NLP and birth...?

[Goldrill]

I'm about 10 weeks pg with DC2 and thought I should start doing a bit of planning ahead of time for the birth. First time round was quite dreadful - nothing dramatic, just very long and I didn't cope at all well - too many drugs, not enough sleep and quite a lot of terror. I am not going through that again.

I would be quite happy to have an epidural but our local hospital (biggish teaching hospital) doesn't do them. I am contemplating going further afield, but the next closest where they have 24 hour cover is 1.5 hours away. I am assuming (hoping) that the second time round will be soooo much quicker that it would be really daft to trek all that way.

So, I thought a better option might be some kind of hypnotherapy or NLP. I have a very low tolerance for hippiness of all varieties and found a lot of the hypnobirthing stuff I read and the CDs I tried last time round did not suit me at all. However, I have used NLP of a sort in the past to stop smoking and to run marathons - so i know it works on me (as am far too much of a lazy lardarse to run marathon without serious mental assistance!) and I would have confidence in its ability to help me cope with pain and to reduce panic.

Has anyone experience of using it, did it work and would you be able to recommend a starting point?

Thanks in advance!

Why don't you try to find a teacher who is closer to your thinking? I too didn't want a hippy hypno birthing teacher so I spoke to a couple and found one I liked

I didn't use NLP but did use hypnotherapy in the run up to having my 1st baby (which is hopefully happening soon as I am 39 weeks!). Believe me I am no tree hugger!-& it's working great for me. Probably because I've used sports psychology techniques in the past very pragmatically to improve performance (sounds like you've used NLP for that), & natal hypnotherapy seems to use a lot of the same methods (positive self talk, visualisation, etc), and knowing that it is a great pragmatic and useful aid, it was a no brainer for me to use it to plan for a birth. I'd say use whichever you are more comfortable with - although if you want to give natal hypnotherapy another shot there are quite a few different CDs and books out there that might suit you better? I don't know if there is a natal version of NLP?