Separating fact from fiction:
If you are considering using hypnobirthing as part of your birth preparation and birth plan then you will want to know the honest facts that surround it, not the myths and misconceptions.
The aim of this blog is to provide those facts to help you make an educated decision.
If you would prefer to speak to me directly then please contact the Healthful Mind Clinic directly to book a complimentary consultation.
What is hypnobirthing?
This technique operates from two different perspectives:
Firstly, it encourages women to explore their real feelings about birth and then provides evidence-based information about the normality of birth. This builds women’s confidence and belief in themselves and the birth process.
Secondly, it teaches women how to activate their calm state. This is the state we need to be in to birth naturally.
The benefits of normal birth:
Birth can happen normally for the majority of women, especially when they are well-prepared, feel comfortable with and understand the process, and are supported by their loved ones and healthcare professionals.
When birth does happen physiologically, women and their babies are mentally and physically healthier compared to those who have interventions. Physiological birth is the foundation for babies’ life-long health and positively supports women’s long-term health.
Sometimes interventions are needed because an emergency situation develops, but when they are used routinely, or just as a precaution, they can cause harm to mother or baby. Hypnobirthing can help women avoid unnecessary interventions because they enable their bodies to work optimally.
When you need interventions
Hypnobirthing isn’t just about supporting those who can have a normal birth. When interventions are required hypnobirthing can still be useful.
Having knowledge about the various interventions and being able to activate the calm state helps women to have the interventions without fear and to maintain their sense of inner control.
Research demonstrates that using hypnobirthing in this situation results in fewer complications and better outcomes for mothers and babies.
Survival mechanisms
We have evolved to react to threats to our safety by activating our stress response. These threats could be an animal predator, or another human wishing us harm. When we activate our stress response, commonly known as the ‘fight or flight’ response, we release stress hormones, which change how our body works.
This is appropriate and helpful, even life-saving, when we are faced with life-threatening situations. It is designed to be a short-lived response that keeps us safe by altering our physiology, such as increasing our heart rate and redirecting blood to our big muscles in preparation for the fight or flight.
In modern life however, few of us are faced with real physical threats but we do create the same response in our bodies when we worry or are fearful about things.
What we believe matters
When we worry about something the same stress response is activated as when the threat is physical. We stop producing the hormones of wellbeing and calm and instead release stress hormones, that put our bodies and minds in a state of high alert.
Birth Beliefs
On the surface many women believe that birth is a normal, natural event that their body is well designed for. BUT, ask them how they would feel if they had to birth outside of the hospital setting or without the presence of a midwife or doctor and many would feel worried by the prospect and consider it unsafe. This worry activates the stress response.
So, often our conscious beliefs about birth do not match our deeply held beliefs, which can be hidden until we face the real prospect of birth. It doesn’t take much to discover that there is a real worry for many women about their ability to birth safely, and that without interventions from doctors, or the use of medical equipment or drugs, they may not be able to do it.
Oxytocin and safety
When we feel safe and relaxed we release a hormone called oxytocin and enter the calm state, also known as the ‘rest and digest’, or the ‘feed and breed’ state. Oxytocin is an everyday hormone that balances us and enables our bodies to go back to normal functioning where we are not on high alert. The fight or flight and the feed and breed states are opposites and cannot both be activated at the same time.
Oxytocin and birth
Oxytocin is also the key hormone for labour, creating the contractions that cause our babies to be born. When we are calm and relaxed in labour we release oxytocin, and labour progresses normally. If we are stressed in labour we release stress hormones which prevent us from releasing enough oxytocin to labour effectively. This can lead to medical interventions and reduces the chance of birthing physiologically.
When our mind and body are calm they work together and enable birth to progress, because we know it is safe to let our baby be born. When we don’t feel safe or calm our body doesn’t want to let the baby out because it is better to keep the baby inside until we find a place of safety.
The stress response and birth
The effect of stress hormones is to also redirect blood away from non-essential organs, including the uterus, to our large skeletal muscles in preparation for the fight or flight. This reduces the amount of blood, and therefore oxygen, going to the uterus and is likely to cause pain. Becoming tense, due to stress or pain, has a similar, compounding effect, increasing women’s need to use pharmacological pain relief, which has potentially detrimental side-effects.
Bringing the knowledge together
Hypnobirthing teaches women about how the body works in labour and which factors in their environment are supportive of labour and which are disruptive. Women learn how to enter the calm state at will. This switches off the stress response. They know how to optimise the way their body functions and increase their chance of physiological birth.
Best wishes
Michelle
To book your free consultation call 0333 772 6233 or email info@healthfulmindclinic.co.uk