HELP! I'M SHIT AT HYPNOBIRTHING!

[ThirtyNineWeeks]

I am 39+2 and my second baby is due on Thursday. My first baby (she is 22 months old) had to be dragged out by forceps after a 17-hour labour and an epidural (and lots of screaming and gnashing of teeth and telling the midwife - who kept calling me Zoe, which is not my name - to 'fuck off and get me someone who's over eighteen!'). I also had an episiotomy and retained placenta. Nice.

I am determined to push this baby out of my vagina by myself. In order to do this I need to avoid the epidural which (I believe) led to my forceps delivery last time. In order to avoid this I have opted for a midwife-led-unit birth with birthing pool and unicorns and kumbaya on the MP3 (I draw the line at clitoral stimulation; that's what got me into this bastard mess).

Against my deepest, primal instincts I have been practising hypnobirthing, but I simply Do Not Believe It Works. Can you help me believe? Do I really have to swallow the gumf about visualising my perinium folding outwards like a rosebud when my baby is crowning? My hypno-natal CD tells me to imagine the nicest beach I've ever lounged on but that was a needle-strewn stretch of grit at Pontins in Southport circa 1982.

I get the stuff about the breathing. I think. I understand that deep intakes of oxygen are nourishing for the cervix and that baby will benefit from my spiritual gasps. BUT.. the colossal problem I have is that I simply don't believe in my ability to squeeze a baby out of my vagina all by myself. It really upsets me that, despite having birthed before, I don't know how it feels to shout: 'It's coming! It's coming! I feel like I need a shit! My baby is COMING!!' like all those toothless fishwives on One Born Every Minute. I don't know what it feels like to have that 'bearing down' sensation. I missed all of that thanks to the epidural.

Will the midwives + birthing pool + visualising Pontins really get me through? Do you have any tips for bearing the pain at home until I'm, like...8cm? How do I stop screaming with rage each time the Mongan Method tells me that even the final stage of birthing should not be painful, but glorious? Why do midwives shout, 'Push! Bleddy push!' when the Mongan Method says the baby should surge itself if I'm wearing the correctly-coloured hessian tankini?

Please tell me I can do this. And how...

Oh and maybe try a pool if you can? Apparently 2nd best pain relief to epidural! Good luck 🍀

Snuffle, that video is hilariously accurate!

I've had two home births after a hospital birth. I tried to get into the hypnobirthing stuff and it helped a bit but I was shocked by how much it still hurt (despite it being my second).

The best advice I have is to relax your face. It seem to remember somewhere about not being able to hold tension in your body if you relax your face. Again, it really bloody hurt but relaxing my face meant it hurt less. It's a natural reaction to tense when we feel pain but that actually makes it worse. I had to have someone (my sister, who knows how to not annoy me) repeatedly say "relax your face", I couldn't haven't remembered to do it myself.

That and water. And knowing that each contraction was going to end (except when I had some sneaky double contractions ).

I think I read some of Michael Odent's stuff or Sheila Kitzinger maybe - about hormones in birth. How adrenaline slows things down and makes things more painful and oxytocin speeds things up and heat we can do to promote oxytocin and reduce adrenaline.

I never did hypnobirthing but I did have a back to back baby which gave me a 65 hour labour, 3 hours of which was active pushing.

For me it was all about the TENS machine. I managed 58 hours of contractions on the TENS machine alone and can't recommend it enough.

I'm 8 weeks off my 2nd baby and have been toying with buying the hypnobirthing book though. I had hypnotherapy to loose weight a few years ago and felt really good about it. I'm a cynical scientist but was told you don't need to beleive for the techniques to work.

Heat-what

I bought the hypnobirthing thing cd.. Listened to it from 36 weeks after lunch everyday.. Fell asleep each day for 1.5 hrs missing most of it.

Was in labour (although midwifes thought not!) with my husband saying 'think of your cd' !! Did not help.

But, no pain relief, no gas and air, closed my eyes and listened to my body (sounds well hippy-ish and in not into that!) and baby was born four hours from first contraction.

Looking back i think it helped me relax pre birth more than anything.

This pregnancy was taking to my midwife about it and she thinks the reason the midwifes didn't think I was in labour was because I was so relaxed..

But if it doesn't work for you ditch it

Hypnobirthing didn't work for me. In fact it made me feel much worse, postnatally, because I had this sense of feeling like a failure to deal with, as well as the recovery from an episiotomy and forceps.

And it wasn't because I didn't "believe" enough. I believed all right - too much if anything - and was genuinely shocked when it didn't work. I was completely relaxed before the birth but then, a few hours in, it all went tits up. And no amount of visualising my cervix opening like a flower could have helped.

