To think that Hypnobirthing is a load of crap

[Poppy1774]

Just that really. I did all the affirmations, breathing exercises, meditation, etc. In the end needed lots of intervention for the safety of me and my baby (and we were both healthy afterwards, thank goodness).
However I felt disappointed with my 'birth experience'. I wish I had never heard of hypnobirthing. If I hadn't, I'd have accepted what happened much more quickly. I wasn't naive about childbirth - I knew that things could go wrong. Yet somehow hypnobirthing got into my head and made me feel that intervention = bad = failure. I wasn't positive enough/calm enough etc. Difficult to be positive and calm when in absolute agony and baby in distress.
Two of my friends have also had the same reaction after births that did not involve breathing a baby out in a birthing pool.
I feel hypnobirthing is not just nonsense, it is also actually damaging to women's self-esteem after birth.
And before you tell me it helped with your second birth after a difficult first birth...second labours are often easier!
Rant over. Thoughts?

@istherealawyerinhere your "friend" sounds awful, not sure I could stay friends with someone who told me they'd done the birth thing "better" than me! I would be furious.

ivyleaf4

I don’t think she thinks she is being like that! I think she thinks she is helping by suggesting I just “try harder” at the hynobirthing next time 😬

YABU
Had a drug free home birth using just this

Pretty sure I used the words ‘hypnobirthing is a load of shit’ when I was mid contraction at about 9cms

One thing it did do however was control my anxiety.
I had a HORRENDOUS first birth and the thought even 15 years later of doing it again was terrifying. I felt more in control and that I understood what was going on and what choices I had this time.

The breathing exercises helped in the VERY early stages. My labour was 3 hours start to finish though and my second stage was 4 minutes. You cannot breathe your way through that.
I used gas and air and it was absolutely excruciating due to the lack of time between contractions.

I think that’s what got me, the course I did was all you only actually have a contraction that lasts 45 seconds then you get 2 minutes rest. What utter bollocks. My contractions were about 2 minutes long and I had around 20/30 seconds between them maximum.

Even the Positive Birthing Book suggests that by being positive you reduce the chances of intervention, so it's not just hypnobirthing courses.

I had a very long stop start labour with DC1, who was back to back. I'd done a hypnobirthing course, but by day 4 it really wasn't helping me anymore and I ended up with lots of interventions..... I found it very difficult after the birth when I spoke to a friend who was convinced they'd had a straightforward birth due to hypnobirthing - it did make me feel like I'd just not tried hard enough and had failed. In my 2nd birth which was straightforward various techniques including breathing absolutely did help me cope and made it a much better experience - but I do think it's unhelpful to suggest hypnobirthing / positive thinking can do more than that.

I used hypnobirthing! Loved it. 5am first contraction 11am after twenty minutes of pushing baby in my arms. Home from hospital in bed by 9pm. Now some say I was very lucky my birth was 'quick'. But in fairness I trained really hard for labour!! I walked 4miles a day every day (even the day before my baby was born) up a MASSIVE hill for 9 months. And was fully effaced by the time I even got to hospital. I think if people stuff themselves senseless full of food and don't exercise for 9 months then expect an easy labour then they are fools!! You would train for a marathon so you need to train for labour. I had really bad pelvic girdle pain / lower back pain too... so it's no excuse. Every midwife I ever met said fit healthy women of a healthy weight have easier labours ... FACT. My mum had twins and had a SHIT time in labour so I know for women advised bed rest or with complications eg multiple birth, back to back etc this may not be the case. But for 80% of 'straightforward MW led births'... the main reason it's so hard is people are overweight and unhealthy.

Intervention isn’t ‘bad’. It’s the blessing of having modern medicine. It’s only when it’s unnecessary and damaging that it’s bad. You can have a birth with loads of intervention but still stay calm and feel positive about it.

