Is it possible to give birth pain-free with hypnobirthing techniques?

Today, I am 8 months pregnant. Which means that the day that I’m going to meet my baby, is really close 🙂 As you might’ve read in my other blogs, the Law of attraction is a big part of my daily life. And since this is working quite well on all the other levels of my life, I started to wonder if you can also apply the law of attraction to manifest a calm, stressless, pain-free – or at least less painful – birthing experience. Without (too many) complications afterwards.

Transform ‘fear’ to ‘mindful’ and ‘relaxed’ with hypnobirthing techniques

Fear struck me when I was around 4 months pregnant. Am I capable of doing this? What can I expect? What if I can’t handle the pain? What can I compare this pain with? Every horror story that I have once been told, arose in my mind. And at this very moment, I thought to myself: how am I going to transform this into something positive? Maybe there are also women who have shared positive birthing stories online that I can use? Stories that will help me to create a new thought pattern in my mind, instead of sticking to the horror ones I already knew.

I started to search Google for positive birthing stories. And yes, thank God, I found the stories I was hoping for. Women who experienced giving birth not as agony, but just as something beautiful and not so hard to endure. Most women I’ve heard talking about giving birth in my life said something like: “The pain is unbearable, but the moment your baby is born and you look into those eyes, you will forget all the pain”. But why is the pain something we need to endure first before the enjoyment comes? Shouldn’t giving birth be a nice and beautiful experience to begin with?

From that moment on I shifted my focus on having a positive birthing experience. A birth that is a pleasant experience from the beginning till the end. Instead of only pleasant after your baby is born. Fear in advance for sure won’t help me and “the path is the goal”, right?

Use affirmations!

First of all I came up with a series of affirmations to read every day. Like this I installed “positive expectation software” in my mind, for the pregnancy itself and for the moment of giving birth. For the pregnancy, I can already say that it was a very pleasant experience for me! Of course I’ve had some sleepless nights, nausea and did I have some minor ailments. But in general, it has been an easy pregnancy that I have been mostly able to enjoy 🙂

The Mongan-method: the hypnobirthing techniques book

Now my goal is to manifest the same type of experience for birth as I did for the pregnancy itself. So I started to do some online research about methods that can help me with this, and the one that stood out the most was Marie Mongan’s book “Hypnobirthing“.

Marie Mongan developed the Mongan-method; a hypnobirthing method. As a kid she heard her mother talking about her own birthing experience when she gave birth to Marie. Her mother had a terrible experience with giving birth. Which is of course not really nice to hear about your own birth 😉

From this moment on Marie has been obsessed by her inner belief and wish, that there must be a way to have a pleasant birthing experience. Eventually, she stumbled upon Dick-Read’s method and with the use of this method, she developed a method of her own. She helps you to take back control over this important, intense event.

You can buy the hypnobirthing techniques book here:

What is hypnobirthing exactly?

Hypnobirthing helps women to learn to trust on their own strength during birth. This is done by the use of the hypnobirthing techniques and by creating awareness that as a woman, you can instinctively endure this. She claims that women experience a lot less pain during birth when they use her method. And she claims it also reduces the need for medication or c-sections. The duration of the birth and the recovery time afterward are also much shorter.

Which is great, because now you will be able as a newborn to focus yourself completely on bonding with your baby! Your baby’s birth trauma will be a lot smaller as well. Which will result in a baby that is able to sleep and eat much better. Win-win for everybody!

Marie Mongan believes that so many women experience giving birth as being so traumatic because our culture is teaching us to fear giving birth. We’ve been told to count on a painful, horrible experience. A question that I’m asked on a regular basis is: “Are you nervous for the moment you’re going to give birth?” But I’m actually really looking forward to it. Fear creates stress in your body. It makes you to feel cramped before it has even started. So fear or dreading isn’t going to help you at all. Besides, everything you believe, you attract!

And how does it work?

Hypnobirthing is a self-hypnosis technique. This hypnobirthing technique will ensure a calm birth, without an overload of stress and fear. By the way, it’s not the type of hypnosis where you’re not aware of the world around you anymore, so not in a wooly way, fortunately. I don’t like that either. You just start to feel really relaxed and because of this techniques you learn how to be in control over your pain, your body and mind.

I found a lot of expensive hypnobirthing (breathing techniques) courses online, which might be great for many, but for me the book is enough. For now. In case the book turns out not being helpful enough this time, I will consider the course the next time 🙂

There is no right or wrong!

By the way, with this blog post, I’m not trying to say that women who did have a tough birthing experience, didn’t do well enough. I’m mostly trying to help myself with the search for different ways and I hope to inspire other expecting mothers as well.

I would never judge anyone, there is no right or wrong. Besides, first I need to see for myself how I’m going to handle this in reality 😉 Even with the best preparations it’s possible to be completely overwhelmed by the pain and not being able anymore to stick to the good thoughts. I have no illusions regarding this whatsoever.

The Law of attraction needs practice in daily life. Which goes by trial and error. It is just a great opportunity to learn from it and to see if I will be able to apply this life knowledge in an intense situation like this, without getting lost in ‘reality’.

Do you have a positive birthing story to share?

For now, I’m looking forward to this special moment that will present itself soon! And I can’t wait to read the rest of the book. I will update this post as soon as I finished it. And I will also tell you how the birthing went. But for now I would like to hear your experiences. Let’s use the comments to share your positive birthing experience, so expecting mothers can benefit from that.

A small update

The day I was writing my post – I almost finished it – I went to the 36-weeks ultrasound. They discovered that our babies heartbeat was almost going twice as fast as it should be. So we went to the hospital and I stayed there for a couple of days. They don’t know the cause, it’s something that can happen during the end of a pregnancy. But they have been able to get her heartbeat in a normal rhythm again :))

So everything is fine, but chances for a natural birth are of course a lot smaller. If there are any irregularities it might become a c-section. I will still continue the book, because I think I will benefit from the hypnobirthing techniques anyway. So I might not be able to share my full experience with you. Which is completely fine for me, as long as she will be fine! But I’d still like to hear your stories!

Lots of love

X

Angelica