Benefits of Hypnobirthing

• Teaches deep levels of relaxation to eliminate the fear that causes tension and, thus, pain
• Greatly reduces and often eliminates the need for chemical painkillers and drugs
• Shortens the first phase of labour
• Leaves mother alert, fresh, awake and with energy
• Helps keep oxygen supplied to baby during birthing
• Reduces the need for an episiotomy
• Reduces and often eliminates fatigue during labour
• Empowers parents with techniques to achieve a gentle, calm birth for themselves and their baby
• Gives the birthing companion an integral role in the birthing
• Embraces the concept of pre-birth parenting
• Teaches breathing techniques that allow a woman to gently breathe her baby into the world without the violence of hard, physical pushing.

Can we return childbirth to a Celebration of Life?

Hypnosis for childbirth is becoming an increasingly popular form of antenatal education. Beth Roche, a local practitioner, gives us the lowdown on HypnoBirthing®- the Mongon Method.

HypnoBirthing® classes offer you Gold Standard antenatal course, which covers everything you need to know about childbirth, in order to have a safer, easier and more comfortable experience.

The knowledge and understanding that you acquire on the course about how your body works with you and for you can really help you to feel safe and in control of the process, rather than simply hand the experience over to the medical professionals. The majority of labours and births are surrounded by fear, and lack of control, those are the things that are the enemy of the birthing room. HypnoBirthing helps to rid you of any fear or anxiety that you have so that the tension and pain which arise from fear aren’t a necessary part of the process.

The HypnoBirthing program is based upon the seminal work of an English obstetrician, Dr. Grantly Dick-Read in his book ‘Childbirth without Fear’. Having witnessed a number of easy comfortable births, he stopped to compare these with the births which he commonly attended, and realised that the difference between the two was that most births take place where women are filled with fear as a result of the history of birthing particularly since the second century when there was a widespread contempt for women, which led to an immense fear of birth. This fear, he also realised, leads to the fight or flight response, where adrenalin pumps the blood to the defence system, meaning that it actually pumps away from the vital muscle in the process of birth – the Uterus!!!! Consequently, the contractions felt during labour are painful as the muscles are being deprived of oxygenated blood, making what could be a smooth and easy process one which is shrouded in ‘inevitable’ pain.

We were all put on this earth to procreate, so does it make sense, in the natural order of things, that the process of doing so is so filled with pain? The act of conception certainly would suggest that it is meant to be a joyful process leading to a celebration of life! Adding to that the fact that our mammalian cousins seem to find labour and birth a much more ‘every day’ occurrence, which they accomplice easily when not intruded upon. So why do we find it so painful, in short, because we think too much! And we are overwhelmingly influenced by our society’s negative perceptions of labour and childbirth, and no longer trust the natural birth process.

HypnoBirthing® classes teach, in a relaxing environment, a philosophy and techniques which help a woman and her birth companion to go with the birth process and relax. Bringing birthing back to being a true celebration of life.