Give me your best hypnobirthing advice!

[newbluecurtains]

For various reasons I've decided to have a home birth. This limits my drug options to just gas and air, I'm getting a birth pool as I've heard this is also good for pain relief, and I've been researching hypnobirthing.

But I feel like I'm being really naive! Sure, many women have used hypnobirthing at home and had a good birth, but many MORE women have given birth screaming in agony and needing the epidural! Who am I to think I could be the exception and manage at home without all that??

Please give me your best advice for using hypnobirthing as an alternative to stronger medical pain relief. If I don't feel confident then it's not going to work!

Find a really good doula experienced in home births. Read a lot. Take classes.

I found it so helpful to use the right breathing techniques at the right time. So for instance, slow long breaths was great during transition when I was losing my mind. But then visualising blowing out candles on a cake as quickly as I could helped me not tighten my pelvic floor during crowning. I didn't have time to get my playlist going so had to do it all from memory but it definitely helped!

Many more women have given birth without an epidural. We've been doing it for millennia!

I didn't hypno birth but I'm not allowed analgesia due to a blood issue and I've given birth 3 times with just gas and air.
The first time was the easiest, a spontaneous birth. I felt in control and the midwife said she was surprised how quiet I was. It was obviously painful but not horrendous. I hardly used the gas and air because I didn't like how it made me feel.
The other 2 were induction and were absolute agony. I honestly felt like I was dying.

Don't be afraid to admit if it's not working. Have a back up plan.

Repetition of the hypnobirthing scripts in pregnancy. I am an former hypnobirthing teacher and that is what I would suggest first and foremost. It's all about the repetition.

I gave birth in a hospital but only with gas and air using hypnobirthing style techniques (did natal hypnotherapy) . How long do you have because the important thing is to practice practice practice. When I was in Labour I just zoned into what I had learnt. Was fine by the way!

Your back up plan also needs to consider the likely transfer time to hospital, given the current appalling ambulance delays, if you can’t handle the pain or develop complications such as severe fetal distress or intra partum haemorrhage.

I had a homebirth with my first with hypnobirthing and a pool. The pool was awesome at least at first, the hypnobirthing didn’t work for me at all, the pain levels were off the scale and it was an experience that I wouldn’t repeat if you gave me ten million pounds.I was a bit annoyed with the whole narrative around honebirth being all warm and fuzzy after that. I did have a long and difficult labour though, obviously it can work well if you don’t. Second birth was amazing and was an elcs!

I am a huge fan of hypnobirthing for helping to keep calm and manage the pain.

But at the end of the day, if your baby is very large or in the wrong position or labour won’t start naturally or you have a placental bleed or one of the many other possible complications - hypnobirthing will not get you a good outcome, medical intervention will. For me the reasons to give birth in hospital are not about the pain relief but about the fact they can get the baby out surgically if it is in distress.

So my top tip for hypnobirthing is - use it for pain and calm, but know its limits and have a back up plan. Personally, I wouldn’t have a home birth for a first baby as the risks are higher.

I had a good hypnobirthing book, I will try to find it and link. Counting and pacing helped me, a lot, and reminding myself that each contraction was helpful, and trying to relax into the pain. I think these all came from the book. However the book also contained a load of guff about how in olden/less developed times we gave birth “better” because more naturally. Yeah, apart from the massive mortality rate!

This is the book I used:

Maggie Howell

Do a hypnobirthing class, don’t rely on just buying a set of recordings. And do it with a teacher who is also a fully qualified hypnotherapist, not somebody who’s only trained in hypnobirthing.

Thirdly, as pps said, practice, practice, practice!

I actually think the Natal Hypnotherapy ( Maggie Howell) downloads are some of the best available.

The book is no use without the repetition of the downloads though.

This is a good book if you are interested in the history of birth and when it was the most dangerous Birth: A history.

It didn't have a fancy name when I did it, @newbluecurtains, but it would now be called hypnobirthing. It basically meant 'concentrating on your breathing and tuning out everything else'. DC1 would have been a home birth if they hadn't a) been 11lb, contrary to the 6lb predictions, and b) become very seriously stuck, requiring an emergency hospital transfer.

IME, the first stage (which is really important) is telling yourself - and believing it - that you can do this. You need to have faith in your body. This is what women have been doing since forever; you can do it too.

In my situation, it would have been fantastic if I hadn't ended up needing quite serious intervention. The fact that I needed intervention doesn't change the fact that you can get through it by breathing. I don't think I made a single sound throughout. Screaming and shouting is not necessary!

I've had 2 at home in water. I found the warm water incredibly useful for pain relief.

I think preparation is never wasted. I listened to a set of CDs every day for weeks and found the imagery and techniques really helpful in labour. I imagine these days they would be available as a podcast.

I went to active birth and hypnobirth classes and DH came to a couple's workshop. I'm not a very crunchy person generally and so found the first session fairly unsettling as it was a more alternative approach than I am used to. However, the techniques and exercises were really useful!

There are some really simple things that can help such as making sounds as you breath out and making sure your out breath is much longer than the in breath. Rotating your hips, rocking over a birth ball and rocking on all 4s were all good moves for me.

Not everything goes to plan and I found all of these techniques really useful for managing pain and anxiety and have used them for lots of other scenarios since too.

