Your intuition knows how to birth.

Trusting your birth intuition can make all the difference.

by Sophie Fletcher

I wanted to talk to you about birth intuition today, as it is so important with birth.  One of my mantras is ‘trust your intuition’, but it’s a bit of a floppy suggestion, what does that actually mean?  What is your birth intuition and how do you listen to it when it’s trying to tell you something?

I was at a birth recently, a super fast, second birth with no drugs at all, a baby girl who was a little over 8.5 lbs with a physiological third stage and no nicks or tears.  The look on the mothers face afterwards – it was awesome.  For her it was a completely different experience to her first birth when labour was hurried along by breaking her waters, which lead to an epidural, episiotomy and forceps delivery.  After her first birth, she was so shaky she couldn’t hold her baby.

What a difference!  But it wasn’t just because she was a second mum, true, she prepared well with hypnosis for birth but she also listened to her birth intuition this time and didn’t try and tick the labour checklist off with every little niggle or set of Braxton Hicks, falling into the trap of thinking labour had started while her body was still just warming up.   She didn’t go to the hospital too early and she listened to what her body was telling her to do.

It was an interesting birth, my head told me that she would be early, for certain reasons, but I didn’t feel it. I was in no hurry to pack my back, and the birth somehow felt distant to me.  I didn’t get many texts from the mum, as she was so busy with other things.  Then the Thursday before the birth, at 40+3 I packed my bag. I didn’t even think about it, I suddenly stopped myself and thought “Hmmm why have I done that?” This commonly happens, somehow I know when to pack a bag.

Then on Friday I cancelled a tennis match that I really wanted to play in. It would have taken me 1.5 hours  away from my client, and although I’d played a match on the Thursday, this time is was different; it didn’t feel right, like a hint of pressure in my chest when I thought about going.  I even had a vivid dream that night, that her labour was so quick they wouldn’t have time to fill the pool!

Sure enough Saturday afternoon I got a text saying that she was going to call her mother in law, for ‘a bit of security’ to look after her other child. I knew then that this baby was coming, even though she wasn’t in labour.   She wrote, “nothing is happening, thought it was the start in the morning, but they must have been Braxton hicks contractions as they stopped”.   She reflected afterwards that if this were her first birth, she would have probably gone to the hospital at that point.

Then in the evening I got a message saying things had started and that she was fine, then later in the evening, I got a very laid back text saying things were moving along they were 5 minutes apart and lasting 1min30 seconds. I just knew, rang and asked if she wanted me there, so she said “I think you should come over but don’t hurry” (when a very laid back second time mum says this, in a spaced out way, I hurry!).

Sure enough she was at home with her music on, just rocking with the contractions and quietly breathing through them.   The dad wanted to go in, but I reassured him that she’d know when to go in. If she’s asking “is it time to go in” or it’s your suggestion as a birth partner, it’s too early.  After the next contraction had passed she said, “no I’ll wait a bit”, then the next contraction came  and she said “now it’s time”;  in the space of 10 minutes it was time to go.  Afterwards she said they were just different, and she just felt it was time to go, her birth intuition had kicked in.

Once we arrived in labour suite they were down to 3 minutes apart, after a quick exam she was 6/7 cms dilated, shortly after that her waters broke.  Her baby was born just 30minutes later, after she quietly gave one little push to little to bring babies head into the world.   No guided pushing or straining, her little girl slid her head and shoulders out, had a good look around and then the rest of her followed very quickly.  Within 10 mins baby was latched on, followed by the placenta.

For me this birth was all about ‘just knowing’ when things were starting, “just knowing’ the right time to go into hospital or call the midwives. This mum had listening to her Mindful Mamma mp3s every day, but had also been busy with a toddler and many other happy distractions in her life, so she hadn’t pounced on those early warm up contractions, instead trusting her that birth intuition.   It also interested me how more and more, I just ‘know’ too. My bag is always packed at the right time, I always have childcare in place, and well, you know, whatever you believe, that dream was true!

Just the difference between two contractions was enough to make the choice to go the hospital. Prepare so you are relaxed and trusting in birth, let go of your fear using hypnosis if you can.  When you get near to your date see those niggles and on off contractions as warm ups, stop starting maybe until your body just clicks into the rhythm of labour.  Stop thinking about it, switch your focus to something else that can absorb you, don’t intellectualise. Trust you will know, here is a checklist:

Listening to your birth intuition:

• Trust hunches, don’t ‘think’.
• If it doesn’t feel right or you are asking someone else’s opinion, consider not doing it.
• If you have to question if it’s the right time to go to hospital, it is probably far too early. (Don’t let other people push you into going, research shows that women often end up in hospital too early as their partner wants to hand over responsibility). If you recognize these, “shall we go? Maybe yes – just to be on the safe side, “Why don’t we go in just to get checked”, “You can get settled in. oh, okay” it’s not the right time.  It should be a “Let’s go, now!” from the mum.
• If you are able to make a cup of tea, have nap either in bed or the bath it’s too early to go in.

