The Debate Continues... How to Have My Baby?

I wanted to share information about Hypnobirthing in part because I would recommend it for anyone.  I felt well prepared having taken the Hypnobirthing course and all of the birth videos I saw were so beautiful using this technique that I was often moved to tears watching them.  To be honest there may be other approaches one could take, but I didn't do a lot of research because once I discovered Hypnobirthing I was sold.

I worked for months on Hypnobirthing and it is amazing, I felt totally empowered to be having my baby at home, unmedicated and having watched videos of other women doing just that reinforced my commitment.  The whole premise of Hypnobirthing is using self hypnosis to work through the contractions or surges/waves as they are called in Hypnobirthing.  The reason for re-naming them is because contraction suggests something is contracting, most likely the uterus, and while the 3 groups muscles of the uterus take turns contracting and relaxing as the baby progresses through the birth canal, that is late in the process of birth.  Early on it is all about opening and thinning... the cervix thins to paper thin and then opens so to use the term contraction is thought to possibly inhibit a woman’s ability to thin and open her cervix because she is visualizing a closing or contracting.  Just an example of the thinking involved in Hypnobirthing.  Hypnobirthing was developed by Marie Mongan to help women get over the fear of childbirth and empower them to approach childbirth naturally.  For more information: http://hypnobirthing.com/

To be honest I felt like I wasn't able to use the Hypnobirthing technique while I was in active labour though it made early labour a breeze.  However, my midwife and doula assure me that I was using the techniques in so much as my labour which was fast and furious was much shorter because I had 'trained' in the Hypnobirthing approach.  Most home birth for first time moms have active labour of 18 to 24 hours and mine was only 8! It served me well... check it out for yourself and you can even check youtube for videos of women using hypnobirthing and see that they are able to use their breathing to work through a relative painless birth!