Natural Birth

I had a rather puzzling birth report from a mother who did my HypnoBirthing course recently. She had a wonderful and inspiring birth, calm, gentle and drug free - except for the fact that she took two paracetamol. Now I've never heard of anyone taking paracetamol in labour before and I was utterly puzzled. Maybe she had a headache at the time?

HypnoBirthing bookings

I'm busy preparing for the HypnoBirthing course in Teddington today, made slightly more complicated by the new on-line booking system. It's working very well now, and it means that people can register for a course on line and pay by credit card, BUT there's one small hiccup. At the moment the system tells me who has booked, but not which course they've booked for, so I have to email back manually to find out.

Of course, this will be sorted out very soon but, in the meantime, if this has happened to you, I apologise. Automated are wonderful when they work properly - and it will soon.

HypnoBirthing Celebration

This weekend I'm not teaching HypnoBirthing - yes, really! Today's a very important day. It's a celebration of the arrival of my hypnobirthing grandson last October. Family and friends are gathering for a picnic. The sun's shining, and I'm looking forward to a wonderful day. He's a true hypnobirthing baby. His mother was fully dilated when she arrived at hospital and he was born half an hour later. Since then he has been very calm and cheerful, as are so many hypnobirthing babies.

Fathers and HypnoBirthing

I was reminded today how much HypnoBirthing (quite rightly) is about mothers and the needs of fathers can be overlooked. Of course fathers have an important role in the HypnoBirthing method, but what about their needs? It was brought home to me a little while back when I was talking to a father who had ME and who was deeply distressed that he was unable to provide for his wife and new baby.

A father's natural instinct to provide and protect is often overlooked, but it is a very deep instinct. In my HypnoBirthing classes I am often touched by the care with which the fathers treat their pregnant wives / partners, and maybe the fathers need a little more acknowledgement for this.

HypnoBirthing Baby

HypnoBirthing is wonderful, and it is enormously satisfying to see the difference it makes to mothers, but last weekend I had a different sort of satisfaction. I took a weekend off to be with my family and played with my hypnobirthing granddaughter as well as my three year old grandson (born in New Zealand so I wasn't able to teach his mother hypnobirthing). There's a lot to be said for playing on a sandy beach with small children.

Breech Baby

A little while ago I worked with a mother to turn her breech baby, and the baby duly turned, as it does in 80% of the cases when you use hypnotherapy to turn a breech baby. Last week I heard that the baby had been born by c-section because the baby's heartbeat had slowed in labour due to the cord being round its neck. This set me thinking again about interventions in labour. Was the baby breech originally because a combination of baby's and mother's instinct knew that, in this case, it was safer to be born this way round. After all, the baby is the only person who knows where the cord is and the exact position of the placenta, and it's extremely presumptuous of us to think we know better, because we don't.

In the modern world, a breech baby is almost automatically delivered by c-secion, but I know hypnobirthing mothers who have easily delivered a breech baby with no drugs, no pain and with a gentle and easy labour.

The modern assumption that having a baby is a medical emergency and that we know better than the baby what should be done is dangerous and arrogant. A healthier assumption could be that all is well unless proved to the contrary, rather than that we should intervene unless it's proved to be unnecessary.

A mother will always do the best she can for her child. Maybe that's why we use the phrase, 'Mother' Nature.

HypnoBirthing Baby

I spent a couple of days with a HypnoBirthing baby earlier this week; my grandson. Everyone tells you that HypnoBirthing babies are calm, develop quickly and thrive. I know he's my grandson, so I'm biased, but it is still remarkable to see the subtle differences in a HypnoBirthing baby. Midwives have been know to remark: "I've never seen such a chilled out baby." It's difficult to define the differences, but it has to do with being more alert, sleeping better, feeding better, and generally being ready to move forward after birth because there are no drugs and no trauma to recover from.