So if you don't believe, that's not a bad thing - I did, wholeheartedly, and it did me no favours!

Ditch the hypnobirthing (and I say that as a trained hypnotherapist). But get yourself a fabulous doula. And read the book Birthing from Within...dont just read it, do the exercices in it. Birth is hard work, it hurts, but you can do it xx

Read birth skills as others have said and read it with an open mind. Just take what you need from it. I know its simplistic but I just counted each breath through each contraction and gave birth on two paracetamol. Nothing compares to the natural high I could feel it flowing through my veins. I am not sure if it was adrenaline or what but I was high as a kite.

That was the birth of my second. The first was a 17 hour journey that ended in forceps and a third degree tear.

You can do this op.

Another recommendation for Juju Sundin here - techniques for managing pain with some stories at the end from women who'd also needed medical intervention to give a bit of balance.
Oh and I never felt the urge to push either. Women's bodies are designed to give birth, yes, but because of our big heads and walking upright we're not nearly as well designed as we could be.

Yy to Juju Sundin! I had a similar first birth, although managed to avoid the forceps. Epidural, 2 hours pushing and a massive tear though. 2nd birth, I used the distraction techniques in the Juju book, avoided an epidural, got the urge to push (actually not so much an urge as a following what your body is doing by itself, it's a bit like staying an urge to sneeze or an urge to be sick It just happens and there's nothing you can do about it!) and had a pushing stage of 4 minutes.

I did Maggie Howell's natal hypnotherapy. I couldn't visualise either but found the deep breathing thing worked through the early stages. When it became really intense I had diamorphine which only lasts for about an hour & a half but was enough to give me some rest. By the time it wore off I was ready to push so didn't need an epidural. Just try to get as far as you can with the deep breathing & then take any pain relief you need without beating yourself up about it.
I think the main thing with the hypnotherapy stuff is to try to stay calm rather than the panic you see on One Born (I love watching it though - much better TV than just watching someone deep breathing!)
Dh googled acupressure points too. I'm sure him putting pressure on the 2 points on my back made the contractions come a bit quicker. May have been coincidence but seemed to help.
Good luck!

I read a chapter hypnobirthing book when i was pregnant and thought it was a load of todge. It did give me and my oh a good laugh though.

I think maybe it's one of those things that works for some people but very few. It seems like a nice idea anyway.

The only tips I have is 1. Try and make sure you can get baby in the best position for birth (midwife showed me some exercises) 2. Tens machine (this allowed me to labour at home until 9cm) 3. Suck the shit out of the gas and air during contractions.

I know it's different for everyone but these things helped me cope delivering a 10lb baby with no epidural!!

I draw the line at clitoral stimulation; that's what got me into this bastard mess).

My main methods of pain relief were:

1. A birthing pool (which really did help a lot - I was much more comfortable and it made the back-labour contractions bearable)

2. Gas and air (which I didn't actually get until I was 9-10 cm because the midwives didn't think I could have progressed so quickly)

I found midwives from the standalone birth centre (where all they did was low-risk cases) were much more chilled and matter-of-fact than midwives from the hospital MLU (where they dealt with both low and high risk cases).

In the birth centre, the position was that most pregnancies are low risk and so most women can expect a straightforward birth unless they're unlucky and complications arise (whereupon they'll be whisked to hospital). They talked me through what would happen in the event of various complications, but it was in the context that these circumstances were unusual. Women's bodies evolved for birth, and if I was low-risk then everything was on track. My job was to deal with labour and birth as best I could (and if that meant going to the hospital for an epidural, then ok), and the midwives' job was to make sure everything proceeded safely and take action if necessary.

In the hospital MLU, the midwives mostly highlighted how easily I could be transferred to the consultant unit if anything went wrong, and how babies would be transferred to NICU along this corridor if anything happened. They described women with complication-free birth as the lucky ones, even though they would have represented most births in the unit. While they were enthusiastic about the active birth rooms and birthing pools, it was always in the context that of course you will have to leave if any complications arise. The attitude of what was normal was completely different to the birth centre, I think because the same midwives attended high risk cases in the consultant-led unit and it carried over into how they viewed low-risk cases.

So if you're not entirely confident about your body's ability to give birth, have a good long chat to the midwives in a standalone birth centre and see if their general attitude towards birth is helpful.

I can also recommend Bump by Kate Evans for a sarky and funny look at birth. It's all strongly evidence-based and goes through the biology of how your body gets on with the process of birth even when the woman has no idea what's going on. I found it strangely affirming!