I’ve used hypnotherapy for both of my births, which were both home births with really no intervention at all (because I didn’t need it, not because I’m superhuman and deserve a medal). Midwife didn’t even come til about 50 minutes before my 2nd was born and I had about 10 minutes of gas and air with him (none with my first). I think hypnotherapy helped immensely, but not all hypnotherapy is the same (a lot of the rubbish you can download online is just airy fairy crap and not actually hypnotherapy). But I also think the setting (at home) made a huge difference both times. I was much more relaxed so it was just easier. I also got lucky and had no complications and a really healthy pregnancy and that helps to.

That said one of the people I know who had the most positive experience hypnobirthing had quite a serious complication (facial presentation). She used it during the 30 minute ambulance ride to hospital with a midwife telling her not to push. She was rushed into theatre for an emergency c section and she said it was amazing that it helped her stay so calm in a really scary situation. So you don’t have to have the ‘perfect’ birth for it to make a big difference.

I’m a retired doctor, and I’ve commented on similar threads before, but here we go again:
Every single day, around the world, 800 women DIE in childbirth. Labour is severely painful and potentially life threatening.
Any woman who delivers a baby should feel damn proud of herself, not consider she “failed” for needing medical intervention.
I’ve put epidurals into hundreds of exhausted women who struggled on for hours with whale song, candles, hypnosis and other hippy woo, and who felt bitterly disappointed with themselves.
I made a point of telling them they deserved a medal along with the epidural - I hope I helped at least some of them to ditch that horrible sense of failure that would otherwise spoil what should be their first proud moments with their baby.
By all means try hypnosis techniques- but please don’t beat yourselves up when they don’t work!

I think it depends on your own mindset and what you are expecting, and wmthwn teacher/course you are following

I was expecting it to give me some techniques that could help me cope better with the pain from labour and also give me confidence making decisions about when or whether to accept various interventions. I also found it helpful to consider how the environment might contribute to having a calmer birth.

The course I did had large sections on csections and interventions and how to help them go smoothly and stay calm. There were even sections on the birth preferences if you need to transfer to hospital, preferences for csection etc. So it definitely wasn't a given that you would get the home water birth.

I actually did get my home water birth 2 weeks ago with my first baby. I think the hypnobirthing helped me cope through the early stages of labour and the breathing really helped. It also helped staying at home on my own comfy sofa. When I called the midwives I was 5cm stretching to 9 and he was born 2 hours later.

I probably would have had a straightforward birth in hospital without hypnobirthing too, but I doubt it would have been so calm and so relaxed. I didn't want or need any pain relief and really enjoyed nearly all of the experience, with the exception of him crowning and my placenta taking over an hour...

I disagree, our hypnobirthing taught us to to remain calm in all eventualities of birth.

We had a birth plan but it all went to pot when my body was not responding to the many forms of intervention that was imposed on me and our son was becoming more and more distressed. It helped us remain calm when we were surrounded by worried consultants and midwives, my epidural failed and when they told us we needed to have an emergency c-sec. It helped us remain calm post birth when we nearly lost our son to sepsis and ended up in NICU.

It's not for everyone and I'm sorry it didn't work out for you, but for those it does and has worked for it can make a huge difference to a potentially very traumatic life moment.

@JonnyPocketRocket I didnt do a course but listened to Sophie Fletcher's Mindful Hypnobirthing audiobook.

Gives you meditation tracks to practise and listen to. More often than not when I was pregnant, I was so relaxed with them that I'd fall asleep halfway through

Wonderful for staying calm and really helped my bond with DS before he arrived.

I did a thing where I imagined I was having a day on a holiday get up had breakfast etc so I could not be there mentally when I had the c section. I did it so well the doctors got quite annoyed as didn’t respond to their questions. Got me through a horrid situation.

I think some people are misunderstanding what I meant. Of course it's nonsense to think that you've 'failed' if you need intervention.
However I really strongly feel that some of these courses are selling a total lie to women. In fact they are almost gaslighting them in a way - telling them that if they are positive it will help (and therefore if it goes wrong, the implication being that they weren't positive enough).

Those of you who had straightforward home births - I am really pleased for you that must have been wonderful - but it wasn't because of hypnobirthing. It was because you were not induced/baby didn't get stuck/distressed/meconium in waters/failure to progress/back to back/needed epidural etc etc....delete as appropriate.

