By Sophie Fletcher

Sophie is the Author of the best selling book Mindful Hypnobirthing C0-founder of Mindful Mamma, one day mindfulness and hypnosis birth classes which are taught around the world. You can connect with her on instagram @mindfulmammauk

Today it’s World Hypnobirthing Day. That there is a day for hypnobirthing is incredible, enough people all around the world teaching this’ and benefitting from hypnosis for birth, for a global celebration.

My son is nearly 14, and it was this time 14 years ago that I was listening to my tracks every single night. There were no classes then, no online communities, no midwives who knew what it was in my local hospital. I was the weird woman who was sleeping through her contractions.

Since then, I’ve trained over 100 practitioners, I’ve taught thousands of people and written Mindful Hypnobirthing which has sold over 30,000 copies.

Mindfulness and Hypnosis – the perfect team

As a doula I’ve used it and seen it working, as a hypnotherapist I’ve used that experience to constantly improve and tighten techniques so that they work simply and powerfully.  I integrated it with mindfulness after I had my first experience on retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh…and two toddlers over 10 years ago. I love it, tell me what your fear is and I can help find a way through it in no time. Your special place? No problem. Hypnotherapy is a language to me and hypnobirthing is just one of the things I do, and love.

It’s not about birth and babies for me! 

Hypnobirthing was not about babies and birth for me though! This is not why I became a teacher, and sometimes I still think “how did I get here?”.  It surprised me, as more than everything else, hypnobirthing made me realise that I was a feminist.  Of course I was always a feminist, I just didn’t know I was. Until I was pregnant.

Growing up I ALWAYS believed that I was equal, I’d been raised to believe that I could do anything I wanted, and I believed it.  That illusion was shattered when I got pregnant – pregnancy and birth forced me to see how my place in the world was defined by my biology.

Booking appointment at the GP’s surgery? He looked at my husband and said “do you want it”, I slept walked through it all, did what I was told.  Part-time working?  I was told by my female boss not to go for a job I was qualified for, as I wouldn’t get it. My full time male colleague got it. This is when I learned that not just men, but women too,  subjugated women.

Hypnobirthing was more than a “birth technique”

What hypnobirthing showed me was how much choice is out there, it exposed the ugly truth of women being stripped of choice when they need it most.  I was so angry to discover that choices, so many choices were withheld when I had my first son. I didn’t even know they existed. The bubble had burst. It was such a violation of rights – of who I thought I was. At first my anger was everywhere, the system, and unjustifiably, myself, my own mother and my husband. How did I not see this?  Did they not see this? How did I not know?

My hypnobirthing experience was not what I would imagine you think to be the “perfect hypnobirth” (that’s a myth too by the way) but it was POWERFUL, it woke me up, I become strong, courageous, ready for the challenges of motherhood. I wanted to help other women to have this experience. I was awake!

It’s bigger than just hypnobirthing

Training as a hypnotherapist gave me the skills and the courage to do more, to go deeper into myself and to train in other ways. I wanted to explore different perspectives and approaches that could help harness internal focus, increase perspective, unleash strength and motivation.  I see so many women that are a shadow of who they could be:  teenage girls, women that are pregnant, women that have given birth, women who have been trodden down by society in their jobs and relationships, women that are moving through midlife. And I hope that through my work, I can offer them a light and key – just as I was offered one.

Hypnobirthing was my key. It was never just about birth – it was about women and helping them light their fire.

How can Chiropractic help me?

Naomi McKay specialises in pregnancy

My name is Naomi McKay and I am a chiropractor who specialises in treating pregnant women and new born children. In essence, chiropractic is a natural and effective way to relieve aches and pains caused by your joints and muscles. It’s much better than taking pain killers because the treatment tackles the cause of your problem not just the symptoms plus it’s very safe and won’t harm your baby.

During pregnancy I typically help women with low back, groin or pelvic pain such as SPD which can be exceptionally painful and debilitating for many women. I also help with other problems like carpal tunnel syndrome, neck pain and headaches which can worsen during pregnancy.

Another goal of treatment is to help prepare the body for birth by releasing the soft tissues around the pelvis which can restrict the baby’s position. I also offer the Webster technique which can help encourage a breech baby to turn into the correct position. I also teach you things you can do at home to help prepare for an easier labour such as sitting positions and exercises – I’m even happy to teach dads some stretching and massage they can do for you!

When your baby arrives I offer all newborns a free health check.

