Header for Alicia Mutch | Poppies Reaching Towards the Sky | Hypnotherapy and Massage Therapy | Healdsburg, California

HypnoBirthing — Time to Take a Break

HypnoBirthing classes in Sonoma County, CaliforniaIt’s October of 2022, and I’ve been teaching the Morgan Method of HypnoBirthing® childbirth classes to hundreds of couples since January of 2001. I just wrapped up a private HypnoBirthing® class and a group class in September. Now that my daughter is 9, it’s time to step down from teaching and focus on family time in the evenings and on the weekends. It’s been an amazing journey and I love the birth stories that I keep hearing from my moms and couples. Thank you for including me in your birth journeys! If you’re looking for a nearby practitioner, visit the HypnoBirthing® Institute’s Find an Educator page.

A Lovely HypnoBirthing® Home Birth Story from Mothering Magazine

Click here to read: “My HypnoBirthing Experience: An Unexpected Miracle”

The above link is an article I found from March 16, 2018 in Mothering Magazine about a woman’s story with HypnoBirthing®. Kathleen Fleury writes about how HypnoBirthing® appealed to her: she liked the idea of learning to “breathe, visualize, relax, and tone your mind and body to anticipate a calm, easy birthing experience.” She writes about creating a “cave” for herself for her birth and fantasizing about a pain-free labor. Then she gives us a reality check by saying she didn’t actually make it to the cave. She was busy watching “Return of the Jedi” with her three-year-old and relaxing while feeling her uterine surges come and go. Her baby was born on the living room floor. She says that she didn’t achieve a pain-free birth, but from her description, her labor was shorter and more comfortable than her first two births, she deeply relaxed in between uterine surges, and she was able to cope with her surges much better. This is HypnoBirthing® in a nutshell!

Plan for Success in Your Birth

Kathleen does a great job of explaining the HypnoBirthing® philosophy. She quotes Christiane Northrup, who says that our culture has already been hypnotized to expect birth to be a “horrendous emergency.” HypnoBirthing® is about planning for success and visualizing the gentle, calm birth of your dreams. She even quotes Mickey Mongan, the founder of HypnoBirthing®:

“Why do we plan on the flaws in birth?” asks Mongan. “When you plan a vacation the travel agent doesn’t say ‘it’s going to rain every day and here are the statistics for airplane crashes.’ Birth is the best journey that a woman will ever take. We want to help them turn their greatest fear into their greatest achievement.”

Easier, Safer, More Comfortable Labors with HypnoBirthing®

What I’d like to say about HypnoBirthing® is that any HypnoBirthing® instructor who promises you a pain-free labor is setting you up for disappointment in your birth. HypnoBirthing® never promises a pain-free or even a sensation-free labor. What it promises is a shorter, easier, more comfortable labor when you relax, trust your body to birth, and tune into your body’s natural birth instincts, which is exactly what this birthing mom did, in spite of having two children running around, a full-time job, and a hectic lifestyle. Kudos to you, Kathleen Fleury.

The Consciousness of Your Baby Before Birth

This video shows the importance of slowing down your life and being mindful of the physical and mental state you are experiencing as you are carrying your baby. Stress during pregnancy has a profound effect on your developing baby’s brain as well as the development of its internal organs and systems.

“A mother’s emotional state enters into as one of the participating causes of the shape, size, function and characteristics of the brain in her infant in her womb and that if she’s given a safe, nurturing environment herself, her infant will be born with a totally different brain than it will otherwise. This is huge news.”

~Joseph Chilton Pierce, author of “Magical Child”

 

Common Newborn Procedures

Procedures commonly done to your newbornI know that HypnoBirthing® primarily focuses on the birth of your baby. However, it’s also a good idea to familiarize yourself with the common procedures that a hospital will perform on your baby right after birth. Here are some common ones to expect:

  1. APGAR testing at 1 and 5 minutes after birth
    • This one is pretty non-interventionist, and you won’t even notice it’s going on. Your caregiver is measuring the responsiveness of your baby. APGAR stands for Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration.
  2. Measuring & weighing
  3. Vitamin K injection
  4. Eye treatment – erythromycin drops to prevent conjunctivitis caused by chlamydia & gonorrhea
  5. Hepatitis B vaccine injection – if you are Hepatitis B positive, you will pass this virus on to your baby through your breastmilk. Populations that are more susceptible to being Hepatitis B positive include prostitutes and IV drug users. If you don’t fall into this category, and have been tested and know for certain that you are Hepatitis B negative, you can delay this vaccination. The state of California requires that your child receive three doses of the Hepatitis B vaccine before attending a public school kindergarten.
  6. Heel prick blood test (testing for PKU and several congenital issues)
  7. Jaundice evaluation and treatment
    • Jaundice is common in babies born before 38 weeks of gestation, as well as with babies that are having difficulty with nursing. In the full-term baby, jaundice will commonly show up in the first 3-7 after birth as the bilirubin levels are peaking. Also, jaundice can show up in babies with underlying health issues that need to be treated.
    • How can you tell if your baby is suffering from jaundice?
      • The skin and whites of the eyes will be a yellowish tint
      • The baby will be lethargic and drowsy
      • The stool will be a pale yellow color
      • Their urine will be dark
    •  Nursing on demand every 2-3 hours or so after birth and making sure you have a good latch and excellent breastfeeding support will help immeasurably. For yourself, remember to hydrate well. Drink at least 12 glasses of water a day to support your milk supply. Also, sunlight can help clear away newborn jaundice. You can place a naked newborn inside next to a well-lit window for 10 minutes twice a day. Never place your newborn in direct sunlight. Babies that are extremely jaundiced will need to come to the hospital for treatment for phototherapy and additional support.
  8. Bathing
    • Since those first hours after birth are precious and so important for bonding with your baby, it’s ok to delay your baby’s first bath. The vernix on a newborn has antibacterial properties and doesn’t need to be washed off. You can spot clean your baby with a soft washcloth if you’d like — otherwise, keep the newborn attached to you at all times.
  9. Hearing test
  10. Circumcision

So, now that you know the common newborn procedures, do some research on them. Google them. Talk to your caregiver about them. Examine the benefits and risks of each procedure and decide if you think each one is appropriate and medically necessary for your child. Some of them have more risks than others. But it’s ultimately up to you to decide what is best for your child.