When I was pregnant...

1. My friend (who has a science degree from Oxford!) had a very straightforward birth and told me that people who didn't hadn't prepared enough.
2. I did a pregnancy yoga/hypnobirthing course. You sent in your birth story after you gave birth and it was read out. The teacher read out one person's birth story which had ended in forceps. The teacher smiled at the class and said 'I do hope she isn't beating herself up too much about the forceps' and then proceeded to tell us about her 48 hour drug free labour. I never went back to the class despite having paid for more sessions.
3. I did the Positive Birth Company digital pack. In many ways very helpful (and I did keep calm in labour despite everything going wrong) however I couldn't send in my birth story to the facebook group because you aren't allowed to write about pain. Sorry, whoops, I was in total agony. Guess I did it wrong.

Relaxation techniques of course can help but YOU CANNOT CONTROL LABOUR. I know SO MANY people who feel they have failed because they needed help.

Check out Katherine Graves' instagram page. Her latest post states 'My body will open up easily to let my baby emerge comfortably.'

What a load of total and utter crap. Why the 25% C-Section rate? Why do 6/10 first time mums need some form of intervention then.

It makes me so so angry.

After a horrific first birth (iMO, I've heard of lots worse) I tried hynobirthing with the second. I was laughed at by the midwife who obviously hadn't encountered hynobirthing before (and induced, so everything was happening really fast meant I just couldn't focus enough for it too be effective. But the third time it was AMAZING. The birth was genuinely pain free.

Obviously not every birth is going to run smoothly and interventions may be needed, which is why women often chose to give birth in hospital. But hypnobirthing can be helpful.
(I still put the techniques I learned into practice if I need them stay calm and am in pain.)

I did go on a 1:1 course and did LOTS of practice before the birth though.

It helped me immensely. I had a long induction and 5 days in felt like I was losing the control over how I wanted it to be. It allowed me to be strong and work through my labour with my birthing partner and midwife to have the labour I wanted.

Don't get me wrong some things are completely out of our control and we have to accept medical advice / intervention when it's needed. But HB definitely allowed me to avoid it for as long as possible and have the labour I really needed

I guess different things suit different people. I read the book and practiced a little with the breathing exercises and had a fantastic water birth. It readjusted how I thought birthing was going to be and I didn't panic.

I can imagine if you pin your hopes on it and it doesn't go as planned, it's disheartening but that can be the same for any aspect of childbirth.

I'd suggest anyone at least read the book and see how you get on. It might help, it might not but I see it as keeping informed about what's about to happen.

I think YABU OP.

What you just quoted - my body will open up easily - is an affirmation. If explained properly, its main purpose is to convince women that their bodies are capable of labour. It's amazing how many women- myself included- have no real sense of what dilating to 10cm looks like and are freaked out at the idea their bodies can't manage labour. For lots of those women even if they're capable of an intervention free labour the fear can lead to panic and shutting down.

I had an epidural, back to back, failed induction, ventouse. The hypno birthing course I went on was called gentlebirth and it was all about using the tools for any labour. It talked through different scenarios, there were recordings for a positive induction and a positive c section. It and a tens machine got me through the 18 hours before they let me have an epidural.

A good friend has had four children and genuinely swears her last two labours she experienced as largely pain free. The first two were positive experiences, she was induced on the first. She reckons she essentially self-hypnotised using yoga breathing which got her through all of them.

I think it's fair to say there's a percentage of women who will always need intervention, a percentage who are very likely to have an easy birth, and a big chunk of women in the middle where their experience - the support they're offered, the interventions suggested, and yes how much they feel in control- will have an influence on how their birth goes. The challenge is nobody knows in advance what group they're in.

I think hypnobirthing can help women who feel their bodies won't be able to go through childbirth in feeling in control of the process. It's not a magic bulllet. But social media will find anything to make people feel part of clubs/behave like idiots. I didn't feel like a failure, I felt like a superhero even though not a single part of my birth plan came to pass.

