deciding whether you prefer the 4-8 pattern, the 3-6 pattern or no counting at all.

The one thing I would flag is that Freya is designed around hypnobirthing. It uses the word surge rather than contraction throughout, and the coaching, affirmations and visualisations all come from that tradition. The developer notes that it can be used by anyone, and the timer would work regardless, but the audio is not a neutral, clinical countdown. If hypnobirthing is not your approach, the framing is likely to feel like someone else's method rather than yours.

Who Freya suits

The clearest fit is someone who has already decided on hypnobirthing, whether through a course, a book or the wider approach, and who wants a timer that does not fight that decision. Freya is built specifically for that audience, and the terminology and audio are consistent with it rather than bolted on.

It also suits anyone who wants their birth partner to have a concrete job. Sharing the log gives the people supporting you something to look at, and the coaching audio gives them something to fall back on when they do not know what to say. In a room where everyone is waiting, having a shared screen with a clear pattern on it is a quietly useful thing.

The price and the single-purpose design mean it is best thought of as part of your birth preparation rather than a general relaxation app you happen to have installed. Someone who wants guided meditations for everyday stress has plenty of broader options. Someone preparing for a hypnobirth, and wanting the same audio to carry them through pregnancy, labour and the weeks afterwards, is the person this was made for.

A focused tool for a hypnobirth

Freya is a narrow app, and it is narrow on purpose. It times surges, it coaches breathing through them, it logs the pattern and it shares that log, and around those jobs it wraps guided relaxations, affirmations and visualisations drawn from hypnobirthing. The 4.7 average from 491 ratings, alongside more than 50,000 installs since late 2019, suggests that focus has landed well with the people it was built for.

The parts I would single out are the choice of breathing patterns, the ability to build your own playlist from four coaches and imported voice notes, and the log that can be handed to a midwife or doula and downloaded afterwards as a record of the day.

If you are using hypnobirthing and want the timer and the coaching in one place, this is straightforwardly worth the price. If you are not, the app's vocabulary and audio will feel like someone else's method, and a plain contraction timer would serve you just as well.

What's new in version 7.2.1

* Bug fixes and improvements