Setting the scene
You announce your pregnant. Quickly following the words congratulations, you hear. ‘It will hurt!’, ‘You’ll never feel pain like it…!’ Seemingly innocent tales from friends and relatives. Dramtisations in films or tricky real-life births on TV programmes.
The message is consistent – bringing a baby into the world is no walk in the park. It becomes a skewed perception of birth. Even before we have experienced childbirth for ourselves.
Is it helpful? Nope. Is it true? Not exactly.
Why?
Building up this negative picture in your head has little benefit to a happy birth story. After all, fear feeds pain and pain feeds fear.
How about we ignore the negatives and approach delivery day with optimism, or at least an open mind?
Let me to put it out there: uncomplicated births can and should be a wonderful, empowered experience. I know – I’ve been there. Bonnie is almost 2 and I can recount her birth with the same elation and joy I felt at the time.
Deciding to have a hypnobirth
I haven’t always been outspoken about childbirth. My first pregnancy ended with an emergency c-section and my pregnancy with Bonnie was considered high risk on account of our IVF.
The anxiety. I don’t ‘do’ being a patient well – I’m a natural worrier. ‘What if I can’t cope with the pain/something goes wrong/I need another C- section/what if she’s not real?’
I knew I needed to do something to calm my nerves and spare myself nine months of stress. I’d heard a little about hypnobirthing before I fell pregnant.
Mindfulness and relaxation were literally the only thing that kept me from losing the plot through IVF. Looking further into the theory of it, I quickly decided it was something I could get on board with. It fit with my bigger picture.
Unable find a teacher local to me that I really clicked with, disappointed I decided to do an online course. I started at 18 weeks and I practised religiously from then until the day I went into labour.
Learning the lingo and altering perceptions
Let me get this straight, there is no pocket-watch, finger-clicking, ‘when you wake you’re going to cluck like a chicken’ scenarios. Hypnobirthing means self-hypnosis. Imagine knowing how to put yourself into a deep state of relaxation, utilising breathing techniques designed to help you stay relaxed even when labour revs up a gear.
‘Contractions’ become ‘surges’. The ‘surge’ of oxytocin applies pressure to the top of the uterus to enable baby to descend, who knew. Birth plans are scrapped – forget about having a perfect birth. Focus on having a birth that feels right for you on the day.
We explore how the new skills you have acquired could be applied to a birth that takes a direction you hadn’t wanted – a C-section or induction, for example.
We hear positive birth stories, watch videos of hypnobirths in action and are set homework to regularly listen to a series of relaxation tracks and affirmations. Aiming to flood your subconscious with happy thoughts and mix up the storage system we all have in our brains for the better.
Fears and perceptions are addressed with basic biology. Science and common sense. The female body is designed to effectively birth a baby. The more relaxed you are the easier it is to give birth. Go with the flow, work with your body not against it. Embrace techniques that fill you with the confidence to listen to your body and trust that it knows what to do.
Sounds so simple, right? But it works.
One of the first tasks we set on our hypnobirthing course is to write our ideal birth. What would we like to do/eat/watch? How might it look.
I knew I wanted to labour at home for as long as possible and thanks to hypnobirthing Paddy and I were able to ride out much of it on our own. We walked our dog, popped to Fin’s Christmas play (yes, really!), watched a TV, cooked yummy food. Later I bounced on my birth ball in the living room listening to the relaxations.
By 2am, the surges were gathering intensity and speed, but I was happy breathing through them, I envisaged each surge as a wave and each wave bringing me closer to the reality I had longed for. Fin holding his new baby sister, with Paddy his arm around them both – the visualisation taking my mind off the sensation. As they reached the three in 10 minutes mark, it was time to put carefully packed hospital bags in the car and head in.
Requiring a water break, I secured my headphones in place and continued to breath. I was helped into the birth pool and within the space of 3 hours I had given birth to my daughter.
It was incredible, intense and emotional, but not an experience I would describe as painful or at all distressing. I’d done it, I had safely birthed by precious IVF cargo with no help from anyone but my amazing body. I felt like superwomen!
