Podcast: Hypnobirthing with your host, Megan Rossiter

Hypnobirthing with your host, Megan Rossiter

Season 3, Episode 2

It's a SOLO episode from me today! Actually our first ever solo episode of the podcast!

Exploring what 'hypnobirthing' actually is?

How can it support you in your pregnancy, your birth and beyond? How does it work? What does it involve?

Listen up for some myth busting, take away tools and tips and the next steps to feeling more confident and prepared ahead of your baby's birth.


TRANSCRIPT

AI GENERATED

Welcome to the Birth-ed podcast, bringing together world leading experts in all things pregnancy, birth, postpartum, women's health and parenting, giving you the kind of in-depth knowledge, nuanced conversation and words of wisdom that you deserve when you're trying to navigate this ever complex pregnancy, birth and baby thing.

If you're new here, I'm Megan, your host and founder of Birth-ed.

Alongside these incredible podcast episodes, which we are able to provide to you completely for free, thanks to the generosity of our amazing guests.

I'm also here to support your birth and parenting preparation through our online HypnoBirthing and Antinatal course.

I'll be that familiar little voice in your ear, here to warmly and gently guide you, reminding you of your strength and your autonomy and giving you the information, hints and tips you need the whole way through your pregnancy and birth.

Because together, we really can make it amazing, and you really do deserve for it to be amazing.

Available worldwide for just £40 or $49.

But for now, I can't wait to share today's podcast episode with you.

Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

Let's go.

Hi, everybody.

Welcome back to the next episode of the Birth-ed podcast.

I can't believe we don't actually have an episode on this already.

This is a thread that has run through all of the podcast episodes so far.

But if you are new here, I wanted to take the opportunity for a bit more of an in-depth look into what hypnobirthing actually is.

So if you are already signed up for one of our courses, I imagine everything that I chat about today, you'll probably already know, but there is absolutely no harm in refreshing.

This is also going to be a brilliant episode to share with any potentially sceptical friends or family, or if you're kind of undecided as to whether hypnobirthing might be something you want to explore in more detail.

This is going to be a really, really good introduction to kind of what hypnobirthing actually involves.

So when I first discovered hypnobirthing myself, I felt pretty sceptical about the idea of it.

So if you're feeling at all sceptical right now, that was me.

It has a very stupid name.

It sounds very sort of woo-woo alternative.

But once I found out what it actually was, how it worked, it made perfect sense to me.

So I actually want you to hold on to any feelings of scepticism that you might have right now.

Not just while listening to this episode, but as a really sort of useful tool to take through your entire experience of health care, maternity care, parenting advice.

Never take anything as read.

Question everything.

How true is it?

Where does this idea come from?

Where does this information come from?

Who is sharing it with me?

What is their reason for sharing it with me?

How relevant or helpful is it to you?

And as an approach, this is going to help you make choices that sit most comfortably with you the whole way through your parenting experience.

So, with this in mind, I think it is important to point out before I kick off that hypnobirthing in inverted commas as a title is not a standardised practice.

So, different teachers, different books, different courses will all take a slightly different approach or have a slightly different ethos or a different end goal.

Some focus quite specifically on having an unmedicated vaginal birth.

Some cover just a couple of pain management relaxation techniques in like an hour long session.

So, what I'm sharing in this episode is very much the birth-ed approach to hypnobirthing.

And when you're considering doing, practising, learning about hypnobirthing, it's really important that you find a course, a teacher, an approach that really aligns with your own values and what it is that you're hoping to get from the practice of hypnobirthing.

So, I would say at Birth-ed, we sit pretty comfortably in the middle between giving you knowledge, tools and techniques to really promote and support physiological birth with an understanding that this might not be the preferred or safest option for absolutely everybody, so thinking also in plenty of depth about how a hypnobirthing approach can be used for all kinds of birth, from caesarean birth to water birth, induction to home birth, with epidurals to totally unmedicated, not one kind of birth on a pedestal, but a really honest and realistic, but holistic approach to birth preparation.

So often, when I kind of meet people, probably at the beginning of pregnancy, so you might be listening kind of at that stage, or even kind of right through to the end of pregnancy, when we talk about what their approaches, what is their plan for birth, so frequently people just say, oh, you know, I'm just going to go with the flow.

The only thing that matters is a healthy baby at the end, which just breaks my heart when I hear it, is also just complete and utter nonsense because a healthy baby should not be the pinnacle of a successful birth.

Healthy baby should be like the absolute baseline that everybody wants and expects when they give birth to their baby.

And to even suggest that that isn't somebody's top priority is, I personally think it is quite an insulting suggestion.

