Hypnobirthing

[TrueOlympian]

Hi all,

I'm pregnant with my first child, and as you can imagine, I'm terrified by the thought of giving birth. I think I'm more afraid of the unknown and whether things will go well or if we will need any emergency care. To overcome this, I have been reading a lot about pregnancy and childbirth, and of course, I came across hypnobirthing.

I like the idea behind hypnobirthing, which is educating women about the childbirth process and making them understand the various stages of labor, so they can work with their bodies. However, I find the hypnobirthing specialists a bit like preachers and I don't like that they don't trust the NHS. During my extensive research, everything I read on the NHS website is actually up to date with medical knowledge. I think they try to sell courses by scaring pregnant women who are in a very vulnerable situation.

To get to the point, I'd like to attend one of the hypnobirthing courses to learn about breathing techniques and what will happen to my body, but I don't want a preachy or scaremongering course. I used to follow KGHypnobirthing, but her videos are now so against the NHS that I don't think it's a good fit for me. I also saw good reviews for The Positive Birth Company, and they seem less preachy. There are also some local practitioners where I live (Edinburgh) with good online reviews. Has anyone attended any hypnobirthing courses, and do you have any feedback?

I'm sorry for the long message, and thank you in advance.

p.s. the username is from a post I saw online

Adding to @RosiePH, our course was with two qualified midwives so would also recommend looking for that.

@NewMumma247 I’m sorry to hear that.

I did purchase the course in the end, and I was pretty happy with the explanations about how labour works. I agree though that the free masterclass covers everything you need to know. The Freya app was very useful in the beginning of labour, it helped me know that I was in active labour and told the midwife.

What I didn’t like was the push for pain relief free labour and labour in the water. It seems culty, but that’s how all hypnobirthing courses are, so whoever finds this thread in the future, know that labour is painful and you are the only person to decide whether you can handle the pain or not.

I also purchased the early years course and haven’t find it useful at all. It provides an overview of things but not actionable examples. A great resource for sleeping is “Precious Little Sleep” and for weaning “how to wean your baby” and the solids starts app.