How calm can give you your voice.

By Sophie Fletcher

Author of Mindful Hypnobirthing Instagram @mindfulmammauk

You’re about to give birth.  How do you think you are going to be?  Quiet, noisy? What would you prefer?  To be calm on the inside but noisy on the outside, or calm on the outside but noisy on the inside?  Or perhaps you want to be both.

Birth is a primal event, it’s instinctive and powerful and sometimes unpredictable. And each one is totally unique. You may find you are quiet, but on the day you may feel you need to make noise and that is ok. In fact, both are completely normal when they are instinctive.

As a hypnobirthing teacher and doula with over 10 years experience I have seen a lot of hypnobirthers. I have seen quiet hypnobirthers, so quiet, that midwives didn’t know they were in labour, and I have seen noisy hypnobirthers, so noisy that I could hear the midwives whispering “she’s not really hypnobirthing is she?”.

Well, breaking news she is hypnobirthing.  She is vocal and active because that’s a normal instinctive birth behaviour. What she isn’t is frightened, anxious or afraid of what people might think when she roars. She may not look calm on the outside but she is in a great space internally.

True, calm may look quiet, but sometimes it looks strong and primal and noisy. Internal calm is the very antithesis of quiet – it is a woman who knows she has a voice. She is prepared, a woman who knows deep down that she can do this, whatever happens.

Calmness it’s an inner state of mind.  It’s a place where you are present, aware, connected.  A state of mind in which you can make decisions from a place of strength rather than fear. It enables women to slow down, consider and reflect, to step away from kneejerk decision making that can so often lead to regret or loss of power.

Research is beginning show how anxiety can interfere with choice-making cells in the pre-frontal cortex, the part of our brain associated with high order thinking. When anxious or desperate, we eagerly accept and apply advice, good or bad, we are less discriminating.  When you are calm internally you can make informed choices because you understand consent and can find the time and space to make the right choices for you.

Calmness is also about the external environment you choose to birth in, reducing interruptions, thinking about the things you can see, feel or hear. Hypnobirthing helps you understand the unconscious processes that go on every moment of our loves, the constant interaction between the unconscious and environment. They give you the ability to learn how to manage your own space, and to organise it in your own unique way of ‘calm’.  It encourages you to explore that aspect of yourself, and to take make the birth space your own. To be comfortable with moving things around, rather than thinking “am I allowed to move the bed”.

If you are birth partner, you may “trying to be calm” on the outside for your partner but internally be in turmoil.  You may also project your own anxieties and fears onto your partner. Your assumptions about the noises she makes, may be based on your own learned expectations of birth, and tap into your need to ‘rescue her’. Instead, mindfulness based approaches can teach you to be observant of your own feelings, to be comfortable with your own discomfort.  As a partner you will learn techniques to keep the birth space free of your own anxieties and to be a responsive but not reactive birth partner.

By learning certain aspects of your own behaviour and by understanding birth, as a birthing partner, external calmness can be a genuine reflection of your internal state and an acceptance of her experience.  Your partner will know and feel this deeply.

For all those of you about to birth, know this – calm can be internal, it can be external. Calm can be quiet, it can be noisy but most of all it is powerful and it is strong. Calm creates the space for the energy of birth to roll through, and for you to feel in control of letting go free of inhibition, free of fear and connected with the deepest part of yourself.

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by Sophie Fletcher at Mindful Mamma UK

I wrote this birth meditation a few years ago after I attended a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, a well known Buddhist monk. He’s written a very beautiful pebble meditation which I do sometimes with my children, but which I’ve adapted for pregnancy. I just thought that it fitted perfectly.  We give it out as an additional birth meditation or a slightly different way to do your affirmations in our class, it’s not for everyone but give it a chance as it can be a very peaceful thing to do.

You can either do this birth meditation on its own,  just read it out loud somewhere quiet to yourself on a daily basis, or actually do a pebble mediation with it. To do this go for a quiet walk and collect 4 pebbles on your way. Each time you do the birth meditation, for each element take a pebble in your hand, a round one can be reflective or pregnancy, and turn it over in your hand observing the pebble closely, it’s weight, how it feels in your hand, what you can see on it then read the affirmation with that pebble before moving onto the next pebble and next affirmation.