Signs to go in hospital or call the midwife in a normal birth;

•  It just ‘feels’ different.
• Your contractions are 3-4 minutes apart and lasting longer than a minute – this really does mean a minute or more – early contractions may get regular, but may still be shorter than a minute, maybe lasting 40 seconds or so, then may drop off for a while before starting up again, then they may be more spaced apart but lasting longer. Some antenatal teachers may say strong and long.
• You have pressure in your bottom, not your back  – you feel as if you need to have a poo.
• You really don’t want to get in the car (this is unfortunate if you are off to hospital).
• You don’t really want to hold a conversation with everyone around you.
• Something tells you that you absolutely have to go to hospital now, or call the midwife.

by Sophie Fletcher

Our bodies get on with the task of quietly and painlessly growing an intricate human being.

I never really thought much about how I’d get the baby out; to be frank I’m a genuinely in the moment person, I tackle things as they happen and I don’t get scared of much, expect for missing my train and being late. It often bemuses me that women get so frightened about the birth, and that the main worry is ‘how is that going to get out of there’.  This seems especially perplexing when women aren’t often frightened by thoughts of, ‘how is that baby going to grow in me?’, ‘how is that tiny small fist sized womb going to grow and expand so my baby is going to fit in it?’. The body expanding and growing to accommodate baby is something we are largely accepting of and don’t spend too much time focusing on.

While pregnant women generally just carry on with their lives, complaining of tweaks and pressure here and there,  the more unfortunate ones may have more physical challenges such as SPD, or bad reflux as the baby grows and the stomach is pushed upwards.   However, women don’t fear these, they accept them, find ways of managing and just carry on with the pregnancy.

So why do we trust and accept that our bodies are going to expand and stretch enormousl?That our womb will grow from the size of small fist to the size of a large basketball and that all our internal organs will reorganise themselves, but we don’t accept that our body is designed to actually birth our baby?  WE GROW A BABY, with tiny hands, ears, eyes, arms, legs and a heart.  How incredibly amazing is that?  And you know what, we generally don’t think about it at all, our body just does it and we just accept it.  We don’t question that our heart gets larger, that our organs are pushed upwards and that our lung capacity gets smaller. Do we think, “oh no, I won’t be able to breath properly, I need help to expand my chest and get more oxygen in me”, no we don’t. This video shows how your internal organs are designed to reorganise themselves during pregnancy.

Grantly Dick-Reid, the man whose ideas underpin many other modern approaches to undisturbed physiological birth, understood that fear can slow labour down. He spent a good amount of time in his antenatal classes reassuring women and teaching them how their bodies were designed to birth by telling them exactly what happens as they go into labour.  His book Childbirth Without Fear is still a great book to read if you want to know more about what your body is designed to do.

Nowadays some antenatal teachers will demonstrate how our vaginas expand by pushing a doll through the neck of polo neck jumper, explaining how the muscles of your vagina relax and stretch. Others might use the example of an erection to help women understand that soft tissue in their body is designed to expand and that it’s soft tissue for a reason. When a man has an erection his penis always stretches very easily and very comfortably!  Then it always goes back to its normal size.

One midwife I know made me laugh when she said to me once, “I wish I could say in a class that your vagina is like a bucket, because it is during labour”. Many mums I know describe that second stage when baby is being born as the easiest as that’s the moment they realise that they’ve nearly done it and it’s ok.

Here are some facts about the birth that may help you understand how incredible your body is during labour as well as during pregnancy.

Relaxin:

 The hormone relaxin relaxes the body’s muscles, joints, and ligaments. Not surprisingly, the effect centers on the joints of the pelvis, allowing them to stretch during birth. It also softens and lengthens the cervix and helps relax and smooth muscles in the uterus and elsewhere throughout the body.  The vagina is like an accordion; it can stretch and return to its normal shape with the help of relaxin.

Baby’s head shape and a stretchy vagina

The baby’s head must be small and flexible to fit through the birth canal. The bones of a baby’s skull are soft and are able to mold into different positions. This is why babies that have been resting low in the pelvis waiting for delivery sometimes have pointy heads. The pieces of the skull are like a jigsaw, and can move easily to allow baby to move through the birth canal and then grow and expand over the first years of life to accommodate baby’s quickly growing brain.

To allow it to do what it’s meant to do, mum should be as relaxed as possible, this is something else we teach on our classes. Like any other tissues or muscles in our body, tension can make the job harder than it’s meant to be.

This great article explains the history of how our heads changed in utero to accommodate evolutionary changes in humans.

This one also explains the changes in your baby’s head from birth to ex-utero .

If you are worried about sex and the shape of your vagina this great little article talks about how incredible that soft tissue is.

A flexible coccyx

Your coccyx is designed to move out of the way as your baby’s head descends. This is why not lying on your back is important; if you have freedom of movement, it allows the coccyx freedom to move. The sacrococcygeal joint, the joint between the sacrum and the coccyx or tailbone, also softens in pregnancy; it is designed to swivel backwards to widen the outlet of the pelvis as the baby emerges.

If you can get your hands on an artificial pelvis you can see how a woman’s coccyx moves but a man’s doesn’t.

