HypnoBirthing is a childbirth method that focuses on preparing parents for gentle birth and encourages a calm, peaceful, and natural pregnancy, birth, and bonding experience for families.
Why Should You Consider a Hypnobirth?
HypnoBirthing is a simple process of rewriting the story women subconsciously have about labor and delivery from one of fear to one of the natural, empowered, controlled, minimally painful labor they were born to have. This is a unique method of relaxed, natural childbirth education enhanced by self-hypnosis and guided imagery techniques that allow women to use their natural instincts to bring about easier, more comfortable birthing.
How is HypnoBirthing Taught?
Classes are comprised of mothers-to-be and their delivery support (be it husband, partner, doula, midwife, or friend). Class sizes are kept small, and attendance is limited to between three and seven couples. HypnoBirthing brings women to a state of deep focus in which they can relax their bodies while still being in complete mental control, navigating the stages of labor safely and easily. Whether birthing at home, at a birth center, or in the hospital, the Mongan method of HypnoBirthing will equip laboring mothers to have the birth they intuitively know they can have.
How a Doula Could Help During a HypnoBirth
First, here's a review on doulas vs. midwives: Midwives are medically trained while a doula is, in essence, a mom’s best friend. The role of your doula is to support and advocate the mom’s birth plan and experience. If HypnoBirth is part of your birth plan, your doula will ensure that your birth wishes come true!
Benefits of HypnoBirthing
We've all seen the disempowering scenes of a woman giving birth in a movie or on television. Often, the birthing mother looks terribly uncomfortable, and she is screaming at her spouse, who is utterly useless. Hospital staff yells and runs about while machines are beeping and general chaos seems to swirl around the room. It's no wonder so many women have feelings of discomfort around the idea of giving birth, with our subconscious being fed these negative images.
Birth can be a calm and beautiful event that a couple experiences as an empowered team, consciously bringing their child into the world. Having the perfect birth you dream of is as easy as understanding how your nervous system operates and then practicing how to work with it while in labor.
Our nervous system is the great controller of our overall state of well being. We have two states that our nervous system takes on: parasympathetic (when you are relaxed in a comfortable environment) and sympathetic (your fight, flight, or freeze state which is triggered by anxiety or fear). When we are in a parasympathetic state, all body functions act normally and perfectly: our heart beats at a comfortable pace, our food is digested, and we feel secure. When we are in the sympathetic state, our body prepares to fight or run. All of our adrenaline is directed to the heart. The heart starts to race and send blood to our arms and legs so that we can flee. When blood is directed to our hearts arms and legs, it is taken from the uterus, placenta, and baby. If hooked up to a fetal monitor, the baby may start to show signs of distress, causing further anxiety to the birthing mother, and the cycle of medical intervention begins.
This scenario of mother and fetal distress in birth can be avoided if the birthing mother can keep herself in a parasympathetic state of empowerment and calm. Doing this is simple with proper training in breathing techniques and understanding that fear needs to be completely out of the birthing mother's mindset.
Natural childbirth is a powerful, life-changing experience. Our bodies are perfectly designed, and if allowed to operate naturally, our hormones beautifully carry us through each stage of labor, no matter how long or short our birth may be. Natural childbirth takes preparation, focus, and work but the rewards are well worth the time. Getting to feel your baby move through you, working with you to come down and out of your body, is beyond words. When in active labor, women act as a bridge between heaven and earth, inspiring and uplifting everyone who witnesses us. You deserve to feel that internal power, and it is your birthright to birth on your own terms without regret.
Sign up for a class today and get the tools you have been looking for. Your beautiful birth awaits you!
Franchesca Duval is affiliated with the HypnoBirthing® Institute and upholds their standards of teaching excellence. She currently teaches group workshops at Thrive Birth Center in Santa Rosa, California, and also offers private online sessions for couples who live too far away to attend a workshop in person. She is a mother of a daughter who was born in 2013 underwater at home using The Mongan Method of HypnoBirthing.
Jennifer “Jake” McKenna Ibarra, Blog Content Manager at DoulaSpot.com, is a mother, writer and fourth-generation San Francisco native. She studied early childhood education at S.F.C.C. and is a certified SBD doula, focusing in postpartum, certified in perinatal mood and anxiety disorders through Postpartum Support international and is also a P.S.I. member. In her spare time, you might find her walking around San Francisco.
