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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How can I write a blog this month without mentioning the current series on Channel 4, ‘One Born Every Minute’?

I missed the bulk of the first two, as my internet connection is so slow, but after watching the 3^rd I’m grateful to Talk Talk for sparing me the ignominy of some of the husbands that I watched as they ‘supported’ their wives giving birth.

Watching the 3^rd episode of this programme, I watched aghast as a husband bullied his wife while she was in labour. She was squatting on the floor, while he berated her for wanting a natural birth over a section (she was a VBAC – Vaginal Birth Following Caesarean) and he wanted to know what she was going to do as he didn’t want to be there all night. Not to mention the dad who locked his wife in the toilet while she was having a contraction.

It really was a sight to behold and my heart goes out to both the mum and the midwife, Dominique, who was fantastic, calm and encouraging in the face of a real challenge. That the mum achieved a VBAC was I think down to her and the fact that she was caseloading midwife (the same midwife that followed the mother through antenatal care and the birth), giving the mum a sense of stability and familiarity.

However, despite me wanting to the throw my remote control at that dad, I also felt sorry for him, as his reaction to the situation was likely to have been driven by helplessness, fear and lack of knowledge.

My only experience of dads to be and birthing partners are those who choose to come on the course – those that want to understand what is happening so they can respectfully and knowledgeably support their partner. But who also realise that the opportunity to find more is out there, that there are classes that help him to understand what is happening and what he can do to help.

Last year, Michel Odent, a French Obstetrician renowned for his work on normal birth, wrote a provocative article where he categorically stated that men should not be in the birthing room. Lots of debate ensued online, with people agreeing or vehemently opposed- we sit somewhere in the middle and believe that men should be there, but only, if they want to be there and if they are free of anxiety and fear. Let’s face it, we’ve done a 360° turn in the last 40 years, from men down the pub or outside awaiting the news, to being absolutely expected to be in the birthing room – that’s a big shift and a big ask of men, who are excluded from the majority of antenatal care, with at the most access to an NHS or NCT class.

So it’s no surprise that some men who feel in the dark and disassociated from the pregnancy, and the birth suddenly find themselves into the uniquely intense experience of the birth itself without really knowing how to help. In fact many men on our classes say that the lack of knowledge or understanding of what is going on is what worries them as well as “seeing their partner in pain, and not being able to do anything about it.”

We turn this statement totally on its head in our classes, and teach the dad to be that he too has an important role, more than he might ever imagine, and that the birth can be empowering, and life changing for him as well. We also give them knowledge and techniques to support mum so he does know what to do.

We address the issue of fear in the birthing partner and enable couples to see that fear and anxiety are contagious. If dad is pacing up and down, biting his nails, or is restless it demonstrates to the mum that he is outwardly anxious, but there are also small ideomotor signals, small unconscious movements and gestures, driven by the subconscious, that the birthing mother can pick up subconsciously which can effect her birth.

We help the dad to make positive shifts in his confidence and belief that his wife or partner knows what to do instinctively and that she doesn’t need rescuing from the situation. Most importantly he knows what is happening, why is is happening and what to do about it.

Remember always that at the birth, it’s not just a baby being born, but a mother and a father too. Come on dads, do your bit, learn how to support your partner, and give her a strong shoulder to lean on physically and spiritually during birth and perhaps you’ll find hidden depths that you never knew you had.

A lot of the responses (including my neighbour’s) was that Denis Walsh has no right to comment on women’s experiences. Apparently, it is a woman’s domain, and men aren’t qualified to comment. So how come they are qualified to intervene, into delicate womanly parts with needles, tongs, machines, and all sorts of other paraphernalia. We don’t question that! Is that because they are “rescuing” women from the drama and pain of this cursed condition called childbirth?

Both men and women can believe that childbirth is something we should feel slightly uneasy or disgusted about, very fearful about, that we should work to numb the experience as far as possible, and that it is yet another example of how a woman’s body basically lets her down! (along with hormones, periods, breastfeeding and the menopause). She cannot birth without extreme pain or danger of death.

On the flip side, both men and women can believe that childbirth is something we should celebrate and admire, be proud of and in awe of. Isn’t the ability to create a perfect new life something quite amazing? Shouldn’t women be empowered and revered for that? And it doesn’t stop there. As well as bring forth new life, women can sustain it, with their ability to produce life-sustaining milk, which is in fact perfect nutrition, comfort, medicine, vitamins, in a way which nothing else can!

If we were to adopt the latter viewpoint in our society, this might sit slightly uncomfortably for some people. I have had a few fathers in our classes come to me after and say “do you know what? It almost makes me feel a little like I’m missing out”. To be able to celebrate womanhood and the wonder of birthing with due respect and admiration, rather than pity and mistrust, is, I believe, not easy for men or women in our society.

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