Increased discharge/amniotic fluid

As you near labour your body might be producing more discharge and it may be thicker, this is due to hormonal changes as you near labour, but also helps baby to slip out. Equally amniotic fluid can help moisten the vagina and assist baby’s descent.  Babies can sometimes be born very quickly once the head has been birthed and the midwife catches a slippery baby!

Oxytocin

Oxytocin is our best friend during labour and an incredible hormone. When we go into labour oxytocin levels go up, which increases beta-endorphins (feel good hormones) which help you body naturally manage any strong sensations in your body by producing your body’s own natural relief.

At Mindful Mamma we love oxytocin and on our classes we focus on how to make sure that you give birth in an an environment favourable to oxytocin.

Read more about oxytocin here http://bringbirthhome.com/birth-experience/role-of-oxytocin-during-childbirth/

 Baby helps itself out

Just as you know instinctively how to birth and to get into the correct positions during labour to help your baby out,  your baby knows how to help itself out. Often this is a good reason not to take drugs that can cross the placenta and make baby drowsy. An alert, unmedicated baby will help itself out by  wriggling, and moving about to help its way into the world. This little video shows how this is, and I love the little kicks the baby gives as if it were diving into the world.

 If you’re a practitioner or a mum who knows of a particularly interesting description of how birth works that may have be a lightbulb moment for you or for the people you teach, please share your descriptions. 

By Sophie Fletcher

How does a birthing partner quickly fix a hospital room?

I’ve been teaching antenatal hypnosis classes for nearly 7 years now, and designed the Mindful Mamma class with my friend and colleague Mia Scotland.  So I’ve learned a lot, read a lot, worked with hundreds of couples, but my first birth as a doula was a new experience and taught me much more than I could ever read from a book. It taught me what it’s really like for the birth partner.

For the weeks running up to my first birth there was a mixture of excitement and apprehension. I didn’t sleep much for the 4 weeks I was on call (my client had her baby at 42 +2), jumping at every moment thinking it was my phone.  At one point I thought ‘what have I done?  Do I really know what I have to do, how to be?’. Then it suddenly occurred to me this is how the birth partners must feel – the first experience of the responsibility of being a birth partner and being there for her in a moment had suddenly dawned on me.  In fact is was exhausting and by week 42 I had already learned to just trust that I would wake up, even in the deepest sleep, and with relief had 10 hours of sleep!

For a dad it must be even harder – at least I knew theoretically what was happening and I knew that birth is safe and normal and I trusted that the mother would know what to do.  What must it be like for a birthing partner who hasn’t attended the ante-natal classes, or who doesn’t feel connected with the intuitive and unconscious process that a mother is going through?  It can also affect those around supporting the couple. A grandmother I knew, who was going to look after her grandson when her daughter went to labour, confided in me that she was unable to sleep properly and had her phone under the pillow.

Towards the end of the pregnancy, we watched for signs like hawks, me second-guessing, is this it, there were twinges and changes my mother reported reminding me to keep glued to my phone. In my step class I even had it under my box, ring on extra loud!

Then as she went in to labour, at 4 am, I woke up on the first ring and I tried to trust my instincts and let go of everything I had learned and read.   Yet couldn’t help, while I drove to the hospital, playing over in my mind everything I know and teach about environment, the birth space, the role of the birthing partner.

Having only been in that hospital myself as a birthing mum, not as a birth partner, I couldn’t quite remember it and trying to go through it in my mind was very difficult.  I was going into an unfamiliar environment, I couldn’t really prepare for that sense of unease I felt about going into a space controlled by someone else.   I used the hypnosis techniques I teach to keep myself calm as I went into the hospital, knowing that my adrenaline needed to be near zero, passing through reception, another reception and the room with my client and her husband in.  All of these gateways to the unknown and gateways owned by and controlled by someone else.  I began to imagine what that’s like for the parents, especially the birthing partner whose job is to look after and support their wife or partner whilst at the same time adapting themselves to new and unfamiliar surroundings.

I’ve always taught couples to make the space their own, the job of the birth partner for example is moving the room around a bit and getting the bed up against the wall.  A bed in the middle of the room screams “lie on me, go on lie down…” even though it’s midday and you’re not ill. Yet faced with the act of moving the bed to create more space to move around, I felt paralysed. How do you do it?  The Midwife was in and out and was obviously busy so it was hard to interrupt her.

I felt like a naughty child that wasn’t allowed to move the bed or had to put my hand up to ask a question! I’m not backward at coming forward, and am friends with many midwives. She was a lovely midwife too, so this was interesting for me from a psychological perspective.  There was an inbuilt sense of proprietary being in someone else’s space and a nod to the authority of the system that we inadvertently are taught to be deferential to.

I asked for a diffuser with lavender oil in it, it never materisalised, the midwife forgot, she was busy with another couple, the CD player wasn’t in the room, and didn’t seem to be forthcoming. The light from the resus unit in the room was glowing like a beacon of distress with all the other lights turned off and amidst it all was my client, over a ball that didn’t move (health and safety reasons).

As this moment I realised how difficult it can be for the birth partner make that room your own, especially if you have followed my advice and stayed at home as long as possible.  If you have waited and left it until the last minute, mum is likely to be at the end of the first stage of labour or moving into second stage (as my client was, but who told me she “had ages and ages to go”) and not to be thinking consciously about the room.

