Hypnobirthing and Child Birth Articles by Katharine Graves
Katharine writes a number of articles and has appeared in the press a number of times during the course of her work.
Please read and enjoy a selection of her writings here - we hope you find them useful and entertaining.
Any comments, questions or feedback is always appreciated.
|
|
Written by Katharine Graves
|
|
Monday, 17 March 2008 16:08 |
|
Before they’re pregnant, many women think they’ll take ‘the soft option’ and have a caesarean. Then they become pregnant and their hormones do somersaults. They read some more about caesareans and realize that maybe they aren’t the soft option they’d thought, either for themselves or their babies, and it dawns on them that there’s only one way out, and people say it’s painful.
The other thing that happens when you’re pregnant is that people immediately feel entitled to express an opinion and give you advice. You are inundated with horror stories about other people’s labours, or other people’s wives’ labours, or other people’s sister’s labours, etc. etc. etc. Somewhere along the line somebody mentions that their sister’s cousin’s mother-in-law’s step-daughter did this thing called HypnoBirthing and she raved about it. So you go home and google it. This is how it all began.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Written by Katharine Graves
|
|
Monday, 17 March 2008 16:02 |
1. Make sure you have a healthy lifestyle and diet 6 months before you are pregnant.
The health of both mother and father before your baby is even conceived is important for a happy healthy pregnancy. When asked, everyone, without exception, maintains that they eat a healthy diet, but this can vary widely.
One book which is definitely worth reading is Eat Right 4 Your Type by Dr J J d’Adamo.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Written by Katharine Graves
|
|
Monday, 17 March 2008 15:58 |
|
For thousands of years, herbs have been used to ease a woman’s path through pregnancy, labour and birth. Recently much research has been done, and herbal remedies are still effectively used in childbirth:
1. Morning Sickness
Ginger Root, Lemon Balm, Chamomile
Ginger Root can be grated into a cup and boiling water added to make a tea. Leave to infuse for 5 to 10 minutes and add honey if required. This can be taken 3 or 4 times a day.
If anxiety is part of the problem, Lemon Balm (Melissa) or Chamomile can be very effective. Both make soothing teas, or they can be mixed with ginger root as well.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
 |
|
Written by Katharine Graves
|
|
Monday, 17 March 2008 15:55 |
I came to Hypnobirthing by chance. One of those apparent chances that you wonder if they’re really chances at all. A colleague had done the training, and mentioned to me in passing that I might enjoy it. It has changed my professional life.
Having had four children of my own, I had considerable experience of birth from the practical side. When my children were born there had been good preparation classes which included relaxation and breathing based on the teaching of Grantly Dick-Reed. Hypnobirthing takes his premise much much further.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
Written by Katharine Graves
|
|
Monday, 17 March 2008 15:51 |
|
Before I trained as a HypnoBirthing teacher I had the useful background of being a professional hypnotherapist and also the mother of four children. One day, by chance, a colleague said to me, “I’ve just done this HypnoBirthing course that was really good, and I thought you might like it.” I enrolled immediately, and it has changed my professional life.
As a hypnotherapist I was aware of the power of the mind, but with HypnoBirthing it is brought home to me daily just how powerful the mind really is, and that the body dutifully follows where the mind leads.
The mind has been likened to an iceberg. The part you see above the water is the conscious mind. You can understand it, see how big it is, and generally get to grips with it. It is, of course, the most wonderful tool that we are privileged to have at our disposal. The unconscious mind is likened to the part of the iceberg that is under the water; much larger, much more significant, but we can’t really tell how extensive it is, how powerful it is, or where it begins or ends. When we ask questions about how it works, it’s the conscious mind asking about something that it isn’t, the unconscious mind. By definition the questions are unanswerable.
Without the mind, the body is merely a hunk of meat, and, when you stop to think for a moment, it’s obvious that anything and everything that the body does is at the instigation of the mind.
The body knows how to give birth. We certainly don’t sit down and decide with our conscious mind when we’re going to go into labour or how the labour is going to be. It happens at the right time when the baby is ready and in the right way. What we can do however is get in the way. Michel Odent, the obstetrician who instigated water birthing at his unit in Pitiviers near Paris in the 1980s is quoted as saying: “Never, never disturb the neocortex of the labouring woman,” and indeed it is true that any mammal will give birth only where she feels safe, secure and unobserved. If the mind is worried or disturbed it impedes the natural function of the body. We can see it in the finals of a major sporting event when a top sportsman will fail to reach his potential because of nerves, and it’s just the same in labour. For a woman’s body to function naturally and efficiently, she has to feel secure at a deep subconscious level.
- Copyright Katharine Graves 2007
|
|
|
|
Written by Katharine Graves
|
|
Monday, 17 March 2008 15:44 |
|
The fame of Hypnobirthing is spreading fast by word of mouth, simply because it works so well, and that’s how it has always spread.
Probably the person accredited with the origin of the term Hypnobirthing is Michelle Leclaire O'Neill in 1987 [www.leclairemethod.com], who authored books on the subject including "Hypnobirthing the Original Method". Her work was based partly on previous research be English obstetrician Dr. Grantly Dick Reid.
Another follower of Dick Reid was Marie Mongan, who when she had her first baby, practiced Dick-Reed's techniques and became a convert.
Mongan's story makes interesting reading. She had her first baby in hospital as was the generally accepted practice in America, then as now, and when she arrived she announced to the nurse that she was planning to have a natural birth. With a superior smirk the nurse maintained that she would ‘soon be screaming like the rest of them’ and left her alone in a room with a clock so that she could ‘time her pains’. Husbands certainly were not allowed.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
|
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 Next > End >>
|
|
Page 3 of 4 |