But your experience of birthing your baby, both for mum, for dad, for partner, and for baby, is pivotal in bonding your identity as a parent, your physical health, your baby's physical health, your emotional health, your mental health, the success rate of breastfeeding if you want to breastfeed.

We so frequently separate pregnancy, birth, and parenting, as though they are three separate events that don't influence each other in any way.

But actually, one is just a continuation of the other.

And so the choices that we make in the experience that we have of pregnancy goes on to directly impact our experience and outcome of our birth, and right through into the kind of postnatal period, our experience of parenting, and our children's lives forever.

So if we can step into parenthood feeling positive and empowered, then we are starting from a really amazing place.

And of course, we don't hold full control over what happens in birth, and hypnobirthing cannot and should not ever guarantee a certain type of birth.

We are, of course, in part influenced by Mother Nature's plans and by the system and the people that are there supporting us or not in labour.

But we do hold so much more power, control, and responsibility than we often realise until we come out the other side.

So I'm going to talk a little bit today about how using hypnobirthing techniques can shift our mindset into a positive place and how in turn that can affect our choices, our bodies, and the actual physiology of giving birth.

So, hypnobirthing the birth-ed way, what is it?

I basically think the easiest way to describe what hypnobirthing is, is to break it into two parts.

So you've got the hypno part of it and the birthing part of it.

Now, the birthing part of it is simply an approach to antenatal education.

So giving you a thorough understanding of what happens in your body in order for your baby to be born, what your choices are, say, in terms of your birthplace, your pain relief options, your comfort measure options, common interventions that might be offered or suggested, all of what those choices might be, covering the what-if situations like induction of labour, instrumental birth, cesarean birth, and giving you an understanding and tools and techniques to kind of navigate the maternity system and take back control of the choices and decisions that you are making throughout pregnancy and birth.

Then the hypno part of it, basically the word hypno, which is the bit with the stupid name, comes from the long-established practice of hypnotherapy, which, to put simply, is basically the tool of words, the use of language, to influence the way that our brain works, connecting the mind and body together.

The purpose of this is basically twofold.

First of all, it is tapping into the subconscious part of our mind to help eliminate irrational fears or anxieties, so that your actions and decisions are coming from a place of trust, a place of calm, a place of fact, rather than based on fear or assumption.

And I'm going to talk you through that in a bit more detail later.

And the second purpose of this is to help us be able to quickly access a deep state of relaxation.

A deep state of relaxation is really valuable to us when we are giving birth, literally making the process both quicker and more comfortable.

Now, can we really do this just through the use of words?

Well, yes.

Literally every day, you will be having involuntary physical responses to words that you are hearing.

So, for example, if somebody, if you were listening to a podcast, literally words going into an ear, and it was a funny podcast and they said something funny, the involuntary physical response would be that you might laugh.

If somebody was to say something that embarrassed you, you might blush, your cheeks might turn red.

If you, I don't know, were listening to a true crime podcast and it was getting a little bit scary, literally words that you are hearing, you might feel butterflies in your tummy, you might feel your heart rate go up, you might feel your palms get sweaty.

Again, all involuntary physical reactions caused by the words that you are hearing.

And the tools of hypnobirthing basically work this to our advantage.

So the involuntary response that we will be getting through the practice of some of the relaxation techniques in hypnobirthing is one of relaxation.

And by being able to access this deep state of relaxation, we are able to hopefully maintain more of a sense of calm in labour.

And in this episode, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about why that is so important.

So no one is going to be clucking like a chicken.

Sorry.

It's nothing like stage hypnosis that you might have kind of seen at magic shows.

It is actually incredibly logical and straightforward.

It is not alternative at all.

I think it's more comparable to something like sports psychology.

So marathon runners might use similar tools and techniques in their training to help them break through the 16 mile wall.

Footballers are conditioned by their coaches to picture themselves scoring, picture themselves winning, picture themselves saving a goal.

It is the same in birth.

We're utilizing the power of the mind to enable your body to perform at its best physically.

So essentially, the hypno aspect of the course is giving you a set of relaxation tools and practices that in pregnancy are enabling us to reframe the way we feel about birth.

And in labour or birth are there to aid that sense of relaxation.

Because whether we think so or not, we will have had negative or unrealistic ideas about birth thrown at us from most angles for most of our lives, whether we think so or not, which will totally have altered the way that we subconsciously think about giving birth.

So I've got a little exercise for you.

So I want you to close your eyes, unless you're driving, don't close your eyes if you're driving and listening to this.

And I want you to just take a moment to think.