It’s also important to get yourself treated within 8 weeks of giving birth to avoid developing problems in the future. This is due to the effects of relaxin, the hormone which is released to allow your joints to relax so you can give birth more easily. Over the 6-8 following birth your relaxin levels return to normal and your joints stiffen up again. This is why it’s important to make sure your body is in the correct alignment as often over time joints that have stiffened in the wrong place lead to lower back pain and problems in the future.

If you would like to know any more about how chiropractic can help you or your child, I welcome everyone to come in for a free check. This is an opportunity for us to meet, discuss any issues and decide whether chiropractic is right for you. There is more details information on these topics available on my blog and I offer 2 free guides, “how to avoid back pain during pregnancy” and “how to have a healthy, happy baby.” Just visit www.handsonchiro.com to find them.

Contact details:

Dr Naomi Mills

Hands on Health Chiropractic

Radcliffe Chiropractic Clinic,

16 Grantham Road,

Radciffe on Trent,

Notts,

NG12 2HA.

0115 9334544

www.rad-chiro.co.uk

@chiro_naomi on twitter

SaveSave

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

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.

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. 

By Sophie Fletcher

There is a reason why I say no clocks or watches in the birth room, it’s birth time not day time. Focussing on the passing of time can actually slow it down, doesn’t time go faster when you are not fixated on a clock or watch?

I recently came across the word Kairos, which is an ancient Greek word meaning opportune or supreme moment. The Greeks had two words for time chronos and Kairos. Chronos is about sequential time, but Kairos is time in between time, moments when we are displaced from time as we know it and when something special can happen, something out of the ordinary.  This is where I think birth time is.

It struck me that this is how it is at birth, a time between time when something transcendental happens.

Could we access this place, this birth time through intentional techniques like hypnosis or meditation, or do we do it naturally? It can be either I think. When working with hypnosis in our classes we do a very deep relaxation, it only lasts about 20 minutes, but inevitably people always assume that it was 5 or 10 minutes. This is what’s known as time distortion; when we are in an altered state like hypnosis it’s as if we tumble out of physical time, and have the opportunity to roam freely in a timeless state. It’s a great experience and is incredibly energizing, it’s as if your inner psyche somehow refocuses its lens on life.

It’s very similar with mindfulness, though they way we access and experience that state can be different. During birth time, mindfulness is about being in the moment, being aware of those sensations in the right now, accepting them in that moment, without experiences from the past or expectations of the future leaking into that moment. It’s a state of clarity and of connection with your body and your baby. If you are in the moment during birth, you just experience a sensation and you manage it whether it is pain or anything else. However, if you become afraid of that sensation, projecting things you have read, seen and heard onto that sensation it becomes worse and you can lose your sense of perception.

Using hypnosis during birth can be about accessing a deep state of relaxation but can also be about adapting the current situation through subconscious change,  or it can be for disassociation, separating ourselves from things we do not wish to experience, such as pain.

When we are in the moment or deeply relaxed hypnotic state we are not thinking of the past or the future, those are where our fears or apprehensions lie. We are between time when we are in birth time. Both meditation and hypnosis correspond with a theta brain state, the state when you brain waves slow down to a rate that is comparable to the stage when you are just slipping into sleep – you know that state, just as you are drifting off.

Being deeply relaxed whether you are using mediation or hypnosis can help your body to do what it does naturally, allowing your muscles to work optimally.

When I teach my classes, I say to couples I believe that whilst sometimes hypnosis can be useful during the birth, for example to get you back in your birthing zone, you can do it perfectly well without. I’ve met enough midwives, watched enough women birthing, and spoken to women who have birthed without hypnosis to know that women automatically enter into an altered state, a theta state during birth. As a hypnotherapist I see people in that state all the time. Some women say it was as if they weren’t actually in their body but were observing what was happening.

The trick is to train yourself to let go of the fear that stops you from being in that moment, and to change how your subconscious reacts to birth. This allows you to automatically switch into a comfortable birthing zone. Hypnosis is a brilliant way of doing this. Preparation is vital, listening to our Mindful Mamma mp3s, going to a class or seeing a hypnotherapist can help you prepare your mind and your body so that when you birth you are able to be in that moment, free of worry or fear and able to experience something extraordinary.

Trust me and trust yourself; what a remarkable gift, to be given access to a space between time, where something magical happens that will bring you one of the greatest gifts you’ll ever receive.

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

Seven months pregnant and counting 

By Sophie Fletcher

Seven. This seems to be a significant number when it comes to birth and the feelings that arise at seven months pregnant.