I dropped some lavender oil on her pillow (it had been anchored), turned all the lights out including the resus unit, put the background music to our cd on via my iphone, and starting counting her down with each tightening – interweaving the numbers with some positive suggestion, with no intent for conversation. The room changed instantly, dad said it was as if I had waved a magic wand over it. Baby was born smoothly in around 2.5 hours.

So my first birth.  I learned so much about what it’s like for the birth partner, and had a great experience, in fact it was a amazing to see the techniques we teach work so well. The most important thing I learned was keep it simple, don’t create too much work for yourself, prepare well using hypnosis so you react unconsciously in a positive way to triggers such as aromatherapy and music.  You don’t have to rearrange the furniture if it makes you feel awkward (or if you feel your partner needs you more than she needs the room being moved around), and you won’t always get what you ask for straight away if the unit is busy – but do ask.

Tips for a birth partner

These are the three things that I now always do straight away on walking into a hospital room that mum and dad are unfamiliar with.

. Turn all the lights out, perhaps apart from a little lamp/reading light turned towards the wall

. anchor a smell such as lavender to feeling calm, confident and focused, just drop them on the pillow if hot rocks or diffusers aren’t forthcoming. You don’t need to have to buy equipment.

. make sure that your music or hypnosis mp3s are on your phone or your own equipment to play. Put this music on straight away.

These three things, provided mum has practiced her hypnosis techniques, everyday, will mean that she will very quickly respond physically and emotionally going into a calmer space. Giving the birthing partner time to get on with other things or to just be there with her, whispering words of encouragement.  It really is as simple as that to create the right space for birth.

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by Sophie Fletcher

One of my clients at the moment (I have permission to post this) is having a tough time of it and suffers badly from white coat syndrome. She is absolutely set on a homebirth, because she feels anxious in a hospital environment, but has been challenged every step of the way. Not overtly, as I’ve heard other mums being told – “it’s your first birth you can’t have a homebirth or “we’re too short staffed, you have to go into the hospital”. But her confidence is subtly being undermined by certain tests that will determine whether she is low or high risk and whether she will be ‘allowed’ to have a homebirth or not.  As she really wants a home birth these tests become a threat to her choice and consequently  the tests themselves cause anxiety, which can impact negatively on those test results.

This mum-to-be is excited about her baby’s arrival, has a wonderfully supportive husband, and is fully conscious of her connection with her little one. So it nearly broke my heart when she said last week,

“I guess I thought it would be a wonderful lovely experience and everyone working in that environment would be so full of love and positivity, its just taking me this long to realise that its just a job to most full of red tape, the ladies at Sainsburys checkout are happier and full of more love… what a shame.”

Ironically the stress being created by her treatment is probably causing more problems than if she were being treated with honesty and compassion.  Did you know that there is such a thing called white coat syndrome, which is a associated with people becoming more stressed in a clinical environment. Commonly it’s also called white coat hypertension in people with high blood pressure. Very often if someone has to go into hospital or to the doctors to have their blood pressure taken it goes up, if they take the machine home, their blood pressure can go down and be perfectly normal. The NICE guidelines on Hypertension note:

“White Coat Syndrome is reported to occur in as many as 25% of the population, especially where their BP is close to the threshold for diagnosis. It is more common in pregnancy and with increasing age. Failing to identify WCH makes inappropriate treatment for hypertension in normotensive patients a possibility. Similarly, hypertensive individuals can also exhibit WCH and may receive inappropriate dose titrations or additional antihypertensive agents. Patients have historically been enrolled in trials using clinic BP values, and these trials will almost certainly have included a proportion of patients with WCH. It is unknown whether benefits of treatment differ substantially in those with or without WCH.”

This study puts white coat syndrome as high as 32% in pregnant women.

White coat syndrome can affect pregnancy in several ways. Common antenatal tests such as gestational hypertension and gestational diabetes can to respond to stress in a negative way, sometimes skewing potentially normal results and pushing women into the higher risk category and maybe unnecessary induction before baby is ready to be born (my client was told she would have to be induced at 38 weeks, despite perfectly normal readings at home and diet management).  Other conditions, especially skin conditions such the itching due to cholestasis can worsen in relation to stress. For those of you with eczema you’ll already know that stress can cause skin conditions to worsen. In addition, viruses are harder to fight off if stress levels are higher. As a hypnotherapist I work with many different types of skin conditions, which see massive improvements after reducing stress and anxiety.

