HypnoBirthing at Born - How it can make a vital difference to you and your baby

Born - the home of HypnoBirthing in Hackney.

 

written by Guest Blogger, Katrina Berry.

HypnoBirthing is as much a philosophy of birth as it is a technique or method for birthing. The basic tenet of the programme is that childbirth is a normal, natural and healthy function for women. As such, birth can be accomplished gently and calmly for the very large number of women who are not in a high risk situation.

Like the bodies of our sister creatures in nature, the bodies of healthy pregnant women instinctively know how to conceive and how to nurture the development of the babies they are carrying. HypnoBirthing helps mothers align with their own innate capacity to be able to give birth gently, comfortably, powerfully and joyfully.

A HypnoBirthing mothers learns to embrace her body's innate knowledge of birthing, to relax into her birthing process, working with her body and her baby. She trusts that each knows how to do its job. She wants this experience to unfold naturally without interruption. In doing this she eliminates fatigue and shortens her birthing time. The result is a truly rewarding and satisfying birth experience, with the entire family, including the baby, being awake, alert and calm, yet energised.

When you talk about hypnosis it's common for people to associate the activity with television shows - the type where volunteers go up on to the stage and are hypnotised into doing strange things they would never normally do.

HypnoBirthing couldn't really be MORE different from that! When you experience hypnosis either in the class or during the actual child birth process, you are always able to control your own actions and decisions. In fact that is why you use it, because it gives you more control over what is going on.

If you've seen a television childbirth you'd be forgiven for expecting some kind of a medieval torture. What's the usual media portrayal of labour and birth? ("Labour" says all you need to know doesn't it!) Towels! Water! Screams! We've all seen it a thousand times - what appears to be a primitive yet unnecessary torture inflicted quite unfairly only on the female of the species.

Likewise when anybody is newly pregnant they will ask around all friends and family to find out what they are going to experience. Inevitably they can be told of horror stories and not want to read the last chapter in the pregnancy book for fear it might put them off the inevitable! And yet surely this should be one of the best days of their lives?

So the media and our friends and family set us up to be terrified, and we have no direct experience of childbirth with which to compare what they tell us. 

And what comes with fear? - Tension.

And what comes with tension? - Tense muscles, contraction, rigidity/

And how does the baby come into the world then? - With considerable difficulty.

The whole thing becomes an absurd self fulfilling prophecy. Fear followed by tension followed by pain.

With HypnoBirthing we use the power of relaxation and positive suggestion to give you a series of exercises which allow you to alter this process.

The body knows how to give birth. We certainly don’t sit down and decide with our conscious mind when we’re going to go into labour or how the labour is going to be. It happens at the right time when the baby is ready and in the right way. What we can do however is get in the way. Michel Odent, the obstetrician who pioneered water births is quoted as saying: “Never, never disturb the neocortex of the labouring woman,” and indeed it is true that any mammal will give birth only where she feels safe, secure and unobserved. If the mind is worried or disturbed it impedes the natural function of the body. For a woman’s body to function naturally and efficiently, she has to feel secure at a deep subconscious level.

So fear release is an important part of the HypnoBirthing course. Having worked on fear release, then you can put positive learnings in its place. There is relaxation, deepening of relaxation and self hypnosis. There is breathing, massage and visualisation. And then there is the important aspect of going through the birth with what to expect at each stage, and what you or your birth partner can usefully do at each stage.

The role of the birthing partner is extremely important in HypnoBirthing. Of course plenty of mothers have learnt it and used it successfully on their own, but many others have said, “I could never have done it without his voice prompting me.” It’s good for the relationship of mother and father, and of baby and father, that the father knows he is making a difference in the birth process.

HypnoBirthing is a little like learning a musical instrument. You could be told theoretically how to play the piano in about ten minutes, but it wouldn’t mean you could do it. You could go to classes every week for a year and you would make some progress. But you really make progress because of the practice you do in between. HypnoBirthing is the same. You can read about it in a book and you understand it. You go to a class and it becomes real and enables you to put it into practice for yourself.

Now your childbirth experience becomes something quite different, and by using these techniques to take control of the process you find yourself able to relax, and allow your body to do what is perfectly evolved to do - give birth to a beautiful, healthy baby.

So the next time someone mentions HypnoBirthing, please don't expect anyone to be barking like a dog on a stage - just relaxing and enjoying the birth of their baby, in calm and peaceful surroundings!

“Classes are packed with useful, practical & myth-busting information. The group setting is just right and Kat turns the Born shop into a cozy living room for the evening.” Sally

Katrina runs regular HypnoBirthing courses on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday evenings at Born, Stoke Newington.

Dates of upcoming courses:

Sundays September 14th - 5th October, starting at 6.30pm - ONE SPACE LEFT

Wednesdays September 24th - 15th October, starting at 7pm - ONE SPACE LEFT

Mondays 6th & 13th October, then a week off and 27th Oct & 3rd Nov, starting at 7pm

Wednesdays October 29th - 19th November, starting at 7pm

Sundays November 9th - 30th, starting at 6.30pm


Find out more at www.katrinaberry.co.uk