Could a hypnobirthing help banish your fear of childbirth?
It is a sad recognition in our society that fear of childbirth is a growing trend, and clearly not one to celebrate. Currently estimated that over 20% of pregnant women report fear of childbirth and 6% describe a childbirth fear that is disabling.
Regardless of where women are along the fear of childbirth continuum, and even when they have no fear whatsoever, hypnobirthing is an effective way to empower you to control your fear of childbirth and not let it control you.
There are a number of elements that hypnobirthing addresses that come together to help combat women and men’s fear of childbirth.
1. ADAPTION
Childbirth is a fundamentally human and meaningful time. All women hope for a joyful, positive birth experience. However, the birth process is uncertain, so it is normal to experience anxiety, worries or fear of labour or childbirth itself. Hypnobirthing can help you develop tools to respond to uncertainties and equip you to adapt when it is not going according to plan without spiralling into anxiety.
2. EDUCATION
Hypnobirthing can educate you in how your body is designed and works through the different stages of labour and birth. Did you know that the uterus is an expulsive organ? The natural expulsive reflex is so powerful that it is capable of expelling a baby even if a woman is in a coma!
3. RELATIONSHIPS
Hypnobirthing can help you develop rapport with your midwife and other birth professionals. We assist you to develop trust that your professional support team not only have yours and your baby’s best interests at heart but will also listen to your concerns and be sensitive to your emotional as well as your physical needs.
4. COMMUNICATION
Sadly so much fear of childbirth or even birth trauma relating from a previous birth experience can be done to a lack of effective communication with birth professionals. Hypnobirthing helps you to make your wishes known and for your birth professional to be an advocate in communicating what your priorities are.
5. EMPOWERMENT
It is essential for a positive birth experience that you feel empowered to ask questions and know your legal rights in making decisions. This assists with avoiding feeling helpless, regardless of the circumstances. With hypnobirthing we show you how to be not just involved in decision making, but how to be the person with the final say with your expert advisors around you!
Read our how to have a positive birth experience BLOG here
6. BONDING AND ATTACHMENT
Oxytocin is known as the love hormone, key in the progression of labour, bonding and breastfeeding your baby. By teaching you to regulate your emotions, hypnobirthing embraces your inner calm. This allows oxytocin to be suppressed by the stress hormones, allowing you to bond with your body, and for them to securely attach to you.
7. CONFIDENCE
For some fear of childbirth can have its origins in a previous birth experience or a trauma experience from the past that is not related to birth at all. Perhaps the media portrayal of birth or others relating their own birth stories have left you frightened? Remember this information can often be biased, telling only the dramatic view. As always bad news travels faster than good news. Refuse to let it become your skewed view of birth.
8. MANAGING DISCOMFORT
There is a wealth of clinical evidence as to how hypnosis can alter your perception and experience of pain. However the function of pain is about telling us there is something wrong. Pain is not an inevitable part of a natural labour where the process is proceeding as it is designed to do. Did you know that 69% women having been trained in hypnobirthing have been shown to use no pain relief whatsoever, even gas and air!
9. INVOLVING BIRTH PARTNERS
Paternal fear of childbirth can impact fathers’ ability to be emotionally and physically supportive of their partner and affect their ability to assume a fatherhood role during a vulnerable time of transition. Also mums-to-be who are birth partners, but not the woman giving birth can specifically worry about the welfare of their partner or child and pass the fight or flight activation of their own nervous system onto their partner giving birth. We strongly encourage birth partners to be fully involved in the process of learning hypnobirthing techniques themselves.
10. C-SECTIONS
Yes, you heard right! Hypnobirthing is not just for labour and vaginal birth but also for C-sections. A good quality hypnobirthing for labour and birth course should include the tools to psychologically adjust even if a medical intervention or even an emergency caesarean section becoming necessary. There are also specialist hypnobirthing courses available for planned c-sections (known as elective C-sections) so that fear of a surgical birth is eliminated.
"Hypnobirthing can educate you in how your body is designed and works through the different stages of labour and birth."
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