Reducing stress is crucial in pregnancy to maintain the best possible health both emotionally and physically and to avoid the implications of white coat syndrome. Here are several ways to reduce stress:

1. Take time out every day for just you, whether it’s a bath, some relaxation, reading a book. Prioritise it for you and your baby and make sure that you don’t postpone it
2. Learn self-hypnosis and stress reduction techniques that you can use before going in for a hospital appointment. Many classes, including our Mindful Mamma class, teach this. I’ve heard of women actually being able to reduce their blood pressure when they switch into self-hypnosis and rapid relaxation techniques
3. Ask if you are able to do any monitoring tests at home yourself so that you get a better picture of the patterns of your reading (place, time of day etc)
4. Hire a doula, a caregiver, or a consultant or midwife you trust or feel comfortable with.  You can request a change in consultant or midwife.  You can also choose to have an independent midwife or even to have private antenatal and postnatal care with an independent midwife if you can’t afford to pay for a full package.
5. In the absence of other symptoms, if you know you are stressed in a clinical setting having tests, talk to your doctor or midwife about monitoring in a different way

Michel Odent on Gestational Diabetes

Heni Goer on Gestational Diabetes

False diagnosis of hypertension leads to increased rates of intervention

Impact of stress and link to diabetes

Hypnobirthing can deceive midwives into thinking you’re not in labour.

When teaching classes using hypnobirthing techniques, I often come across people who are sometimes worried about not knowing they are in labour and not getting to the hospital in time. Many women who do the Mindful Mamma  hypnobirthing class just don’t experience the type of pain or drama that you associate with labour you see on TV.

I always reassure clients that they will know when they are in labour, and baby is on their way, to trust in their instinct even if they are only experiencing a pressure or tightenings.  Usually this is why hypnobirthing babies are so quick to come, because mums can experience tightening or pressure, or nothing at all, in early labour, becoming more aware of labour nearing completion as the tightening or pressure becomes more intense.

A colleague of mine who had done hypnobirthing once talked about a client who took herself into hospital saying she needed an enema, she was found to be 10 cms dilated. Another client of mine just felt a little out of sorts and for some reason wanted to call her midwife, who told her she was 6 cm dilated and in established labour. These women just ‘knew’, without even consciously realising.  My personal experience was being put on a monitor to measure my contractions, which confused the midwives even more because the reading didn’t match my responses. The machine must have been broken! I think it even got a kick from one midwife.

How others around you witness a hypnobirthing labour progress.

While mums may know they are in labour others around them may not.   It’s often I hear mums say that the midwife thought they were a long way off only for dad to spot the head emerging.   I often hear of  midwives telling the mums to stay on the phone while they have a contraction to assess how much pain they are in, but usually if you tell them you’ve done hypnobirthing she says “come in quick!”, because  a midwife familiar with it will know that presentation can be different. In the 6 years I’ve been teaching, as far as I know, I have never had a mum turned away from a unit told she was not in labour, but last week this happened, twice to the same mum, and her little girl was born into her dads arms on the floor of their hall.   Her body took over and she didn’t even know that she was in the ‘pushing stage’ until baby’s head was emerging. Luckily all was well, they have a beautiful little girl, and an incredibly proud dad who has an amazing story to tell his daughter.

This mum knew she was in labour, which is why she went to the unit.  She should never have been sent home.  But what do you do if you are worried about the midwives not believing you are in labour or not getting to the hospital in time if you are planning a hospital birth and have done hypnobirthing?

• Trust in your instinct, if they are turning you away based on observing you through your surges/pressure/tightenings, tell them you have done hypnobirthing, or are using hypnosis for birth and have learned specific techniques to help with labour.   If you are worried ask your practitioner for a small factsheet or letter to give to the midwife on how hypnobirthing mums may present differently.  You have the option to request a vaginal examination at that point if your instinct is that you are baby will be here soon but they want to send you home.
• If you are sent home you have the choice to call your community midwife.  I have known mums to go home and call the midwife in the community saying that they are comfortable, they don’t want to move again and aren’t going to go back into the hospital, very often mum will feel instinctively that she hasn’t got time to go back into hospital.  This is known as an unplanned home birth and legally they have to attend you and come to your home. “

Hi, I had an unplanned homebirth! I went to the hospital, but they sent me home without examining me! When I got home I knew that I was close to having the baby so I rang the community midwife team based at our local childrens centre. They sent a midwife out to me straight away, and when she found that I was fully dilated she called them back to ask for another midwife. As you can image this wasn’t planned for and nothing was prepared for a home birth delivery! All went well. Midwives were fab and stayed for about an hour afterwards to make sure I was ok. All in all a positive experience! 

•  Have a planned homebirth.  Home birth is very safe for low risk mums and is particularly compatible with hypnobirthing. The midwife is much more able to watch your progress by observation over a longer period of time and you don’t have the worry of travelling backwards and forwards between home and hospital.
• When practicing your hypnobirthing, breathing or relaxation imagine a period of time that you want to know you’re in labour. It may be 3 hours before baby is born, or 4 or 6.  Perhaps write yourself an affirmation “My body will let me know that my baby is on their way 3 hours before they are born”.
• Think about hiring a Doula. A doula will be with you at home, or when you leave for hospital. They will know you’ve done hypnobirthing and will act as your advocate either getting you to hospital or calling the midwife to your home at the right time.
• Rest assured that this is a very unusual thing to happen, tune into your instinct, your body and your baby. Trust that you know what is happening more than anyone else around you and that this just goes to show how powerful the mind can be. At the end of the day these stories are a wonderful endorsement that hypnobirthing works.

Clock watching can slow labour down.