I think idiots on social media and people putting pressure on themselves can't be blamed on a method. Courses that present unrealistic ideas is a separate issue from whether hypnobirthing is a useful tool.

Personally, I didn't find it to be a load of crap. I did find it much easier to birth my daughter having learned how to relax into a contraction rather than trying to fight it.

It's also about trusting your body to do what it was designed to do.

Obviously it won't work if there are genuine complications from outset but some complications happen that could have been prevented imo.

Jbonesmumma1 what a load of rubbish. See babdocs post a few below yours. Women around the world DIE in child birth everyday. And NOT because they are unfit 😡😠. Pregnancy and childbirth is THE most risky thing a woman does. Yours is such an ignorant post

Jbonesmumma1, wow, I rarely post here, but felt I had to say something. That's so arrogant. Some of the fittest mothers I know, one is an ultra marathon runner, and another is an ex-Olympian, ended up with sections- a breach presenting baby and a placenta previa case. Yes. It's great to be really fit and all that, but it doesn't equate to an easy birth. That's madness to suggest that.
I hated the cultish nature of the hypnobirthing concept, closely related in my opinion to a pregnancy yoga class I went to, where they suggested hypnotherapy as well.
Funny enough, they only invited back the easy births to tell their story. Those with medical intervention were deemed failures, so the class participants didn't get a balanced view of childbirth experiences.
I left after I was told that I could "breathe my baby out". Not very easy when you have had a 12 hour labour after induction, because you are 14 days overdue, meconium staining, back to back and then a shoulder dystocia emergency.
Midwives and doctors must crack up with some folk!

I found it useful with third pg - had cd.

The MW were very unprofessional - we wanted a HB our second for very practical reasons their response was awful - formal complaint awful - lying about test results and practises.

They completely undermined me and left me frightened of going into hospital or staying home. It was awful. I was on the other site at the time and they pointed me to AIMS and hypnobirthing both helped.

We were assured that everything would be in place for HB by manager– looks like the MW were complained about had undermined us to other MW – they dismissed everything we said and ended up taking ages to turn up well after the birth surprised we hadn’t called an ambulance.

So it was DH going to pieces and me giving birth with nothing but hypnobirthing in my mind to help and previous areas MW on what to do if they hadn’t been able to get there in time.

I wasn’t expecting a lot from it though TBH – but did find it helpful and luckily brith was as straight forward as previous ones else we'd have been completely fucked.

Thanks @Scubalubs87 @Fragglerock75 and @PlinkPlink! Ill check out the courses / resources you recommended

No not being unreasonable ! I used the positive birth company pack and found some elements helpful at various points of my Labour but not all . I was really glad I had read JuJu Simuns book on birth management and would recommend this to pregnant friends
There was one affirmation which was " your baby is the perfect size for your body" and well, guess what he wasn't and I required a section after 12 hours

I also disagree with the quiet calm deep breathing approach - i was one of those women who yelled the place down which came as a massive shock to me as I am a total introvert but those moments were the times I felt like i was bossing it ! Lol

I used the positive birth company online pack and found thatuseful to

Where it failed for me was one mantra or affirmation was " your baby is the perfect size for your body " well guess what he wasn't and i needed a c section

@Jbonesmumma1 What an insensitive and ridiculous comment!
Walking 4 miles a day does not ensure you had a complication free birth. Your comment is ill informed and frankly shows how little you know about birth and labour
Many people do what you did and more and die in labour through no fault of their own.

But for 80% of 'straightforward MW led births'... the main reason it's so hard is people are overweight and unhealthy

Bollocks. There is nothing you can do to train for labour. Unless you know some way of lifting weights with your uterus?

Yes techniques like hypnosis and being physically fit may make it easier if you have a straightforward birth. It will not change things if your birth is not straightforward.

Before dc1 i was very strong, and flexible. But she went into distress before I even hit 1cm dilation, resulting in an emcs.

Nothing to do with how fit i was, nothing to do with positive thinking.