Here’s an article from verywellfamily.com about the most common newborn procedures.

In Favor of the Natural Expulsive Reflex in Childbirth

Click here to read: Getting Pushy | Midwifery Today

The above article from Midwifery Today, published in Issue 98 in the Summer of 2011, speaks wonderfully to the Natural Expulsive Reflex that HypnoBirthing® refers to (a.k.a. the Fetal Ejection Reflex). This article validates instinctively letting your body bring the baby down instead of following all of that annoying coaching for forced pushing.

The Quietude Phase

The author, Alison Bastien, writes that often, when a woman’s cervix is fully opened, a doctor, nurse, or midwife will immediately coach her to begin pushing, even when she’s not feeling an urge to bear down. I’ve certainly heard this story from my HypnoBirthing® students. This can lead to frustration and exhaustion as the “pushing” goes nowhere. And if you don’t have an urge to push, there’s something wrong with you. This article speaks of an interim phase between the time when the cervix is thinning and opening and the descent and birth of the baby. Midwife Whapio Diane Bartlett calls it the “quietude” phase and Sheila Kitzinger calls it the “rest and be thankful” phase. Alison calls is the “still pool,” that period of calmness before you meet your baby for the first time. For some women, this phase is short, and for others, it’s longer. What do you do during this phase? Nothing. There is nothing to do. Rest, sleep, connect with your baby, and restore your energy. Listen to your body. It will tell you what it wants to do. Ignore the coaching.

Our Microfocus on the Cervix

Another gem I pulled from this article is our obsession with the checking the dilation of the cervix in the United States. Alison quotes a Russian doctor as saying, “We do not ask a woman to push until we see the baby’s head.” And then a wrinkled old traditional midwife in rural Latin America speaks about checking a woman and says,

“‘Why would I want to feel the dilation of the cervix? I’m feeling for the babies head! If your finger goes all the way to here (indicating her second knuckle) then it’s still got a ways to go, and if you can only get it in to here (tapping her first knuckle), then here it comes!’”

This is so different from the attitude in the United States, where we routinely check the cervix to see if a woman is “ready to push” or not. It’s a simpler, gentler way of looking at the birthing phase.

Trust in Your Body’s Wisdom

The wisdom from this article is this: leave a birthing mother alone. Her body knows what to do with or without your meddlesome interference. Don’t coach her to push. She knows how to bring her baby into the world.

“Let’s let the babies tell us when it’s time to push!”

 

Information about Vitamin K and your Newborn

As informed consumers of birth, it’s very important to educate yourselves on all of the treatments that your newborn baby will receive once it’s born. What are the benefits of each treatment? What are the risks? The vitamin K injection is required by the state of California for all newborns, and I’ve found some articles that will educate you on this treatment.

Here’s an article on “Evidence on: The Vitamin K Shot in Newborns” by evidencebasedbirth.com.

Here’s a “Vitamin K at Birth” article from Pregnancy Birth & Baby, an Australian resource website.

But here’s something else to think about, is vitamin K by injection really the best way to ensure that your baby’s blood will clot properly after birth? An alternative to the injection is to give your newborn oral doses of vitamin K. The availability of oral vitamin K depends on the ability of your care provider to obtain it, and unfortunately, it’s getting harder and harder to obtain pharmaceutical-grade oral vitamin K. Here is a video from Evidence Based Birth about oral Vitamin K as a possible treatment choice for your newborn:

This blog entry is not intended to be medical advice. It’s designed to inform you so that you can make better, safer choices for you and your family based on medical research.

Some of the Benefits of Hypnosis for Pregnancy

Benefits of hypnosis during pregnancyUsing hypnosis and hypnotherapy for pregnancy and childbirth is fantastic! I love to work with pregnant clients. I have been teaching the Mongan Method of HypnoBirthing® since 2001, and I have seen many transformations from fear to confidence in my HypnoBirthing® students, as well as hearing amazing, inspiring birth stories. I see pregnancy as a fantastic time to work on all of your emotional baggage so that you don’t bring that with you to your birth or to your parenting skills. Some of the many topics I’ve worked with over the years include:

  • Turning breech babies
  • Turning posterior babies
  • Alleviating nausea or vomiting
  • Keeping an over-active cervix closed during pregnancy
  • Reducing blood pressure
  • Alleviating heart burn
  • Lowering stress or anxiety
  • Sleeping deeply at night
  • Reducing or eliminating fear of childbirth
  • Changing the perception of labor, especially how the uterine surges feel during labor (transforming the sensations from “pain” to “pressure”)
  • Teaching moms to relax during birth so that their births are more comfortable and so that they birth instinctively, as nature designed

What do you want to transform during your pregnancy and birth? The possibilities are limitless.

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