Our birth culture has become one of fear, with horror stories passed down from generations of strangers, friends and colleagues. My Independent Midwife aims to provide you with strategies to avoid and confront fear before the birth, enabling you to have a calm, informed and positive birthing experience..
Hypnobirthing
Hypnobirthing and Birth Preparation
Congratulations on your pregnancy, we are delighted that you are considering allowing us to join you on this special journey into parenthood. As midwives with over 30 years' experience and mothers of 7 children combined, we know how important pregnancy and birth is. We have seen first-hand the difference that birth preparation makes. Our hypnobirthing and birth preparation programme will empower you with the skills to understand your body, the process of birth and how to utilise your natural coping strategies to have the best possible birthing experience!
What is Hypnobirthing and Birth Preparation?
Our course is simple and logical, but the effect is profound. We focus on releasing fear and building confidence in you and your body.
We offer a complete birth education programme that supports you and your birth partner to discover how calm, confident and positive your baby’s birth can be. Our course combines birth education and hypnobirthing to enable you to fully understand your body and learn to utilise your mind to enable a positive birth regardless of the circumstances.
This course aims to help you understand your body, your mind and your birth, the decisions you may have to make and the choices that you have.
How does hypnobirthing work?
Confident and Calm
To understand hypnobirthing, you must first understand oxytocin.
Oxytocin
Oxytocin is the hormone of love, it is produced when we fall in love, when we make love, and when we breastfeed. It is also essential for your contractions starting and continuing during birth. The more oxytocin you have in your body, the quicker and more effective your birth will be. This is because oxytocin allows the muscles to function to their full capacity causing the cervix (neck of the womb) to open up and dilate. The more of this hormone you produce the better and easier you will experience birth. In calm and safe mode, your body can produce copious amounts of oxytocin. You will also produce endorphins which, when combined with oxytocin, act as a powerful natural pain reliever
Culture of Fear
However, as with all hero’s oxytocin has an enemy and it’s known as adrenaline.
Adrenaline
Adrenaline is an important hormone that is released when we feel danger or threatened and it essentially puts us into ‘fight or flight’ mode. Giving birth in a dangerous situation is not such a great idea, so adrenaline very helpfully blocks oxytocin and stops it from working effectively, delaying birth until the danger has passed. However, sometimes you can perceive the birth itself or the birth environment as the ‘danger’ causing the body to release adrenaline.
Hypnobirthing teaches you the techniques you need to maximise your production of oxytocin and minimise your adrenaline production, resulting in a calm and positive birth where your body is enabled to function naturally and to its full potential in complete harmony.
Support For ALL Types Of Births
Some people think that hypnobirthing sounds hippy dippy and that hypnobirthing is only for a natural birth or that it means no pain relief. However, hypnobirthing provides you with the skills to make the decisions that fit in with your ideal of how birth can be.
Many people come to Hypnobirthing wanting to be in control of their birth and their body, or to relieve fear and anxiety. The purpose of hypnobirthing is to enable you to birth your baby however you want, achieving a positive and calm birth experience regardless of the mode of birth.
For many people birth can be a very exciting, but also daunting experience. Often when you have your baby it is your very first exposure to hospitals, medical procedures and medical professionals. Whilst you are likely very grateful that these things are available, the fact remains that it is a strange new environment, that presents you with confusing and sometimes conflicting decisions.
Hypnobirthing techniques can be applied in all situations to compliment conventional maternity care and enable a positive birth experience through learning how to reduce fear and anxiety and maintain a calm and safe environment. You will find that this is true for all types of birth from home births to elective caesarean sections.
What are Hypnobirthing techniques?
Hypnobirthing Techniques are multisensory, ranging from adapting the birthing environment, light touch massage, relaxations read from special scripts used to activate a calm response in you and breathing techniques. Your midwife can explore imagery that works for you, and how to implement the correct breath work so that you are using your breathing to your advantage whilst you give birth.
How do these techniques work?
The birth breathing alongside the hypnosis techniques supports you to remain in the calm mode, and whilst you’re in this mode you’re best placed to produce the birth hormones which are essential for a gentle, easier birth experience.
Birth Preparation
To complement hypnobirthing, our birth prepartion course aims to fully prepare you for your birth. Utilising the latest evidenced based information you will learn about the physiology of birth, the choices you can make and how to decide what is right for you and your baby. The birth preparation course includes information regarding;
- Physiology of normal birth
- Techniques to optimise normal birth, including water birth
- Making informed choice during pregnancy and birth
- Common interventions during birth
- All types of births including caesarean section and instrumental births
- How to individualise your birth choices to suit your own birthing preferences.
- Opportunities to discuss your individual circumstances and how to adapt hypnobirthing into them.
Do I need to know anything else?
Use your techniques and practise daily. Every person, baby and birth is different. Setting realistic expectations for your birth and understanding how hypnobirthing and birth preparation can support you, gives you the confidence to achieve the positive birth experience you so hope for. You are the one giving birth and ultimately the power comes from you.
Role of the birth partner
Hypnobirthing is for everyone – and everyone includes birth partners too – which many antenatal courses overlook. Birth partners report feeling protective, confident and happy that they have a central role in supporting you and your baby as the birth progresses. Birth partners talk about how much more bonded they feel to the baby, and how much closer they become to you as they are invited into the birthing plans, owning their spot bedside you, using the techniques and working the scripts with you, reassuring you and helping you to remain calm and focussed.
What makes us so special ?
Our last growth scan showed a drop in growth velocity so I reluctantly agreed to induction, but not until 40 weeks. It was a long slog of 3 days and failure to progress but we were able to advocate for ourselves about what we wanted and I managed to push back on and avoid a caesarean section many times.
I just wanted to thank you because we know we wouldn’t have had the confidence to be more in control of the birth without your help and information. Oscar coped with the long induction beautifully and people commented on how relaxed our room was with the candles, low lights, music and relaxation, which we owe to you!
-Lauren, Ben & Baby Oscar
What Hypnobirthing packages do we offer?
2 Hypnobirthing sessions
£250
2 Hypnobirthing Sessions & 2 Birth Preparation Sessions
£400