The due date countdown and friends who can’t help asking is the baby is here yet.

by Sophie Fletcher

“Have you had the baby yet?” is a question that you may here more and more as you approach your due date. As much as they love their friends and family this text or call can be one of the biggest irritants to mums-to-be as when they go past their due date.  Ironically, the worst culprits are often other women who, without thinking, feel they are being attentive to their friends and bombard them with texts, saying “just checking that you’re ok”, “oh so you haven’t had the baby yet”.   An acute example is my own mother, who phoned the hospital and was buzzed through by reception to the intercom in my room, during labour, at least twice to ask if I’d had my baby!

Most people automatically send a text round when baby is born; I’ve received numerous texts at 2, 3 or 4 am.  So the rule of thumb is if you haven’t received a text then baby hasn’t arrived into the world yet and if baby is on their way, and mum knows, she’s unlikely to want to text you back or chat to you.

Friends and family should fight the urge to call the mum when she is reaching her due date, she may be at the receiving end of dozens of texts from well meaning people.  At the same time mum-to-be may be under pressure for induction because she’s gone over her due date – the texts or phone calls  may become  a reminder that she’s over her due date and cause even more stress.

You may think, “I’ll switch my phone off” when I get close to my due date.  But the sound of an answer message  can just stir up the excitement even more, because if your phone is switched off everyone who calls assumes that you are in labour.

I know and you may know that you are not at term until you reach 42 weeks, and that the majority of women birth their babies before this date, but very often over their 40 week due date.  Only around 3-4% of babies come on their due date.

We also know that any stress or apprehension can stop labour from starting, as it releases stress hormones that can slow labour down, so it’s incredibly important that mum doesn’t have these reminders everywhere around her due date, and that she is able to go, stress free, into labour when she and her baby are ready.

Tips to help you minimise this disturbance as you approach your due date:

1. Don’t tell people your due date.  Tell them an approximate time, eg. The end of August, middle of September.
2. Tell your friends that you will message them straight away when baby is born.
3. Ask them not to text you, to ask “how you are”, or “if baby has arrived” after your due date but maybe a “I’m nipping to the supermarket, do you want anything” text is fine.
4. Get some lovely relaxation music to reduce stress after your due date when you may be getting anxious. Try the Mindful Mamma Mp3 on itunes.

By Sophie Fletcher

Yesterday my friend Katie rang to say her cat, Sox, had finally given birth to the kittens we knew she was expecting. Last week we were watching her intently over coffee, her belly swaying in time with her step, noticing that as she lay down in various places in the sun trying to get comfortable she couldn’t lie for long.   We had a feel of her belly and you could feel at least 3 kittens in there moving around.   We hedged bets on when she would give birth, neither thinking it would be within the next few days.

Suddenly, Sox’s behaviour changed and she was restless, clawing at boxes in the study near where Katie has been making a box for her to nest in.  Birth was sure to be imminent! Katie put the box down for Sox and left the study. Tom her youngest had been unwell and having a few sleepless nights, so there had been lots of noise and movement through the night, but in the afternoon just after Katie popped the box down and joined Tom for an afternoon nap, Sox snuggled up in the afternoon quiet in her box in the darkness underneath the desk and gave birth to four kittens. Coming down an hour or so after putting the box out and having a nap Katie found her licking the sac off the kittens.

The study has become a no go area after the birth, so Sox can feed and nurture her kittens in quiet, undisturbed by the three rowdy children in the house.   My children are allowed to go and peek into the box, but not make their presence known and certainly not to touch the kittens at this stage.

We have more in common with Sox in how we birth than we think. One of the prerequisites for a good birth is that the mother is undisturbed, that she feels safe and that her environment supports this.  During her birth Sox was in the darkness under a desk away from prying eyes and free from people and interruption. She felt comfortable in her nest. Us humans make a joke of our ‘nesting instinct’ but it’s a wonderful reminder of the instinctive birthing mammal within us.

If you compare the expectations of Sox’s birth to your own, you realize that we didn’t know when Sox’s kittens were to be born, we just knew that she’d been getting bigger and slower! There was no due date at all.  We simply guessed when she’d give birth, we even had no idea when labour started.

When Sox gave birth, she instinctively knew when it was quiet and she wouldn’t be interrupted – when the house was sleeping.  This reminds me of a story that someone told me of how she labored really well while her birth attendant was sleeping, and that the gentle reassuring snoring helped her. She knew someone was there, and would be there if she needed them, but at the same time was utterly confident that she wasn’t been watched and would not be interrupted.

Then after the birth, Sox had time to bond with her kittens, us knowing that she may reject them, if the children or we touched them.   Her space will be kept quiet and protected for a few weeks at least.

If you compare this gentle, quiet experience to the bright lights of hospital, people chatting away, noise and interruption everywhere then you can begin to understand where we are going wrong. At the end of the day we are animals, with big brains that get in the way of birth.  Animals don’t have birth manuals, they just know what to do.  Let your brain go to sleep, let your animal instinct wake up and tune into what you want for your birth.   It’s probably not so different from what Sox wanted.

