How our preconceptions of birth can shape our expectations and our experience
It happens to us all when we fall pregnant; at some point the issue of birth arises. This may be the moment we discover our pregnancy, or it could be later on, but sooner or later the question of 'oh, I have to birth this baby...how do I do that?' comes home to roost. Sadly, for many of us, this recognition comes with anxiety, concern, and sometimes even abject fear. I have known many different variants of these feelings through my experience with clients; from petrified, to just a bit worried. In most cases, expectations are of the negative variety. Few people that find our classes do so expecting the best, it is always expecting the worst. However, I am pleased to say that, without exception, when our clients finish class 4 they all have a very definite change in perception. Mums and birthing partners, all, acquire a much more confident and calm outlook; happy, excited to meet their babies, confident and empowered! I was lucky when I found hypnobirthing; I had never got to that completely fearful outlook, the one exploited and even created by programmes such as One Born Every Minute and similar, or perhaps from experiences of others - friends, family - or even our own previous experiences. I was curious, and pretty anxious - after all, I'd never done this before - pregnancy, the idea of birth, it was all new to me, as it is to us all that first time we're pregnant. But I found hypnobirthing and it changed how I thought about and viewed birth. I was honestly excited and felt entirely prepared to trust my body and my baby, because of the skills and knowledge that I acquired during my classes. I remember during class one, being asked to think of a few words that I associated with birth - I'm sure that 'pain', 'hospital', 'screaming' were things I had in mind. But by the end of class four, I had: 'informed', 'empowered', 'calm', 'excited' and 'prepared'.
So I asked Island mums what their thoughts on birth were. Unsurprisingly, 'pain' came up a few times. 'Fear', 'panic', 'worry'...with a bit of 'hospitals', 'unknown', 'loss of control' tossed in for good measure too. However, (and this was a surprise), I also got a bit 'excited', 'empowering', 'amazing' and 'life-changing' (which was our competition winner, Kelly's, word).
It is great to hear that people are thinking more positively - that people are willing to talk more positively about birth. This is great news for the birthing world - that we are no longer always being shaped by the negativity being put out there in the media and via others. And that, too, is being picked up n the media. More celebrities are hypnobirthing (presenter fearne Cotton is a recent hypnobirthing mum) and talkihng about it. Even OBEM showed a fabulous hypnobirth in their latest series.
Birth is a normal, natural process for a female body to experience. We've created to do it. We still need to learn how to do it, to teach ourselves how to do it (which is where The Wise Hippo comes in), but at least, we are starting to believe and seek to learn more about just how to achieve the right birth on the day, with confidence and trust.
So if you'd like to learn more about how to do this yourself, please do get in touch - it's the cornerstone of everything that we teach. You have the ability, you just need to believe it can be done.