Phone calls from mums enquiring about our Mindful Mamma antenatal classes often come when they are seven months pregnant, a frantic “I’ve only got 12 weeks to go, is it too late?”“The fact that I’ve got to give birth in 8 weeks has only just dawned on me”.Why is it that mums to be suddenly make a psychological shift to thinking about the birth at this stage in their pregnancy?

The pragmatists amongst us would say, well of course the closer we get to something the more we think about it, so it stands to reason that the closer we get to birth, the more prominent that event becomes in our thinking until at one point, at about seven months pregnant, it begins to dominate our thoughts.

Putting pragmatism aside, I still believe that it is uncannily consistent and this interests me; why always when women are seven months pregnant? Then I read some research by Cyna et al, one of the better meta analyses of hypnosis for birth, and their findings showed that the best time to start preparing for birth using hypnosis was when women were around seven months pregnant.

I’m sure that it’s because there is shift in the mother towards the birth. For me this is similar to a microcosmic maternal individuation process, an unconscious shift, that begins to integrate the parts of the mother, the baby and the father as well as the surrounding community, in preparation for their new relationship as father and mother and their unit as a family.

Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, talked about individuation as being a process that we undertake largely in the second part of our lives, but I strongly believe that a similar process of individuation takes place, on a smaller scale, in a mother during pregnancy and the birth itself and that this process begins in earnest at around seven months pregnant.

“Jung understood individuation to be something that began in the second half of life, when individuals reach the zenith of their lives and suddenly find themselves facing an unknown vista or some unforeseen upheaval. Sometimes this turning point takes the form of a crisis: such as a financial failure, a health problem, a broken relationship, or a change of residence or profession – something which upsets the status quo. Sometimes this experience assumes the form of a profound self-doubt, a loss of meaning or religious conviction, a questioning of everything previously held so dear. Sometimes it presents itself as a deep yearning or a call to change direction. And many times, it can manifest itself in powerful dreams and fantasies.”

We all know that women have pregnant women have powerful dreams, often difficult to understand.These dreams surface from a maelstrom of feelings and emotions during a time of profound change in true Jungian style.

At this stage all sorts of doubts and worries may begin to come up to the surface, doubts in their ability to birth, doubts as to whether they will be a good mother, feelings about their own childhood or their own relationship to their mother might arise.I’ve even heard some women say that they were faced with their own fear of death, during labour, something described by Leboyer in his landmark video “Birth without Violence”.But how empowering. Imagine being able to face your deepest fears, knowing you are loved and supported by all those around you, and to be able to conquer those fears and to come out on the other side, richer for the experience.

Just as with the formal process of Jungian individuation, with birth we become stronger, different, more aware of our own abilities to reach deep within our own resources and to come out understanding the extent of our own personal power. It is transformational, a gift and it upsets me that this is taken away, damped down and denied by unnecessary interventions or drugs during birth. When people ask me “why not take the drugs”, “what’s the point in experiencing a normal birth when you don’t have to feel anything”, I want to tell them that it is important to feel something, to be aware, to be in command, to be immersed in your true capabilities, but it’s quite an abstract concept to describe to someone who is set on an epidural.

It’s my belief that for some reason 7 months pregnant marks the start of this process.In the wonderful book ‘Birth Traditions’ by Jacqueline Vincent Priya different traditions across the world are explored, and they are remarkably consistent, the same themes emerge, but in different ways.One of those that is the ‘7 month ceremony”.

Priya writes that “Seven is a number with magical and spiritual significance…in many places this is the time for a special ceremony. Often this is carried out in the first pregnancy so that as well as protecting the couple and their unborn baby, preparing them for birth, it also established the couple socially in the status of potential family”.

Nowadays I see more of my clients undertaking what’s known as Bessingways to begin this journey when they are seven months pregnant and see it as a more meaningful alternative to a baby shower. It’s an opportunity to invite just a few close friends and have a celebration of the baby’s life and your journey into motherhood.

Here are some suggestions for a few things to do if you wanted to created your own blessingway when you are seven months pregnant, to begin your journey towards birth.

Poems – Each friend can bring a poem that represents something they want to share with you as part of your birth journey.

Beads – Some women like to create a bead bracelet for the birth, each friend gives you a bead with a few words to take into the birth with you. So that each time you twist or touch each bead, you are reminded of that friend and their support for you.

Belly Casting– Another popular activity for a blessingway.

Welcoming Wish – Each person writes a small wish for your baby onto a card and ties it to a tree, the mother can then take these down to read during labour and to save for the baby.