*"Pool is second best pain reliever to an epidural"
*
That's the funniest thing I've ever read

I bought all the books and CDs and went to a hypnobirthing class....but I came to the conclusion that hypno birthing as a whole is shit. The CDs were a con. I tried all the methods in labour, and I honestly wanted to snap the cd in half - it was not helpful during labour, it was fucking annoying!!
In the end, I carried on with my drug-free labour by telling myself each contraction was one step closer to it being over.
The breathing techniques do work to an extent, but I think that's just keeping the mind focussed and in control rather than losing your mind in the pain.
Banning the word "pain" is a ridiculous concept IMO. Pain is the only thing you can comprehend at that moment in time, so banning the word is pointless.
I would definitely cherry-pick the bits and pieces that do work for you and go from there

Geeka, when you say "have a good long chat to the midwives in a standalone birth centre and see if their general attitude towards birth is helpful"... how could this be put into practise in real life?

Where can you waltz into a birth centre and ask to speak to a midwife for a "good long chat"? I appreciate it may be the case somewhere, but where I live (one of the largest cities in the UK) you can't even have an organised hospital tour anymore, let alone a private chat.

Furthermore, there isn't a stand-alone birth centre anywhere near us, so it's not an option for birth anyway. All the MLUs are attached to hospitals, and it could well be the same for the OP.

FWIW, the midwives I had at the hospital-attached MLU were very supportive of my wishes for an intervention-free, natural birth in the water. Indeed they encouraged it. It was only when we had absolutely no choice that I ended up being transferred. Up until that point it was never mentioned as an option.

I read Ina May Bullshit from cover to cover in my last pregnancy and all those hippies at The Farm just completely infuriated me. I hate reading about orgasmic births and spiritual awakenings and how birth is 'sexual'. I just can't take it in.

Me too! And me neither.

Ah, the rose tinted optimism of a first pregnancy. I swallowed all that "natural" bullshit. Had a textbook waterbirth... and a third degree tear.

Learned a valuable lesson, namely that hippy dippy natural childbirth is seriously fucking overrated. Begged for an ELCS for baby #2.

running I too am in one of the biggest cities in the UK with one of the country's largest maternity hospitals virtually on my doorstep.

However, there is also a standalone birth centre near another hospital in the next trust over, which takes the same time for me to drive to as the big maternity hospital. My antenatal midwives didn't even know it existed even though it was only 3 miles away, just because the trusts didn't communicate well about alternative maternity services. At the birth centre, they welcomed individual drop-in tours and had plenty of time to chat and answer questions. It was a world apart from the MLU.

Obviously experiences will vary and it's great that you had a good experience at the MLU. But I found a major cultural difference between a standalone birth centre and MLU, with the former being much more supportive and relaxed about the birth process. Personally, that was what I needed. The OP sounded similar, so i recommended she try the same.

Oh wow, you are all so kind and amazing for coming to share! Thank you so very much

Some of what you wrote has had me in gales of laughter, and I thank you for that; I needed it.

My phone is dodgy so I'm going to fire up my laptop and digest more of your wisdom and respond. Please keep your thoughts coming - even if you think they are flame-worthy; I bloody love raw honesty, me.

'You don't need to believe for the techniques to work'.

I love you for this.

I'm really sorry to tell you this but I found it complete and utter shite. No visualisation technique was going to distract me from this giant decending down my birth canal! I tried. I really really did. Did all the mp3, all the scrapbook crap, photos, etc but when the contractions started I tried the breathing techniques - they did nothing - so I just got on the gas and air, started screaming and ripping the skin off dh's arm. Wish I hadn't wasted the money going to the hypnobirthing class now! Won't bother next time. At least I will know what to expect!

If any of it works for you now or makes you feel vaguely relaxed then do try but don't be pissed off if it doesn't work. I was and I think it made it worse as I was so mad that it wasn't doing anything!!

Have heard others say it was amazing but think they were just 'lucky'

Yes, I'm beginning to think those who find birth 'amazing' simply have very large vaginas.

You might be better off with a completely different approach such as juju sundin's birth skills.

Birth Skills: Proven pain-management techniques for your labour and birth https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0091922143/ref=cmswwrawddcAnPwbMXWB6RN
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0091922143/ref=cmswwrawddcAnPwbMXWB6RN

Hello

Midwives at my birth centre were better btw

I just bought Jar Jar Binks' 'Birth Kills'. It's coming tomorrow. Thank you for that recommendation! It cost £20 including guaranteed delivery for tomorrow (which means I can not now afford the waterproof mascara I was planning on buying for the birthing pool. Never mind, I'll just have to look like a sooty-eyed slut).