Hynobirthing - is it worth it? - Pregnancy and Par...

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Hynobirthing - is it worth it?

Mantaray75 profile image
6 Replies

I'm considering doing a couple of sessions on this but my local ones are quite expensive. I'm just wondering how worthwhile people have found this method.

Although I'm hoping for a natural birth, at 43 and with an over anxious consultant I won't be surprised if I don't even get to the natural labour stage anyway, so again, how helpful would this course be.

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Mantaray75 profile image
Mantaray75
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6 Replies

For me the hypnobirth course was massively worth while. Part of it is about staying calm what ever happens and making choices that are right for you and baby. One of the big things we were taught is it's not about a natural birth at all, it's useful even in a c section. I would say not only did it help me in labour it helped me stop worrying about my pregnancy and helped with breast feeding as it helped me be much calmer. Hopefully that helps.

KittyK profile image
KittyK

I did it and while I wouldn't say it made me fully Zen, it did help me stay calm. I didn't panic even when my daughter had to be assisted with forceps. It depends if you can afford it I guess? I'd say it helped me stay a little calmer but it wasn't drastic xxx Good luck! Xx

Billywhizz10 profile image
Billywhizz10

We had a horrible, traumatic hell of a birth, a full on, emergency C section, and having done hypnobirthing saved our sanity in the aftermath.

Its a fancy name for meditation and mindfulness geared to pregnancy and birthing , that's all. You can apply to anything- birth, raising the kids, your job even. I used the breathing and relaxation techniques now when our 6 week old wakes up in the middle of the night, we still use it.

To be honest, I wish we had geared ourselves up for a bad birth, we had vision of natural birth, where we live, on the nhs, it was a stupid fantasy. Face up that you'll probably be bullied into getting induced and your birth will be highly medicalised, part of our trauma was letting go of the natural birth fantasy we had.

The one drawback of hypno-birthing is it encourages this image that natural birthing is the ideal we need to strive for and its focus is only on the birth. So for older women and IVF, you will have to fight tooth and nail for this, we lost.

One last thing I would say, with our 6 week old now, my wife thinks she concentrated too much on the birth, we both were, so now we're learning on the wire for crying, breastfeeding, etc, we went antenatal classes, but they were so in-adequate for the whirlwind that's coming your way !!

Best of luck xxx

I haven’t done a course but read “ your baby your birth” and have been listening regularly to Bree Taylor Molyneaux hypnosis for pregnancy on Spotify (before that the one for IVF) and they have helped a lot with anxiety surrounding birth x

CC2018 profile image
CC2018

I'm interested in doing a few of these as the class at our hospital is fully booked so i've found someone who does one to one. If you're worried about cost I ordered a ivf hypnobirthing cd from Amazon which has been great. There's 3 that take you through ivf, pregnancy and birth- I bought all of them but you can buy them separately xx

kt_11 profile image
kt_11

I found it really useful (age 34, induced at term due to IVF). Can’t comment on how useful it would be if you ended up with a c-section but I felt it really helped me to focus on my breathing and stay pretty calm despite being induced.

I used gas & air which I think was as much about the breathing control than the actual pain relief - I think it worked well with the breathing techniques from the hypnobirthing.

Baby got a bit distressed at the end and I needed episiotomy & ventouse to get him out but the midwife was amazed at how calm and quiet I was (not quite like the ladies on the hypnobirthing videos in their birthing pools but I never had any desire for a water birth) which helped save my energy for the pushing stage.

Never imagined it’d be my type of thing but I would recommend it 😊 x

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