“we got our calm, healing VBAC”
“As a guy, attending your partner’s birth can make you feel like you’re useless.”
Basic knowledge of what happens during the birthing process and what you see on TV/movies gives you so little in the way of being able to support your partner. Clichéd words and sentences such as “Push!” and “You’re doing so well!” come to mind.
Obviously guys are mostly oblivious to what a woman goes through during labour and birth. We don’t know what we can say or do to help our partners get through THE most intense thing a human can go through. A simple rub is on the back is never going to be enough to help a woman persevere with that intense pressure she is feeling.
These reasons and what my wife and I went through during our first child’s birth, prompted us to look into hypnobirthing for our second child’s birth.
Hypnobirthing sounded to me like it could only go so far in helping with the birthing process. I would never have thought it could be such an incredibly powerful tool!
For those of you who are sceptical about hypnosis and think it’s all an act, please keep reading! Hypnosis isn’t about mind control. It’s not about making people act like chickens. Hypnosis is being able to go into a deep state of relaxation where you become more suggestible. When you get into this state, you have WAY more control over things you feel and the way you think and perceive your surroundings.
With enough practice, you can even do self-hypnosis and fall into a deep state of relaxation instantly. I saw my wife actually do this during the birth of our daughter in December.
This brings me to my review of Hypnobirthing Sunshine Coast. I couldn’t be more impressed with Kylie and everything she taught us. We had one on one lessons with Kylie in our own home which made it so much easier to relax and really let ourselves open up to the idea of hypnosis. Being an analytical thinker myself I didn’t think it would work on me. I thought I’d be too busy trying to prove Kylie wrong and that I could ignore her suggestions.
However after the first demonstration of how powerful suggestions can be when you are in a relaxed state I was sold.
Kylie was incredibly helpful when it came to learning about how hypnobirthing would help when it came to the big day. She helped us learn to think about birth differently.
Instead of looking at birth as a scary process, we learned to look at it as a natural process that human bodies know how to do.
Words like push, pain, contraction and others were changed to more positive words such as breathe down, pressure and surge. Words are very powerful and when you say you are in pain, it enhances that belief. Medicalised terms like contraction and failure to progress make you feel more stressed and being stressed will make your body seize up. During birth your body needs to be as relaxed as possible and this is exactly how my wife was during her recent birthing experience.
Did I mention it was a VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean) birth?
The obstetrician gave us a 20% chance of a successful natural birth. 20%. That number scared us…
…but we learned to focus on the fact that the human body knows what to do. It HAS been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years!
So how did hypnobirthing help me? A Guy!
Someone who knows nothing of what a surge feels like. Someone who doesn’t have an orifice from which a human can be birthed! How was I able to not feel like a useless extra person in the room?
Well having done the hypnobirthing program, I overcame my own fears, and was the one in control and able to help my wife. With enough practice, mental preparation and love for my wife’s wellbeing, I was able to utilise what I learnt to help keep my wife in the zone – relaxed and on track.
With hypnobirthing, the birthing woman needs to stay in a deeply relaxed meditative state. Things such as conversation, bright lights, asking questions etc. would immediately bring anyone out of such a state. Therefore I was the one who needed to call the shots.
I was armed with the knowledge of how baby and mother work together to get through the birthing process, and things I could say and do to help centre her
when she was feeling at the end of her tether.
During our hypnobirthing course, I was also taught acupressure points to help ease discomfort and release pressure from my wife’s body.
With all of these techniques during the 7 hours my wife was birthing my daughter, I was really able to help.
I wasn’t just another person telling her to push when it was obvious she was pushing! Instead I was able to gauge what she was feeling, where she was feeling it and how best to help her cope.
Knowledge of baby’s position during birth was also taught to us during our classes, so if baby was having trouble getting into position for a comfortable birth, we could use specific exercises to help give baby enough room inside to be able to move down the natural way during birth.
With the previous birth of our son I felt completely and utterly useless. It was a very traumatic birth, we felt powerless and unsupported, and I felt unable to provide help to my wife in such a scary time. With the recent birth of our daughter I feel like I used everything I learnt perfectly.
I don’t mean to sound boastful but my head was on straight, I was able to help my wife to stay in a relaxed state throughout the entire birthing process and our daughter was born naturally and calmly.
My wife came out unscathed and happy and incredibly impressed with how I helped.
Hypnobirthing should be what’s taught during antenatal classes. The knowledge provided is so incredibly valuable.
Hypnobirthing provides the tools and skills you need to have control over your own birth.
I want to thank Kylie from Hypnobirthing Sunshine Coast for helping us achieve a natural birth with no trauma! I’m so glad we invested the money into the course as it’s given us something that goes beyond monetary value.