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Can
you HypnoBirth®?
"My HypnoBirthing experience was
phenomenal. It was magical to me. I felt peace. I felt euporia. " So can you HypnoBirth®? When I first heard about HypnoBirthing, I thought that these women were special. I was not like them. For my first daughter’s birth, I thought pain was part of childbirth, and I was prepared for it. After 24 hours of labor, hours of pushing, a cesarean, and pain the entire time, I was absolutely terrified of giving birth again. How would it ever be possible to have a painless birth? I thought these HypnoBirthing women were either (1) lying or (2) saints, with emphasis on number one. The next time I got pregnant, I did even more research than the first time. I was willing to try anything that would decrease my pain without drugs. I hired a doula and having had two friends highly recommend HypnoBirthing, I signed up for classes. I started out skeptical. My doctorate is in clinical psychology and even when I was active in the field, I was not a full believer in hypnosis. I discovered though that HypnoBirthing is not straight hypnosis. It calls on the roots of hypnosis, teaching you to fully relax, but it does not put you into a trance or anything close to one. So far so good. Since I teach prenatal yoga, I know how beneficial relaxation can be and how it also takes practice. I attended the HypnoBirthing classes and learned the breathing, the relaxation, and also saw the videos. The women on the videos were completely relaxed. They barely made noise. Some of them didn’t even move! I didn’t think I could be one of those women. My HypnoBirthing teacher, Dr. Vivian Keeler, was also a doula. She would describe beautiful births she had attended. At one point she said to the class, “I would like women to think about why it is that woman in other cultures birth with so much more ease and comfort than we do in the Western world.” She thought it was because women in other cultures grew up talking with women who gave birth easily. And we would get the same opportunity. The most amazing experience was the final celebration. We met at Dr. Keeler’s house and listened to women who had recently given birth after taking the HypnoBirthing class. These were real women. They were not on video tape and they weren’t saints and certainly not liars. Their babies were with them, sleeping, crying, nursing, and smiling – just as real as they were. And they sat, one after the other, and told their HypnoBirthing stories. Normally in this situation you hear how horrible the pain was; how you should take the epidural. That was not happening here. The first woman to speak gave birth in 20 hours with two hours of pushing. She started with, “My HypnoBirthing experience was phenomenal. It was magical to me. I felt peace. I felt euphoria.” She was for real. She went on to describe how worried she was about birth beforehand. She had practiced the breathing techniques she learned in class, but not every day. When questioned about pain she replied, “I did have some cramping in my legs but other than that you just felt like you were going through a tunnel.” A tunnel. That’s it. Another woman said, “I was always one of those women who was very scared of labor.” (This sounded more familiar.) “It was just a waste of energy, because it was a great experience.” This woman had practiced the relaxation every night. At one point she said, “According to the monitor I was having really strong contractions. But I wasn’t feeling anything, really. I was fine.” Not feeling anything? I was even more convinced. A third woman, who was in labor for 36 hours, said that she was not the best student. “[During class] I was always fidgeting. I couldn’t get comfortable.” She then said, “But the HypnoBirthing really works. You can really use your mind for amazing things.” She described a very long pushing phase in addition to the long labor. Her baby was constantly being checked. She said about the experience, “The one thing that was really cool about the HypnoBirthing and breathing is that the baby was very calm through the entire thing. It was not a short labor, but he was fine. They kept checking him and saying he was a cool cucumber.” Other women spoke about their births. They would describe it as being uncomfortable and having to concentrate to relax. One of the final women to speak gave birth to her third child in her car on the way to the hospital. She said, laughing, “This was painless; nothing. I’ve gone to the bathroom and had more pain.” There’s the word – painless. These were women sitting all around me and were just like me. They just happened to discover this method of giving birth that worked really well. I was hooked. It was possible. I would practice every day and hope for less pain during birth. Why not? “Painless. Euphoria. Phenomenal.” I wanted a chance at that. Elizabeth Bonet, PhD is a freelance writer who lives in Sunrise, Florida. She can be reached at elizabeth@yogafairy.com. Her HypnoBirthing teacher, Dr. Vivian Keeler, can be reached at the Hollywood Birthing Center in Hollywood, Florida or via e-mail at mybirthmatters@aol.com. Back to Pregnancy Yoga Links & Resources ph: 954.533.4000
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