You can continue to do this birth mediation with you baby, then toddler after they are born. It’s a very simple but lovely exercise as it does connect you unconsciously with the true depths and heights of your being during pregnancy.

Mindful Mamma Birth Meditation

I am like a flower.

“I am beautiful like a flower, aware of this tiny baby blossoming like a flower within me. I am unique, my baby is unique. I promise to nourish and love myself, thereby nourishing and loving my baby growing within. By watering the flower within me, we both grow strong and healthy. At birth I unfold like a flower unfurling in the warmth of the sun.”

Strong like a mountain

“I am strong like a mountain. I touch the earth and sky, at one with nature and with my baby. In my strength and my solidity I support my baby. With this strength I empower myself and prepare for my incredible birth”

Moon birth reflection lake

“I am like a lake. Crystal clear, calm and tranquil. Still – as if you could take the perfect picture. In my tranquility and peace, peace and tranquility in others are reflected. My baby benefits from this calm and their development and birth is also reflected in my tranquility. When I smile, others see this peace deeply within me and I reflect on my love for my baby developing within his or her calm and peaceful waters”

Space around and within me.

“I am like space. I have movement all around and feel my baby moving freely within. My mind is free and still. My focus is clear in this space and I have freedom and a deep sense of peace and of who I am and how I communicate with my baby growing within me. Space gives me clarity and comfort both while I am pregnant and during my baby’s birth”

Adapted from the pebble meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh

Copyright Sophie Fletcher 2009.

by Sophie Fletcher

Many years ago I met a friend of my husband who was 24 and had a 10 year old daughter. The story goes that her mum phoned her dad in the pub and asked him to come home because Anna was having a baby. He replied “I’ll finish my pint and I’ll come home and we’ll sit down and discuss what we are going to do”. Then her mother shouted “ now, she’s having the baby now”.  Anna gave birth to her little girl within the next couple of hours, with little more than a bit of stomach ache and sitting on the loo. So apart from thinking she had a bit of an upset tummy, she was fine. I thought “how on earth could someone be pregnant and not know and is that what you would call a pain free labour?”.

When I became pregnant I was in very good shape, it was just after I got married and had spent months toning and exercising to squeeze into my dress.  Throughout my pregnancy I had intermittent bleeding, I had no morning sickness at all, and I didn’t show until very late on in my pregnancy. In fact I recall at 24 weeks, putting on my new Isabella Oliver trousers on the tightest setting to go to work and then proudly sticking my tiny rounded tummy out. When I did go into labour early my ‘tiny bump’ was commented on.  I’m sure if I had been on birth control and not  planning a family that being pregnant would have been the last thing I’d have thought of.  In my years of teaching I have seen women with very very small bumps, and women with huge bumps. Conversely a friend of mine who definitely isn’t pregnant has IBS and is always complaining she looks pregnant, another has fibroids and her abdomen can get quite swollen.

I can see how possible it could be years before pregnancy tests, or even today if you are taking precautions that have failed. It’s rare but it happens.  When researching this, I stumbled across a show that is running in the US called “I didn’t know I was pregnant”. If you want to see it, google it, it’s full of Discovery Health drama so I won’t post it, but you can read this very funny critique of it here.  How could I have not known about this show!

What really interested me is how women who don’t know they are pregnant experience having a baby, do they have what would be considered a pain free labour?   There are many antenatal classes today that focus on the aspect of fear and expectation; the ideology that when we are pregnant, we become anxious of labour which creates physical tension, which in turn make birth much more painful than nature intended it to be. Some hypnobirthing models avoid the word pain altogether and say birth isn’t meant to be painful. It’s certainly true that expectation of pain, whatever that pain is, increases our perception of the intensity of that pain.  Prof Irene Tracey at Cambridge University has undertaken some significant work on expectations of pain and in a recent study examined how manipulating participants’ expectations of pain can influence their response to an active drug. So in theory if you aren’t expecting to give birth, you don’t have the same level of expectation could you have a pain free labour.

 A study published last year by her, showed that volunteer’s experience was influenced not by the drug but whether they were told the drug had or had not been administered. This showed the volunteers really did experience different levels of pain when their expectations were changed, although the administration of pain relief remained constant.