Welcome Gifts – Each friend makes a promise to do something to help you after baby is born, eg. your ironing, meals for a few days, to take your baby for a walk while you get some sleep…use your imagination!

These little steps which begin the gentle transformation from mum-to be, from when they are around seven months pregnant, to mother in a way that unconsciously strengthens you and prepares you for the incredible experience of birth.

OMG OMG OMG.

How excited can I get about ducklings? Two have hatched today in my garden. I saw their dark brown fluffy bodies and beautiful shiny eyes, and heard their cute cheep cheep. Seeing them peer out from their nest was almost as lovely as seeing a new baby born, looking up from her mother’s breast. (Actually, newly hatched ducklings are fluffier and less gooey – but not nearly so emotionally heartwarming).

We’ve had ducks for a while. I wanted to hatch some, and I wanted it to be as natural as possible. I knew that newly hatched ducklings imprint onto that which they see move, so they need their mummy around when they hatch, in order to follow mummy duck around the garden. I didn’t want ducklings in a box. I wanted them stumbling over stones and rocks, following mummy frantically and freely.

So we waited. And waited. No signs. These ducks have been bred for eggs, not breeding, so I guessed that their natural instincts had been bred out. And I wondered, while putting the washing out, how quickly instinctive birth can be lost after generations of caesarean sections?

Anyhow, we tried all sorts of other things. Getting chicken hens to sit on the eggs, using a home made incubator, using a posh incubator. To no avail.

Then, suddenly, mummy had made her very own nest, and was sitting on nine eggs! It wasn’t where we wanted her to be – but she was so well hidden that we realised she wasn’t in danger from foxes. We were delighted. But not as delighted as we are now that they have also hatched!

Clever mummy. And to think that we lost faith in mother nature and her ability to create fabulous new life just like that! Our classes help us to put that faith back, and as a doula, I have to work at keeping the faith. I can’t believe I let it waiver with my mummy duck. She has taught me to keep the trust no matter what the situation!

His reply was “well that’s easy isn’t it, you just need to relax.” Pleasantly surprised that all my work on birth had begun to see the growth of positive thoughts about birth, I smiled and said “yes that’s right”. He continued, “you see I saw it on Scooby doo, and when the chicken relaxed the egg popped out. Easy.”

So not all my conditioning! But his response was interesting, it demonstrated how early our thoughts around the birth process are conditioned from a very young age. At Mindful Mamma we teach all our clients how important it is to relax and prepare, and of course when you are relaxed and prepared it can be great if you have no underlying fears or apprehensions surrounding birth.

However a large piece of research from Sweden recently showed that preparing with psychoprophilaxis (relaxation techniques) compared to those who hadn’t showed no difference at all in outcomes.

This is hugely important for us hypnotherapists as we know that any underlying fears, whether it is of hospitals or needles, or simply that the mother feels threatened within her birth environment, can trigger the fight or flight response, which feeds into what is known as the fear-tension-pain cycle. As far as we know only preparing using hypnosis, particularly work around fear release, can break this cycle if there are any underlying apprehensions about birth.

Sadly in today’s society we are conditioned to believe that birth is painful, that it’s a medical process and that it can be dangerous from a very young age. I challenge you to find a birth in a film or a TV show that is not dramatic and fear inducing! We are not taught about how beautiful it is, how amazing our bodies are at adapting to birth physically, how the baby helps itself be born, and that actually the sensations and intensity you feel during birth are manageable. When you are free of fear, relaxed and calm your body does what it does naturally.

Imagine an animal in the wild giving birth, if she senses any threat, however small, she will automatically slow labour down. We are exactly the same, when giving birth our primal brain is bought into play, and we react as animals do. We need to disengage the chattering mind to just allow the birth to happen as other mammals do..

We set up the Mindful Mamma one day class to explore this and to teach couples to prepare for the birth they want, to learn they have choice, and to help dads understand how important their role and composure during birth is. In classes you can learn how to release your fear of birth, using hypnosis, to break the cycle of fear, even if it is subconscious, and then visualizations, self-hypnosis and mindfulness to keep mums in their birthing zone.

We have even taught midwives how the impact of their voice, gestures, presence can affect mum psychologically and physically. Amazing stuff!

More and more women are becoming aware of their potential to experience the birth they want, to feel empowered and in control. If you have any pregnant friends, pass this on – it may just get them thinking.

You can download birth MP3s or buy CDs from www.mindfulmamma.co.uk.  Classes start at just £120 and are held across the UK, Australia and Barcelona.

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