Always remember that you haven't failed if you don't have the birth you thought you might. It is ok (in fact, more than ok) to take pain relief. You won't win any medals for not doing so.

I had a water birth for my third baby using hypnobirthing and did not feel any need for pain relief. Yes it was uncomfortable however was completely bearable level of pain. Using "up breathing" throughout contractions helped and "down breathing" in the pushing phase. No tearing and birth only 45 mins from arriving at hosp. Labour 1 hr 40 mins all in. Visualisation is something I feel helped me, I envisioned a slow burning candle during the contractions and envisioned blowing it out during the pushing phase to fully focus on breathing. Genuinely could not recommend hypnobirthing any more. I will however say that IF you do not feel able to do this at the time, take whatever you feel you need. A safe delivery is key and there's no points gained for doing it without any medication. You want to enjoy the birth experience as much as possible and until you are in the moment you won't know exactly what you need. 100% just go with the flow. Good luck to you
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For various reasons I've decided to have a home birth. This limits my drug options to just gas and air, I'm getting a birth pool as I've heard this is also good for pain relief, and I've been researching hypnobirthing.

But I feel like I'm being really naive! Sure, many women have used hypnobirthing at home and had a good birth, but many MORE women have given birth screaming in agony and needing the epidural! Who am I to think I could be the exception and manage at home without all that??

Please give me your best advice for using hypnobirthing as an alternative to stronger medical pain relief. If I don't feel confident then it's not going to work!

Thanks all, to answer some Qs I'm currently 34+2 and I live really close to the hospital if anything goes wrong.

What kind of practice would you recommend? I've got Katharine Graves' hypnobirthing book which comes with visualisations as an audio download. I feel a bit silly listening and breathing but seems like that's what I should be doing.

Like someone else said here I'm not a very 'crunchy' person generally but I do think staying calm and breathing carefully can really help to physically relax and reduce pain so I want to do it.

So I'm trying to manage my expectations about how much it can help without undermining it and thinking it'll hardly make a dent in the pain, if that makes sense?

ok - buy Maggie Howells natal hypnotherapy book and listen to the audio repeatedly. The music and breathing helps you zone out which is what you need to do when in labour. I found it managed the pain fine. But you have to believe in what you’re doing as you say (btw I’m not hippy AT ALL but I believe women can birth calmly if there’s no other adverse circumstances)

I did hypnobirthing with my first and tried with my second (birth Centre and then hospital births) but really hadn't done the work beforehand for 2nd labour and was relying on remembering the stuff from 4 years previously. Both times it helped me keep calm but I struggled with the calm with my second Labour. I used a pool with both births and gas and air. I also really liked visualisation in early stages of labour- with DD i had a long latent phase- of a flower blooming and I repeated mantras in my head such as 'I am softening and opening' and my favourite affirmation/mantra was: this surge cannot overwhelm me because it IS me. I also liked : every surge brings me closer to my baby and 'I trust my body, I trust my baby.'
Using these techniques- plus tens machine was my.best friend in early stages of both labours- helped me keep calm which helped me stay upright, forward, open and active. All very important to increase chances of a complication free birth. I also made a playlist in advance of birth 1 which really helped and I look back now fondly when I hear certain music that was on that playlist. I also read Milli Hill Positive birth book and some of Ina May Gaskin's book too prior to birth. Found both of them really informative and empowering.

As others have said- much of birth is luck of the draw, so just ensure you have thought about back up plans for other eventualities so you can still have a positive experience based on your own decisions even if plan A goes out window for whatever reason. Wishing you the best with it all!

Practice, practice, practice

visualisations definitely. breathing practices. Give yourself time everyday to focus on your breath, do your visualisations and relax / mediate on your positive affirmations.

for what its worth I was in hospital and ended up getting induced, loads of drugs etc but I still used my hypnobirthing practices and they helped loads.

I found it really helped with my second, I tried to focus on the breathing and had a dark room with a fire so it felt really primal. Key thing was practice as it needs to be instinctive. Funnily enough I really struggled to use it with my third who was an induction in hospital, I think you need to get several things working together to really feel the benefit.

I read the Marie Mongon book over and over and just practiced some of the visualizations (some of them were absolute guff but a few were useful).

I went into it with a completely open mind, but more importantly decided there is a huge difference between pain and suffering. Once my pain tipped into suffering, I'd request pain relief.

I didn't actually need anything until it came time to push and managed 2 chugs on entinox before the baby arrived, but for me, the key point was using hypnobirthing to my benefit without being totally militant about how my birth "should" be.

Do the study, and go in with an open mind. Hypnobirthing was the biggest tool in keeping me calm and focused and I felt totally in control.

The Mongan method book didn't work for me at all. I bought a very expensive course the next time and it was amazing. I still use the techniques regularly. I forget what it was called but it was the "official" hypnobirthing one.

Best tip is to put the time in to practise with the tracks. Plenty of time, daily if possible. Once they click, they will be there with you to draw on any time.

I also used the Maggie Howell Audios and books, the breathing kept me calm in my first labour, and I kept telling myself that every contraction was bringing me closer to meeting my baby. It didn't take away the pain, but it stopped me panicking.

I'm using it again for this birth, but also read another breathing technique which was breathing in through your nose for the count of 4 and out of your mouth for the count of 6-8, five repetitions of this is usually the length of one contraction.

I'm not great with the visualisations, being on a beach etc, it was all about the breathing for me.