Baby: How Hypnobirthing helped my labour
As I mentioned in my birth story, during my pregnancy I bought the Positive Birth Company digital pack which is an online course all about hypnobirthing and as Siobhan says ‘gives you the tools needed to create a positive, empowering and calm birth’. I was tempted to do a course but they were so expensive and I really liked the taster videos on Siobhan’s YouTube channel. Both Chris and I watched the whole set of videos and it made a huge difference to how we felt about the birth and the birth itself. I think a lot of people think hypnobirthing is all about having a natural birth with no pain relief but it’s really not, and is instead giving you the tools to deal with whatever happens – whether you are induced, go into labour naturally or have a c-section. I had gas & air and a water birth but would have gone for more pain relief if I’d needed it.
I thought I would share 5 points of how hypnobirthing helped me….
1) How I felt leading up to the birth – before becoming pregnant, I thought of birth as a really scary thing and didn’t really know much about it. The course taught me all about the different stages of labour and what your body is doing and why (it’s pretty incredible). It completely changed the way I felt about birth and I went from thinking I would have as much pain relief as possible, to wanting to do it with the least possible (which was a tens machine, gas & air, and the pool).
2) It gave me some great ways of dealing with labour – in a nutshell, the more relaxed and calm you are in birth the more helpful it is for your body as it is focusing on doing what it needs to. If you’re feeling scared of it then your body will be producing adrenaline and taking away the blood from where it needs to go. The course gives you lots of ways of keeping calm and the ones I used most were the breathing exercises which I did for most of the 36 hours! It really helped to have breathing as something to focus on. I also found that because I knew what was happening with my body, I didn’t freak out as knew it was all happening as it should – although I did have one panic during transition (which is when you move to the pushing stage) and said that I couldn’t do it anymore!
3) It gave my husband a role – Chris enjoyed watching the videos and it really helped him to know what was happening and what he could do to help me. He counted my breathing constantly and also knew how important it was to keep hydrated and to keep eating food. He kept making me drink water and fed me grapes to give me as much energy as possible.
4) It gave me a great birth preferences template – the template is brilliant and makes your preferences really clear. I just amended what Siobhan had used in hers so it saved me a lot of work too! The midwives commented on how helpful it was and once they saw that I read that I was doing hypnobirthing they bought a diffuser into the room, and also added some essential oils into the pool.
5) Access to lots of positive birth stories – when you buy the course you get access to the Positive Birth Company’s private Facebook group which is filled with people’s positive birth stories. I really enjoyed reading these and it helped put in a good frame of mind when thinking about the birth. I still like reading them now!
I hope you found this useful. For £35 the course is such great value and I think it’s so worth a try, even if you just come away feeling more informed about labour! Do get in touch if you have any questions for me.