I want you to picture birth in your head, not necessarily you giving birth, just anyone, a picture of someone giving birth.

If you want to, and you're sitting at home, you might draw a picture of this, you can hit pause and draw a picture, or you might want to kind of jot down thoughts, words about what it is that you're seeing in your mind.

If you are just sitting comfortably, then just allow this picture to form in your head.

Try to lean into the very first image that appeared, not what you think I might want you to be picturing or what you're supposed to be thinking.

But what assumptions do you immediately make about birth?

Don't correct your thoughts if you think they're wrong.

Just see what comes up for you.

Think about where this person is.

What kind of room are they in?

And whereabouts in this room are they?

What is the room like?

What does it look like?

Is it light?

Is it dark?

What are they doing?

What position are they in?

Who else is in the room?

And what are they doing?

What are all the people in the room wearing?

So what's the person giving birth wearing?

What are the other people in the room wearing?

What else is in the room?

What objects?

What furniture?

What sounds can they hear?

What sounds are they making?

What does their face look like?

What is the overarching feeling of that room?

Let's just take a moment to let that really, really kind of form in your mind.

Get a really clear picture of what that looks like.

Okay, so this, what you are picturing, is a little insight into what your subconscious mind thinks about birth.

And this is actually a really helpful exercise for anyone that is going to be in your birth space to do.

So if your partner is going to be there, if you've got a birth partner, if your mum's going to be there, whoever it is that might be supporting you at any point throughout your birth, get them to do this exercise as well.

Because the subconscious ideas of everyone in that space, including, and annoyingly, you probably won't be able to get them to do this exercise, including the midwife or doctor or whoever it is that's looking after you from a kind of clinical perspective, if they're there, the subconscious ideas of everyone in that space will be influencing what happens, what choices are made, and how you behave or how you are expected to behave.

Now, if you Google a woman in labour or watch any TV show or movie or basically anything with birth in it, the vast, vast majority of pictures, images, stories of somebody giving birth are a woman in a hospital gown, laying on her back in a hospital bed, screaming, surrounded by medical staff, beeping machines, and there is so much here to unpick.

So, first of all, if any aspects of what I just described form part of that subconscious image of birth for you, then, you know, you actually wouldn't be far wrong.

Perhaps you have even had a birth or been at a birth that looked exactly like this.

Now, we know that in, where are we, 2023, around 80 to 90% of birth in the UK happens in a hospital room on a labour ward, so looking very hospitally, and around 80% of people are giving birth on their backs.

So, if that forms what your image looks like, that certainly isn't wrong if we are just acknowledging what is common.

It is definitely common to give birth in that way.

But is this the physiological norm for human birth?

No, not for the vast majority.

But it's only once we start to unpick how birth ended up looking like this, and by the way, it's only looked like this for the past 50 to 100 years, and getting to grips with what the body actually needs in order for birth to work and to feel safe, that we can start to understand the potential impact of what that image has on birth, and that we can start to make choices that potentially serve us better as we step into our own pregnancies and our own births.

So in order to explain all of this a little bit more clearly, I'm going to dive in now and explain a little bit about the hormones that are involved in giving birth, which will hopefully explain why hypnobirthing is helpful and basically why it works.

So this is your 10-minute long science lesson.

Feel free to jot things down as you go if you'd like to.

Okay, so obviously your baby right now, if you're pregnant, is sitting hopefully quite comfortably inside their sack surrounded by water, which is sitting inside the uterus.

The uterus is an organ which is made up of sets of muscles, and some of the muscles that exist in the uterus basically work together as pairs.

So if you can imagine, it's hard to do over a podcast because I can't show you a picture of it, but picture a balloon.

So you've got a nice inflated balloon.

Now imagine there are lines or stripes going from the top of that balloon to the bottom.

So vertical stripes going all the way down, the whole way around.

And this is one set of the muscles, long muscles that go from top to bottom on the uterus.

And this is one set of muscles.

Those muscles work together as a pair with round muscles.

So if you can now imagine rings or circles going horizontally all the way around the outside of that balloon, so they're crisscrossing over each other.

And those muscles, like lots of the muscles in our bodies do, work together as pairs.

So when one tenses, the other relaxes and vice versa.

So for example, if you were to bend your arm, when you bend it up, your bicep is tensing, your tricep is relaxing and vice versa.

And this is what the muscles of the uterus are going to do in labour.

So in the part of labour where the cervix is being stretched open, the cervix itself, that's the neck of the balloon, the neck of the womb, that is made up of those circular rings of round muscle.

So during a contraction in that first part of labour, those long muscles basically tense, they get shorter, they tighten, and the round muscles relax.