Silence before Humour

Noise. It’s like a belisha beacon, or a loud game show buzzer jumping out of the screen every time I watch a birth on One Born Every Minute or a birth on television, or even homebirths where people chatting away while mum’s in the pool, I even saw one when a telephone rang just as the mother was birthing her baby. The noise sets my teeth on edge. Instinctively it just feels wrong, I want to “shhhh!” them. Why do people feel the urge to fill that  birth space with chat?

Last weekend I finished my Doula training with Michel Odent and experienced Doula Liliana Hammers. I was mesmerized listening to Liliana’s accounts of how even when awoman shouts out or asks questions, she treats it as rhetorical, just quietly shrugs and smiles with a calm reassurance, not even necessarily answering the question. This does take skill and at one point I realized that Liliana would make a fantastic counsellor. Very often in counselling, clients ask a question as part of their own internal process. Entering into an internal space, with the unspoken support of someone nearby, allows them to connect safely with their emotions and to ask questions of themselves.  Asking a question out loud doesn’t always mean that they are asking you for the answer, but seeking that answer from within themselves or even expressing an observation. Silence is often used as a technique to allow someone to become still and to engage with the feelings that arise in that moment, free of judgment.

Why are people so uncomfortable with silence in a birth space? And why do they feel the need to talk all the time.  So often people feel compelled to speak when there is silence and to fill that birth space with the clutter of words and noise.  Very often this is what happens at births, people seem to find it difficult to just sit and to be.  Some midwives are chattering away, interrupting the mother, some fathers or birthing partners use humour to break that silence as it feels uncomfortable and humour is an instinctive way to ‘break the ice’. Sometimes there evens seems to be a bit of a social event going on around the mother.

Why not chat away, interrupt, engage the mother with conversation?  During the birth a mother goes into an internal birth space, it’s a different state of being than she is in every day life.  Naturally, she quietens down her chattering mind, her neo-cortex, the same part of the brain that shuts down as you drift off to sleep at night. Michel Odent told me he called it “falling into sleep and falling into labour”.   To allow the right birth space is to allow the mother the same space as she falls asleep in every night. Secure, dark, unobserved, protected and quiet.  If someone were chattering away to you, or standing over watching you while you were trying to get to sleep it would be difficult wouldn’t it!

Very often midwives used to knit so that they could just be in the birth space, occupied with something that allowed them to be present without making their presence felt.  This strong, calm, non-judgmental, quiet reassurance helped to hold the mother in that  birth space, without the need for interruption.

So when it’s silent be silent too. If the mother makes noise, or asks questions that seem irrational and unlike her,  don’t always feel like you have to reply or even give words of reassurance. Bite your tongue, be strong, present and calm.   Consider that nothing needs fixing, everything is fine and that by wading in with words you are disrupting something that needs to be uninterrupted and undisturbed .  Sometimes that quiet, calm presence, and that reassuring shrug and smile are all that’s needed for the birth space to be a perfect space for birth.

Babies need to be water with love and patience.

 Why the fuss about birth and not the baby? 

By Sophie Fletcher

“Whatever the present moment contains, accept is as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.” 

Eckhart Tolle

Recently I was reminded by a friend about the bigger picture.  She said birth is just a small part of the journey we experience as pregnant women. The much bigger part of the experience is what comes after – motherhood. She wondered why women are so focused on the actual birth rather than their baby and suggested that this preoccupation with birth prevents a woman from wholly preparing to be a mother, connecting with her baby on their journey.

There is no doubt that the focus has shifted from having a baby, and the baby themselves, to how the women are going to manage the birth, get the right pushchair, finish the nursery, perhaps moving house (surprisingly common!) or how long their maternity leave is going to be.   In our Mindful Mamma classes at the beginning we ask everyone to spontaneously write on a note the first word that springs to mind when you think of birth, very often baby isn’t in the mix, instead words like pain, control, blood, long and hard work float to the surface from fears harbored in the unconscious.

But the truth of it is that from conception to birth to motherhood is a life creating, life changing, daunting, challenging and absobloodylutely incredible journey. Birth is just a moment, an intense moment, of a period in your life that will bring you highs and lows, tears and laughter, fear and joy.   There is nothing more frightening than a baby making their first wobbly steps near your mother-in-law’s granite fireplace and nothing more wonderful than your baby’s chubby arms loosely clasped around your neck as they fall asleep rhythmically breathing into your ear.   But we don’t dwell on any of these before they happen, we experience those moments as they happen and enjoy them or manage them skillfully in the moment.

Imagine conception as the planting of a seed, the seed growing beneath the surface nurtured by the soil, out of sight but watched expectantly until it breaks through the surface.  The plant continues to grow but from this moment is reliant on the water and sunlight to grow and blossom.   Just as this plant needs water and sunlight your baby needs your love, care and gentle compassion to nourish their emotional well-being and growth.

Motherhood can be a wonderful thing and it can also be a mirror of birth in terms of the emotions.  There is fear, there is sometimes that sense of losing control, and there is joy, happiness, the worry of not knowing what is the right way and wrong way to do it.

Birth is just the beginning, and just like motherhood you can choose to get on and do it and do it your way, intuitively with love, strength and patience.   Your baby’s journey into this world begins at birth, just as your journey into motherhood begins and your partner’s journey into fatherhood begins.

