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.
