Why I Chose Hypnobirthing

There’s a lovely article on the BBC website that you might like to read. It’s called ‘Why I Chose Hypnobirthing’ at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2136691.stm It gives the story of a typical hypnobirthing birth.

The thing about hypnobirthing is that it is not ‘managing pain’. This dreadful phrase is on the lips of every midwife. The concept that it is unnatural for pain to exist in childbirth is something that people find it very difficult to understand because they have been programmed from a very early age to ‘know’ that birth is painful. But when you stop to think for a moment, how is it that one muscle, working in the way that it is intended to work, is painful when every other muscle in the miracle that is the human body is comfortable? It seems illogical, doesn’t it, and, when you reflect, it’s a pretty bit design fault when everything within our bodies is so complex that it’s almost magical, and it works so well.

All mammals give birth in comfort. We are mammals. And yet many women suffer extreme pain. The difference between us and other mammals is that we have the rational brain, the neocortex, and it is this part of the brain that registers fear and is the cause of pain in childbirth. In the hypnobirthing course you learn why this is so, and how to drop the programming that is the cause of all the trouble.

Fascinating? Yes. Almost unbelievable? Possibly. But it works.