Empowering Your Birth Experience
FAQ
Why this course?
This personalised course is designed to equip you with great hypnobirthing information, giving you the knowledge to understand your options and the implications of the choices you make. And as well as teaching you the techniques you need for a successful hypnobirth, it provides you with unique support from a qualified hypnotherapist to address any fears, phobias or poor habits in your life and achieve the best outcome for you and your baby.
What will I learn on the course?
Breathing exercises
Deep relaxations
Visualisations
How to release fear and build confidence
Comforting massage
How the birthing partner can be your protector and support
How your body is designed to give birth with efficiency and comfort
Knowledge and information about pregnancy and birth that you might not have heard before
Understanding of how the mind and body work together
A personalised practice programme to support you at home
Does the father/birth partner need to come too?
No, but they will be glad if they did! Fathers/birth partners can sometimes arrive at the course sceptical and leave very enthusiastic. We only ask you to listen to the facts and the logic so you understand how important it is and the difference you can make. The caricature is of someone who is nervous, feeling responsible, holding the birthing partner's hand and wishing they could help but not knowing what to do.
A hypnobirthing father/birth partner is knowledgeable and able to support their partner during the birth. They are a huge asset in the birthing room. They hopefully practise together before the birth, which brings them closer together, and they know that they play an important part in how the baby enters the world. This deepens their relationship, and their relationship with the child.
When should I do the course?
Given the choice, I would advise doing the course in the second trimester of your pregnancy so you can enjoy the benefits during your pregnancy as well as at the birth of your baby. It is not so much a matter of learning facts so they are fresh in your mind, but more a matter of absorbing the information so that it becomes second nature... but learning hypnobirthing helps whenever you do it.
Is buying a book about hypnobirthing and/or relaxation scripts sufficient?
It really depends. For a few parents it is, for many it isn’t, though it will always make a difference. The trouble is, you don’t know which category you come into until after your baby is born.
You undoubtedly get more information and feel more supported from attending a course. How many people have bought a series of audios to learn a language and then found that doing a course is far more effective?
History of Hypnobirthing?
“Hypnobirthing is soundly based on established medical knowledge.” - Midwife
In 1957, after two years of study by eminent neurologists and psychoanalysts, the BMA issued a statement that ‘hypnosis is an effective method of relieving pain in childbirth’ and proposed that all doctors should train in hypnotherapy.
The seeds of the natural birth movement were first sown with the work of eminent obstetrician Dr.Grantly Dick-Read. After witnessing a homebirth in the slums of the London Docks in 1913 where the mother refused any pain relief and then proceeded to give birth quickly and with no pain, Grantly Dick-Read was amazed.
The mother’s comment after giving birth when he asked why she refused the pain relief was “It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t meant to, was it, Doctor?” This experience was defining, and after a career of working on the battle field in the first world war and then in hospitals as an obstetrician, he theorised that fear was the overriding cause that led to pain in childbirth. At the end of his career he wrote the book “Childbirth Without Fear”. He hypothesised that when you are fearful, you tense up and the natural birth process is inhibited and becomes longer and more painful.
Over the years, his theories have been fully vindicated with research into how hormones work during childbirth. His principles have been further developed by a number of natural birth practitioners, with hypnobirthing being the most notable and widely practised. Many midwives in the UK have trained in hypnobirthing. Obstetricians are also beginning to understand the real significance of the work we do.