The Wonders of Hypnobirthing and Using Hypnosis for Pregnancy and Birth
Having spent many years not only attending births but also looking after women throughout their pregnancies, I have learned a great deal about us humans during a time when we are both vulnerable and powerful. This portentous event is not only very special and intimate, but is also something that happens day in, and day out. It gives us a sense of normality and of being a momentous occasion. But what I do know is that us women have magical abilities where we can grow and produce a brand-new human baby. Having spent many months growing, watering, and nurturing this precious cargo, we then deposit it into a world full of chaos and wonder. Getting said baby human out of us is a pretty enormous feat and one that should be treated with a lot of care and respect. However, over the past 2 decades I have witnessed the ongoing decline to the autonomy of women during pregnancy and birth. This has been happening for eons, putting fear and doubt of our abilities into the front of our minds as we have become more and more focused on a more medicalised approach to everything health wise.
I have also witnessed something wonderful, that when women are given the self-belief, confidence and safety around pregnancy and birth, they become more than capable of trusting their own abilities and can focus on what is at hand. Which is wonderful. And the simple truth is that most of the time, it does all goes well; there may be a few hiccups on the way but childbirth is NOT a dangerous time in women’s lives; it is physiological. It can be dangerous if the medical world is in charge, coming from a place that sees birth as medical, as something that has to have strict and limiting time schedules. As an NHS midwife I often was told by the hierarchy “have you not delivered that baby yet? Get a move on”. Not uncommon words on a maternity ward. This lack of knowledge and understanding does not marry up to what our bodies naturally do. We in effect are telling our bodies to “shut up” which I have never, and will never understand. I am not against the need for medical intervention, only when it is so normalised as how we have to give birth. Then as far as I am concerned, it’s BS. There is no consideration or respect for birth, which in my mind is one of the most sacred, important and vital things that humans – female humans – do.
When women are given control, support, confidence and self-belief then they are super capable of something that they are essentially designed to do. Each pregnancy is different, we all have different experiences, even though the process is essentially the same. But the nuances are completely individual and should be acknowledged as such. We can have very different contexts within the same experience drawn from our own reactions, feelings and environment from growing up . A woman can give birth more than once and have very different births in her mind. There is so much that affects the experience and these need to be considered from every perspective – our life experiences, the way we process things individually, our brain wiring, all of it! When using hypnotherapy to assist the outcome of that experience we can deal with all of that. Hypnotherapy has a 2-way ability; it deals with the specifics whilst also dealing with the emotional tentacles of that particular something specific. Therefore with childbirth, there is a great deal of emotional baggage that needs to be acknowledged when focusing on birth. And the wonder of hypnotherapy means that this emotional baggage is dealt with by our super-special-amazing subconscious mind. You don’t have to figure it all out yourself which is why hypnotherapy is so efficient in dealing with the specifics helping to calm the fear, self-doubt and lack of confidence.
Birth is something that we as mammals have done since mammals have been on this planet. And if we watch how other mammals give birth, we can learn a thing or two. But… the difference with humans is that we have had so much interference that we don’t know whether we are coming or going. The good news is, we can, and are slowly taking back the ground that has been stolen from us. There are the most amazing doulas and
midwives out there who do advocate for women. They are the ones who have a great passion for giving women the control and knowledge around safe birthing. So all is not lost. With the right support and the tools to help with the pregnancy and birthing journey, we can have the births we deserve and want, not only supporting the mother and her family, but equally giving the baby the best opportunity to start life in a physiological, non-fear based and loving way
If you want to take part in Hypnobirthing you can book on to my course directly here or if you want to ask more questions please get in touch with me.