HypnoBirthing Really Does Work

Yesterday a mother who has just booked up to the HypnoBirthing class in July emailed me to say she was feeling nervous about the birth and asking me if I would send the course CD to her so she could listen to it in advance and relax. By chance (?), it just so happened that she lived in the same street as my son, daughter-in-law, and their HypnoBirthing son who I was visiting at the time. It also just so happened that I had the CD she wanted with me. Within 10 minutes of receiving her email, I had walked down the road, and dropped the CD in to her. HypnoBirthing really does work!

The only thing is, the CD has relaxed her so well that she's never heard the end of it.

HypnoBirthing for Birth Comfort

I read a really funny article just now about HypnoBirthing. It said:
HypnoBirthing - for decreasing birth disomfort.
Why not be positive and put: HypnoBirthing - for increasing birth comfort.
Or, better still: HypnoBirthing - for allowing birth to be comfortable as nature intended.

Record Number of Doctors Learn HypnoBirthing

The HypnoBirthing course which started at Triyoga in Primrose Hill yesterday holds a record. Five doctors attended the class, so news of the effectiveness of HypnoBirthing has definitely penetrated to the medical profession, showing a truly open-minded approach. It was a great class, held on a beautifully sunny day.

Next week we plan to have a picnic on Primrose Hill.

The Night Before

I love teaching HypnoBirthing. That's why I spend so much of my life doing it. I love knowing what a difference it has made to people's lives.

However, I don't love the night before a course. The floor is covered with folders being made up. The photocopier is red hot with duplicating handouts. I've loaded the car with folding chairs, TV, cushions and boxes of books. And usually there's a lot of midnight oil being burnt.

But it's all worth it on the day.

Summer HypnoBirthing

Today's HypnoBirthing class had an added bonus. It was a private class for a mother whose baby is due in two weeks' time, and it was the most beautiful sunny day, so at lunch time we took a break and sat outside at a pavement cafe in Primrose Hill enjoying the sunshine.

I've had two more lovely HypnoBirthing birth reports in the last couple of days, so I'll either add them to the website or post them on the blog (or both) in the next few days. It gives me such delight to hear the birth reports from mothers I've taught, and I know couples who are thinking of doing the course enjoy reading them.

Different View of Health

Most of my life is spent looking at what makes a healthy and gentle birth through HypnoBirthing. On Friday I spent the day taking a slightly different view of health by attending the 'Energy 4 Exmoor' symposium run by the Exmoor Trust at Ralegh's Cross. It was a fascinating day, with lots of useful information on the viability of various forms of generating energy. There was an excellent presentation by Mukti Mitchell on reducing your carbon footprint while still maintaining your lifestyle, and a fascinating talk by Prof Sir Ghillian Prance, former director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, on conservation.

It really struck me how the principles from which I work in HypnoBirthing, apply in these other areas as well. Altogether a refreshing and inspiring day.

Learning from Lambs

At the beginning of April the field behind my cottage was full of ewes in lamb. They were about to be moved to another field as the grass was getting very low, when one night the first one lambed. It was a freezing cold night, and when I awoke in the morning the flock was at the far end of the field where the farmer fed them every morning, and the one ewe that had lambed was at the end near my cottage right up by the hedge, far away from the rest of the flock, with little twin lambs huddled underneath her to keep warm. She had quietly separated herself from the flock during the night, and given birth at a time when sheep, being diurnal animals, are not normally active. All mammals will naturally give birth at a time when they can be alone, unobserved, and away from their peers. It was a time and place that she felt safe. We could learn a lesson from that ewe. How many mothers travel across town in labour, to go to a strange place where they feel nervous and where they are observed by many strangers? A recipe for a difficult labour.

And there she stayed. She moved very little for several days. She didn't go to feed with the rest of the flock. She simply stayed quietly in her own little enclave, sheltering and feeding her lambs.

The farmer also knew from experience what works best. He moved the rest of the flock to a different field where he had intended the lambing to take place, but he left the one ewe and the newborn lambs undisturbed. He knew that, if he interfered, he would disturb establishing feeding, and the ewe's supply of milk, and the ewe might reject her lambs.

As far as giving birth is concerned, we are simply another mammal. What works for other animals works for us too, and we would do well to remember this.