I’ve heard an anesthetist say that he frequently goes to administer a epidural, he may put pressure on the area, insert the needle and ask “how is that”, for the mum to say “oh thank you that’s fantastic such a relief” before he’s actually put the drug in. I heard mums ask if their partner can put the tens machine up, only to get relief before the partner has turned it up.

The power of hypnosis is also undeniably a brilliant pain management tool. Suggestions used during hypnosis distract the mind through disassociation, but also embed the belief that everything is well and fine and that the more they let go the more comfortable they are, and the more comfortable they are the easier it is to let go. Effectively reducing the expectation of pain.  As a hypnotherapist in my general practice, I often work with people who have chronic pain; their pain is constant and yet when they are under hypnosis the pain disappears, and remains much less even after the session has finished.  To read an extreme example of how hypnosis can manage physical sensation and pain read this article by Dr John Butler on his own hernia operation using hypnosis.

As a doula I use deep hypnosis for women, that are in a long latent stage, to get rest. After a short session of hypnosis people generally feel energized so it’s a great way of helping to manage this. Recently a client who had had an epidural with her first birth said that it was amazing and as effective as the epidural, she said during the deep hypnosis she went from having a labour with pain, to it being a pain free labour.

Expectation of pain during labour can create tension, which can create pain. However there is no denying that labour can trigger sensations for some women, sometimes powerful sensations, similar to stomach aches. This can be unexpected for women who are taught that strong sensations aren’t a part of labour.  If we are not prepared for the sensation of labour, our brains then fall back to default position and perceive it as pain, rather as pressure, tightening or aches.

Women who don’t know they are pregnant don’t build up that expectation of pain in labour.  Even if they are in unconscious denial of pregnancy they will avoid reading up, or listening to pregnancy related horror stories.

So I googled for stories, and found that as well as the show in America on the subject, a surprising amount of stories demonstrated consistencies in how women experienced the unexpected birth of a child.

•  This one from Leanne Carter, who felt a bit bloated before Christmas, but was still having her periods and had no other symptoms. She did experience stomach cramps but thought they were period pains, when they got bad (probably transition) they took her to hospital where she took herself off  to the loo and felt the urge to push, her baby boy was born shortly after.
•  Another girl, a student, again thought she had bad period pains, eventually went to hospital where they discovered she was pregnant, assumed she was 32 weeks, hooked her up to an ECG, she unhooked herself as she needed the loo. As she tried to go for a poo, things didn’t feel quite right and she reached down and could feel the top of her baby’s head. She said “a few pushes later and I had given birth. Amazingly I felt calm and focused. My oft potty mouth was expletive free. The only words I spoke were ‘I don’t need to’ when my friend told me I could make a noise”.
•  Someone worked a night shift in a hospital, stuck it out till she finished at 9am, went to A and E because of abdominal pains and a baby arrived just before lunchtime.
• A young teenager had played a hockey match and  then thought that she had a bit of stomach upset. Baby arrived a couple of hours later.

From all the stories I encountered there were consistencies on a number of things, the women complained of a stomach ache or feeling out of sorts, or back ache, but just put it down to other symptoms, went to lie down or managed in the same way they would a headache or flu. If the sensations got troublesome, usually only a short while before their baby was born, they took themselves to A&E. This is likely to be transition and that natural short surge of adrenaline just before baby is born. Without exception they all seemed to have very short labours simply because they treated it as they would a virus or stomach bug until the last moments before the baby was born.

The internet is awash with forums trying to second guess when a woman is going into labour, in many ways we are over educated and women are much more alert to the signs of their body warming up, thereby often assuming labour was longer than it was. For some women attention turns almost obsessively to those small indictors of labour being closer and the mind becomes focussed on every minute change, often exaggerating signs. On the other hand,  it’s not uncommon for very laid back mums to carry on with everyday tasks until they are no longer able and baby’s arrival is imminent.

I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts or stories of finding out you were pregnant very late on in your pregnancy, or anecdotal stories from your parents or grandparents. Especially if you felt you had a pain free labour. I’m sure there are plenty more out there!