Hypnobirthing stories good and not so good please!

[ovumahead]

Hi all
I had a very traumatic first labour and birth experience with my DS who is now 7 years old. Currently 27 weeks pregnant with baby number 2, and yes the big age gap is partly due to how long it took me to physically and emotionally recover from that first experience!

I'm planning a home birth despite being classed as high risk (due to previous cesarean) however I'm still in two minds about this due to the risk. I have a doula. I've just started a hypnobirthing course, however, I'm a bit skeptical of the whole "hypnobirthing births are always amazing and pain free and faster" etc. I feel this could set me up to feel a complete failure if things do hurt or end up not being completely natural.

I'd love to hear others hypnobirthing experiences, both positive and not so positive, just to help me get my head around it all!

I'm really not sure what else to do to prepare for birth this time around....

Thanks for this thread!

I though I was the only one who got an absolute RAGE from the Mongan book. Dc2 is due in a few weeks, so I thought it could not hurt to try hypnobirthing. As others have said, the message I got that if your birth is in any way painful or stressful, if you panic or need interventions, then it's your own damn fault that you didn't manage to imagine yourself on a fluffy pink cloud or whatever. And I warned DH that if he even tries any of the recommended birth partner speech, I'll throw him out of the window.

I need very knew it was called hypnobirthing but I had my first child in February and had done a breathing class in the lead up. I thought it was a bit hippy in parts but when my contractions started concentrating on my breathing was a life saver.

In the end I had five days of labour at home with contractions at most ten mins apart the whole five days. I arrived at the birthing centre at ten cm and baby ready to go. This left no time for the water birth I wanted. I also didn't have gas and air as I was managing on breathing techniques.

I never imagined I would manage the labour without drugs and only really resulted to an animalistic grunt at the very last burning push stage.

I don't know it will be everyone's cup of tea but if you have the right mindset it works wonders.

Thanks again. I've loved reading all your responses, many of which echo my own frustrations and concerns about it. I will continue nonetheless, I'm assuming you don't have to buy into every aspect of it in order for it to be useful. And I'll bite my tongue if and when the warped stats rear their ugly head! But if anyone dares to mention homeopathy I will have to say something

Good luck ovumahead!

Despite my misgivings and loathing of the book I can see the science in 'it's hurts less if you're relaxed and you can focus more if you're not scared', so I'll be giving it a bash too.

I've seen enough videos of it done to see it can help, although whether you have to fling reason aside to be one of those people remains to be seen for me.

The only 'side-effect' I can see is possible disappointment after the birth at how it went or how we 'coped' and I think a level head and a supportive birth partner can help there.

I did a hypnobirthing course before having DC2. I think it could be helpful for straightforward births. However, despite there being talk of the need to be flexible if things don't go how you expect them, this wasn't backed up by the anti hospital/medical intervention tone of the sessions. This made me much more anxious than I should have when I had to be induced after my waters broke and labour didn't start naturally. Anxiety is what hypnobirthing teaches you to avoid, so it was all a bit of a vicious circle really. I feel a bit angry about it to be honest.

Yes that's my anxiety ! It all seemsto be about avoidance rather than acceptance which I guess is what I find off-putting. It's almost sending the message that birth is so terrifying you need to be in some imaginary safe place on a beach otherwise you'll be in loads of pain, and pain is bad, everything will go wrong if you experience pain, etc
That's what I'm getting from it anyway!

It's such a shame that your birth experience was so frightening for you. Did you try aby of the techniques when you were being induced?

DS was a long labour - no pain relief (I refused after pethine made me shake and vomit).
Dd - private hypno coach.

What I will say is on reflection afterwards - dd s birth was a much more relaxed affair. Partly because I knew what to expect in terms of pain, contractions, timing etc, partly because of the skills that the relaxation I learned come to me. I think that s where hypno helped me- I learned relaxation, I learned breathing properly. I didn't feel anaesthaised by my hypnosis I was fully aware, I had has and air, it was still a tough slog but I felt I coped better as I was in control of my feelings and responses and head space and not trying to control my labour or fight it and I was not frightened of it.
I think you need to be suggestible/ receptive to it in order for hypno to work. No point in doing it if you don't believe some of it. The relaxation, staying calm etx made sense to me (am medical/ scientific background so some of it I just couldn't get my logical brain around) but parts of it that worked made sense to me. HTH

DS was a long labour - no pain relief (I refused after pethine made me shake and vomit).
Dd - private hypno coach.

What I will say is on reflection afterwards - dd s birth was a much more relaxed affair. Partly because I knew what to expect in terms of pain, contractions, timing etc, partly because of the skills that the relaxation I learned come to me. I think that s where hypno helped me- I learned relaxation, I learned breathing properly. I didn't feel anaesthaised by my hypnosis I was fully aware, I had has and air, it was still a tough slog but I felt I coped better as I was in control of my feelings and responses and head space and not trying to control my labour or fight it and I was not frightened of it.
I think you need to be suggestible/ receptive to it in order for hypno to work. No point in doing it if you don't believe some of it. The relaxation, staying calm etx made sense to me (am medical/ scientific background so some of it I just couldn't get my logical brain around) but parts of it that worked made sense to me. HTH

I used the Maggie Howell MP3. I wasn't overly convinced to be honest and a lot of the techniques kind of went out the window considering I had contractions for 3 days before entering active labour. By that point my brain wasn't really able to focus on much!

I did find the breathing exercises helpful, but I'd learned those at a pregnancy yoga class I went to anyway. I did have a few really panicky moments during labour where I did manage to catch myself and think "no, come on, you're capable of this" but I think that was more to do with DH being an amazing birth partner than anything really!

Oh, and in a way, I don't know if it actually made me expect labour to be easier than it was. I'd never been scared of giving birth and I think in a way it kind of lulled me into a false sense of security.

Obviously the human body is a wonderful thing and it does help if you enter into labour without fear because you'll be more relaxed, more trusting in yourself etc. But there's no getting away from the fact that labour really fucking hurts, and there is no shame in going for pain relief etc. As someone on here posted, nobody's going to give you a medal for not taking pain relief! You do what's best for you.

There are different types of hypnobirthing. Some do suggest if done well there can be no pain but not all. Natal Hypnotherapy doesn't and acknowledges most women will have pain. It's about coping with it and staging in control. It aims to lessen anxiety by boosting confidence in your natural ability to give birth. Running a marathon hurts but the pain is viewed as a sign the body is being pushed and worked extremely hard. Just as it is in labour.

Going to a special.place in your mind like a beach is not about avoiding pain but about distracting and calming the mind from thinking about the pain and perhaps less than ideal environment.