I had quite a few conversations with this particular mother before her daughter was born, and I was struck by the way in which she really took on board the information she had learned in the class and made it into her own support system for birth.She was quietly and inherently confident in her abilities to birth, practiced regularly, and translated what she had learned in the class into pictures and images that would remind her of her purpose during the birth. In other words, she put the work in.

The midwives commented on how good her birth plan was, and she built a lovely, supportive relationship with the midwifery team in the hospital.

I always say everyone is different and every birth is different. In our class we teach some fundamental principles about how your thoughts can affect your physical response during birth, and some very simple but effective hypnosis techniques, but we don’t prescribe how your birth should be. It doesn’t matter whether you chose to have a hospital or a home birth, whether you chose to have the baby rubbed down first or put straight onto your chest, whether you chose to have a lotus birth or not. It all comes down to feeling secure and safe, having all the information and being able to make a choice. If you baulk at the idea of a lotus birth, then don’t have one, other people may baulk at the idea of not having one. There is a huge spectrum in terms of what a normal birth could be regarded as; in fact One World Birth only yesterday published a video that questioned what ‘normal’ birth was.Denis Walsh, Professor of Midwifery in Nottingham, called it an optimal birth experience, and a physiological birth, which is absolutely the same philosophy that I would agree with.

What is normal for you is right for you.Taking on board a different belief system for birth, that you don’t really feel comfortable with, would defeat the purpose of what hypnobirthing is.For me hypnobirthing isn’t a dogma, its a way of looking at birth differently, teaching you what your body and your hormones are capable of, that you can do things differently, what you could do differently and importantly that you are in control of how you choose to experience your birth. Whatever you choose should be based on your wishes for your birth and your baby. Most of all it gives the confidence to trust your instincts and to bring your baby into the world your way.

Classes like Mindful Mamma, give you the space to pause, to think, to explore and consider how birth could be different and why it may matter to you, how you can work with partner and your midwife, and what alternatives there are to managing your experience comfortably – with techniques, and in a way that is right for you. It’s a springboard, and you can choose to get off, just tentatively jump up and down, or dive in!

I always say to people who have bought the mp3s, great, it’s a start, but doing a class makes an enormous difference and to those who have done the class, fantastic, but now the work begins!

Practice is enormously important; hypnosis is all about conditioning your response to birth and conditioning happens through repetition.Through practice you will also uncover different, and better ways of doing things for you.You may find that it feels better to tweak the suggestions and say them in a different way, you may want to change the breathing slightly, or you may wish to have different images.

One client changed her breathing with a little mantra that went “3,2,1 release release, release’ during each of her contractions, another printed off a picture of a baby on a little surfboard, surfing the wave to look at each time she had a surge.Another had what she called her oxytocin photos laid out on a table.

The message that the mother at the beginning for all other mums was that you have to make it your own and she was absolutely right.This is your baby, your birth, have the confidence and the self-belief to do it your way and practise, practise, practise

Last week I had the absolute privilege of attending a workshop with Dr Sarah Buckley.As luck would have it Annie a colleague had forwarded an email about it a few months back, and I booked it within minutes.Someone like Sarah is rare gem and a shining light in the gloom of medicalised birth, so I was sure that once word spread it would be booked up.

I give out Sarah’s article on ecstatic birth after all of my classes as I view it as essential reading for mothers to be. Her articles also pop up rather frequently on the Mindful Mamma facebook page! Our Mindful Mamma classes focus on the mind body connection, the need for mums to understand why they have to dampen down their neo-cortex during birth, and how to do it.Sarah’s work is crucial to this and this workshop a great opportunity to sharpen our message to mothers.

Sarah’s take home message was that a woman during birth needs to feel

• Private
• Safe
• Unobserved

A simple message, but one that gets lost in the morass of information that women are subjected to during their prenatal period.This message was the golden thread that bound her three sections together, ‘the safety and logic of normal birth’ ‘the impact to interventions’ and ‘the hour after birth and postnatal period’.

Her comparisons with animals, and her references to our mammalian instincts and old brain reminded me of the book that I sometimes share in classes by Desmond Morris, some may not be aware that he wrote a book called ‘Babywatching’, many years ago after observing human and animal behaviours during birth and early parenthood. Fortunately this accessible book has been republished.

His view was there are two p’s that are important for birth, not pain and pushing but position and place! He talks of horses, 90% of which give birth in the dead of night, when they know that they are unobserved.It was the place aspect, which came across so strongly in Sarah’s presentation, not just the physical space, what’s in it, how it looks, is it light, dark, but also a sense of the sanctity of that space.

Sarah spent a lot of time discussing the role of hormones – this is something we also spend time teaching, specifically in relation to our unconscious responses to the environment.These unconscious responses are triggered by instinctual reactions to our environment and our very basic survival functions that rest within our old brain.

When birthing we are actually more alert because we are more vulnerable, and so it is crucial that the sounds, voices, lights are kept to a minimum, so mum feels totally private, safe and unobserved.

The section on intervention, made me feel overwhelmed with sadness.The evidence to support normal birth and the benefits of uninterrupted birth to our children as well as to humanity is so compelling that, when weighed up with the incredible risks of some pharmaceutical and physiological interventions, I for one find it hard to believe that we are still having to shout so loudly about normal birth and its link to the psychological and physical wellbeing of mother and baby.

Sarah twice put up this quote by the Dutch obstetrician G. Loosterman and invited reflection on the last words, “do no harm” which of course are fundamental to any doctors commitment to care.

“Spontaneous labour in a normal woman is an event marked by a number of processes so complicated and so perfectly attuned to each other that any interference will only detract from the optimal character. The only thing required from the bystanders is that they show respect for this awe-inspiring process by complying with the first rule of medicine–nil nocere [do no harm].”

Her final section on post-birth was longer than I expected but which gave her the time to emphasis how important this period is. She spent a lot of time focusing on the cord and why it is so important to leave the cord until it has stopped pulsating. In fact Sarah had what’s known as a Lotus Birth with her children where you leave the cord attached to the placenta, even after the placenta has birthed, until it drops off naturally. I would urge anyone who is thinking of their options after birth to read the chapter in her book ‘Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering’ or her article on lotus birth. It makes complete sense, and dispels any concerns about the purported ‘risks’, that mothers sometimes ask me about, such as it increases jaundice.

I cannot even begin to go into the detail or do Sarah’s observations justice in this blog, but I would urge anyone expecting a baby to read her book, it is an important book, a very important book as she is a thoughtful and enquiring physician whose aim is to do no harm.We are at a tipping point with birth and Sarah describes birth how it’s meant to be.Babies should be born into this world with love not violence.Our attachment to each other, to our baby, the absolute joy of birth is important, it’s natures design.This complex exchange of hormones isn’t accidental these hormones actually have, paradoxically, a very simple purpose, which is to anchor the fundamental requirements of life and successful evolution – attachment and love – deeply in our brains.

Many thanks to Patrick Houser at Fathers to Be for organizing this wonderful event and to Janet Balaskas and her team at The Active Birth Centre for hosting it.Especially thanks to Sarah for coming over to the UK and her incredibly patient daughter Maia (who sat quietly and played the whole afternoon!) to share her work with us all.