Hypnobirthing Fail please help

[FeelingFlat]

I'd read about hypnobirthing a few years before being pregnant and loved the theory. When I became pregnant I fully committed to hypnobirthing and felt so relaxed and so so excited about the birth.

The first few hours were spent beautifully relaxed in a birthing pool and I was so confident that I would birth in the pool with no interventions. Many many hours and all interventions later my baby arrived via c section. In the immediate aftermath I was just happy to have a beautiful healthy baby and had absolutely no time to reflect on the birth.

Since, I've had multiple friends that have had the birth I 'wanted' and now my emotions are very hard to deal with.

Please please do not remind me I should just be happy I have a healthy baby, I count my blessings all day every day.

Has anyone felt similar when they were so confident in hypnobirthing and has now lost all faith to give birth again (this is my first child) I have such sad feelings about the c section as I spent my child's birth in a state of pure panic thinking I was going to die.

I spent ages doing hypnobirthing, reading about it, boring people about it, reading up about 'purple pushing', the lot. Went into labour and it all went out the window. I'm pregnant again and expect labour to be the same. I'll push when told and take all the drugs and try to get it over and done with. You can't go back and change what happened. Your brilliant friends' experiences don't help. You sound like you could do with someone to talk it over with. I sympathise OP. I don't think it's trivial. It obviously matters a great deal to you and I hope you feel better soon.

I'm so sorry this happened to you OP.

Though I didn't have the same experiences as you, I was traumatised after my son's birth. It felt like a punch in the stomach every time somebody dismissed my feelings because he came through his rocky start (where I feared for his life) and is now perfectly healthy. I thought he was going to die or have long term difficulties, wasn't able to hold him for ages (still can't look at other people's after birth happy family photos) and that was traumatic and rather shit. People saying "But he's fine now" was unhelpful and made me feel worse, like I couldn't mention my feelings to others because they weren't valid.

I highly recommend seeking some professional support to help you to process your feelings. I desperately wish I had done this earlier.

Take care OP

Thank you thank you for all that can sympathise and offering advice, I really needed to hear this today xxxxxxx

Bear in mind also that the women you are comparing yourself with are not a representative sample - it’s purely random chance that a lot of them happen to have had hypno / water births. The other women in my NCT group all had forceps or C sections - not representative either, but I’m sure I would have felt as you do for longer if I had been surrounded by women all having the birth pool experience.

Our brains pay more attention to information that confirms our existing beliefs than information that challenges them, so it is likely that you do know people who have had more difficult experiences, but either your brain is screening them out through the lens of the belief “I’m a failure at birth”, or perhaps they didn’t want to scare you when you were pregnant, so held back in what they told you. I couldn’t stop talking about how awful I thought my experience was, which elicited a lot of gruesome details from women who had previously painted a very rosy picture.

@HEJ17 Fuck off. How dare you belittle someone’s emotional response to a traumatic experience. What an arrogant, twattish thing to do.

OP, birth trauma is a real thing, and it doesn’t always strike straight away. If you can, get a debrief with you maternity department, if not, go to your GP. You deserve support, not criticism.

I had an emergency c-section and felt completely traumatised and robbed of the beautiful birth experience I was sold. It took me a long time to get over it. I started to worry about it all again and felt completely anxious about giving birth when I fell pregnant with my second. In the end I decided to elect for a c-section and it was the best decision I made. The birth experience was wonderful and almost healing. I hope you feel better soon OP. My advise is to keep talking about it until you feel emotionally better. Time does heal.

Whisked off to hospital afterwards due to meconium in the water and for my extensive stitches. I felt traumatised and like a total failure, and sobbed for ages because it was so terrible and I was certain my child would never have siblings.

iamthefox I remember feeling like that.

I remember lying in recovery after having my third degree tear repaired (oh the irony - gave birth with no epidural but needed one to put my undercarriage back together) and I swore to myself, with this hours-old baby, that I was never doing it again.

And I didn’t. I begged for an elective section for my eventual second child and it was amazing. I was totally free of all that “c sections are to be avoided at all costs, major surgery, tut tut” baggage and it was amazing. I didn’t have to experience a single contraction and, like georgepig, found it to be a really healing experience. I’d felt so robbed of any positive emotions after my first child’s birth, it was amazing to experience actual joy second time around.

Apologies if my post came across as unkind - that wasn’t the intention at all. I had quite a challenging birth (augmentation, no pain meds available, baby’s heart rate dropping, resident OB crying tears of stress and unable to reach her supervisor...) so I can relate to a degree. However, I feel like the emphasis that’s placed in a lot of birthing classes and conversations among women after birth hold up this picture of a “perfect birth” that everyone can have if they just practice enough, are focussed enough, etc. and I think that it leads to a bunch of women, especially if they wind up needing a C-section, needlessly being made to feel like failures. That’s why I tend to come down so hard on people who want to rehash how their birth went. Because it can’t be changed, and how it went once is no guarantee of how it will go in the future. But I probably should have given you that context and been more supportive of your desire to process the experience! Which is of course a legitimate thing to do. I just wanted to make sure people wouldn’t rush at you with “oh but you must have done it wrong”, because unfortunately I’ve seen that. Wanted to nip that in the bud!

Sorry to hear you're feeling this way. I do agree they hypnobirthing sells you a false ideal of childbirth that is only really attainable to those who have a straightforward vaginal birth. I also did hypnobirthing nearly 15 years ago, had an induction and was able to use it to a certain extent. My second birth nearly 11 years ago was an ELCS (very late, large, breech baby). I did use elements of hypnobirthing immediately prior to and during that birth. I see it as a relaxation tool for life rather than a birth method that just anyone can opt for. I actually use hypnobirthing visualization techniques when I have to go to the dentist etc and find they help.

I don't think anyone can help another person change the way the fee about something so profound and so personal, it's something that you will come to terms with by yourself over time. The difficult part is that you can't blame the failure of anything in particular, it's just that birth experiences are unique and beyond all of our control.

@HJE17 I agree with a lot of the points in your most recent post. I’m sorry to have been so rude but your first post read badly, particularly given the views in your second.