So allow yourself to become aware in this moment of your baby, the core of your being, your connection with each other and how you are moving forward together hand in hand on a new, exciting and eventful journey that will last long after the birth.

Prior to the birth, allow yourself the time to reflect on what type of teacher you want to be, how you want your baby to learn. Being mindful of that responsibility, reflecting and welcoming that role will in turn strengthen and prepare you the birth – the moment that your journey begin and the moment that your flower nudges through the soil and begins to grow into a beautiful blossom cared for and loved by you.

Birthing Confidently

By Sophie Fletcher, Mindful Mamma

Sophie Fletcher is a founding member of Mindful Mamma, Doula, Clinical Hypnotherapist and specialist advisor for the National Council for Hypnotherapy on Pregnancy and birth.  Her book “Mindful  Hypnobirthing” will be published by Vermillion in 2014. Classes are run across the UK, it’s a one day class to hypnosis and mindfulness for birth. Sophie also does private classes for couple in London and the East Midlands. www.mindfulmamma.co.uk, www.sophiefletcher.co.uk, sophie@mindfulmamma.co.uk

A friend this week asked if I could signpost them to some articles on confidently birth and that could help some people they knew feel a little less afraid of birth and to prepare for a confident birth.   So I searched all my resources for an appropriate article, something that was an overview and that inspired confidence. Importantly something that made them think, “yes I can do this and it’s going to be ok, actually better than ok!”.

So I searched, and I couldn’t believe it. A simple comprehensive blog entry on confident birth, that was an overview totally eluded me. Don’t get me wrong, there are hundreds of fantastic blogs on confident birth, hypnobirthing, home birth, normal birth but they’re a patchwork quilt of specific articles about one tiny part of birth.

If I were considering a normal birth, a confident birth,  that made me think about the birth with calm excitement, and helped me to think that it could be different and better than I had imagined, with some basic resources to get me started,  I would be unlikely to stumble upon it.  I would just feel overwhelmed with all the information. I needed to write something on confident birth for the beginner!

Seasoned bloggers and natural birth advocates know where to look, but to a mum just beginning her journey who is frightened or apprehensive, and just come across the term normal birth, or confident birth, it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack. A haystack that is stuffed full of comments and threads from pregnancy forums, compounding most fears about birth.

So for my Mindful Mamma clients and others who are interested in a normal confident birth I thought I’d write a condensed resource, a beginner’s guide to a confident birth and a springboard into the vast network of information on the internet about how birth can be powerful and amazing.

There are some bullet points to get you thinking about confident birth, a couple of videos that show you what you can do, and links to blogs and birth stories of mothers that have done it.

1. Your body is designed to birth, you CAN do it and do it well. You can have a confident calm birth.   Women birth every moment all over the world about 49,000 babies are born every day and the large majority of those babies are born healthy and well.
2. You have choice every step of the way, you can change your midwife, you can choose any hospital you wish, you can choose a homebirth, you can have as many birthing partners as you wish, you can choose to have a vaginal examination or you can choose not to have a vaginal examination, you can choose to have more time, you can choose the birth you want.
3. Birth is not the worst pain ever, but fear of pain can make it worse. Some women say they don’t experience pain, others do and find it very intense.   I broke my elbow a few years back it was awful, it was constant and it lasted for weeks. If you are contracting over a period of 8 hours 4 mins apart you are perhaps only having contractions for 2 hours.  The trick is to remain focused and do a class that teaches you great coping strategies.  Many second time mums find it easier, not because their physiology has changed or they ‘know how to do it’, it’s because they lose the fear and they know that they can do it.  It’s amazing what we can do when we are in the right mind set.
4. Stop watching anything like One Born Every Minute, I find that programme incredibly upsetting sometimes, and find it difficult to get rid of some of those images in my head.  I can’t imagine watching it a few weeks before I’m due to deliver.
5. Understand the truth about any fears you have during pregnancy, concerns about a big baby, concerns about tearing, or being out of control.  Do some research so you can really understand how your body works and take preventative measures or do some good reading. Odds are that you’ll find research that contradicts common pregnancy myths and  you’ll feel more confident.
6. Learn about how your hormones work, and what your body is designed to do.  You’ll learn that the more you let go of your fear, the easier it is to focus and to be in control of your birth.
7. Do a good class, hypnosis for birth or yoga or even one of our Mindful Mamma classes.   This will build your confidence and help you to see birth in a different way to how it’s generally portrayed in western society, a medial event and helping you stay in control. Even some confidence building Mp3s will help.
8. Don’t always believe what you are told, if you don’t want what you are offered there is always an alternative. It’s up to you to ask.
9. A cliche I know, but listen to your instincts. We are animals at the end of the day. Animals don’t come with manuals, they instinctively know how to birth.
10. Focus on your baby, often forgotten, this is baby’s journey and your journey into motherhood.  It’s a labour a love, bringing your baby into the world and into your arms.  A good friend recently who is mother to two young boys said “there is too much focus on the birth, when becoming a mother is so much more”.

Links for a confident birth

Please feel free to add your blog or any other resources that I have missed in the comments section.  Or even some reassuring comments for first time mums who may be frightened of birth.