And it's those round muscles relaxing that as they relax, the long muscles pull them upwards and they basically stretch over your baby, probably your baby's head, potentially your baby's bottom, but basically causing the cervix to stretch completely out of the way until the cervix has completely disappeared.

In the second part of labour, the role of those muscles reverses.

So instead of those long muscles tensing, the round muscles relaxing and opening for your baby to pass through, the round muscles now have all been pulled up, forming a big wedge of muscle at the top of the uterus, and now they are going to do the tensing.

So as they tense, they basically squeeze, and as they squeeze, that squeezing pushes your baby down and out in order to be born.

That's the kind of expulsive sometimes thought of as like the pushing stage of labour.

So that is what the muscles are doing in labour, and this is basically controlled by hormones.

And the hormones are very much influenced by the nervous system of our body, and the nervous system basically has two sides to it.

So one part or one side to the nervous system is called the parasympathetic nervous system.

You absolutely do not need to know what it is called.

It is basically your calm mode.

Now, when we are in the calm mode, we make a whole host of hormones that are important for giving birth.

I'm going to talk to you about three of them specifically, the main one being a hormone called oxytocin.

So oxytocin you might have heard of, it is your love hormone, your happy hormone.

It is there when you stroke a dog, when you laugh, when you orgasm, when you breastfeed, anything that gives you that warm, fuzzy sensation, that is the physical sensation of your body producing oxytocin.

Now, oxytocin in labour is responsible for initiating your contractions, the length of them, the frequency of them, maintaining them, basically the whole of labour, falls onto the shoulders of oxytocin.

So we want oxytocin in the bucket load when it comes to giving birth.

Oxytocin is also important.

So even if you weren't labouring, so even if you were having a planned cesarean birth and you didn't need to have contractions to get your baby out, oxytocin is important for establishing breastfeeding.

It is the hormone that helps you bond with your baby.

It helps the uterus contract back down to stop heavy bleeding after birth.

So there are a number of reasons why we want to be producing oxytocin as we give birth to our babies, however we're birthing them.

Now the next hormone that is relevant here is one called melatonin.

If you've heard of melatonin, people have often heard of it if they travel a lot in relation to jet lag.

Sometimes people have heard of it in relation to sleep.

It is basically the hormone that tells you, I'm tired, I should go to bed.

When we get that feeling, we tend to be having a peak in oxytocin, in melatonin production.

And for most of us, that tends to peak quite naturally at the end of the day.

So kind of 10, 11 o'clock at night, a lot of us will get that peak in melatonin.

And it tends to be at its lowest at kind of 5, 6 o'clock in the morning, which is our, you know, what causes us to wake up.

Or if you get woken up, makes it very difficult to get back to sleep at that time because we have such low levels of melatonin.

Melatonin in labour has two purposes.

First of all, it is, because it's your sleepy hormone, it literally causes your body to relax, causes the muscles in your body to relax.

Now, when the muscles in our body are relaxed, this includes the muscles of the uterus, our body tends to be much more comfortable.

So if we can create melatonin, then we are literally making birth more comfortable.

The other thing that melatonin does for us in labour and birth is that anything that oxytocin is already doing, melatonin lifts it up.

It's like a boost button for oxytocin.

So if oxytocin is starting to get things going, and then we have melatonin as well, suddenly what the oxytocin is doing, basically creating contractions, they tend to be intensified or more powerful or more effective when there is melatonin.

And this actually goes a little way to potentially explain why, number one, why more labour starts at night because we naturally have that higher level of melatonin at night.

But particularly, why so frequently people have, oh, it's early evening, you know, just getting into late evening, nine, ten o'clock, and it just feels like something's happening, and we get very excited because we can feel something going on in the uterus.

And then either you sit up on your ball all night and it gets to five a.m.

and everything has disappeared and we're completely exhausted, or you go to bed, you go to sleep, you wake up and you're like, oh, I thought I was going to wake up in labour and it's all disappeared.

And that might be to do with the fact that we had that melatonin, it was increasing things, and then the melatonin naturally dropped.

So if that is happening, just be reassured that everything that we feel, everything that happens in labour, is doing something.

So it might be that you get that for several evenings, and that might be opening the cervix a little bit, it might be helping baby engage into the pelvis, it might be rotating baby into a better position, it could be any number of productive things happening.

Just because it has then slowed down when you've gone to sleep or overnight, that doesn't mean that anything is necessarily wrong.

It can just be a really, really normal part of that early preparation for the real deal, when eventually, I promise, it will not stop.

So that's melatonin.

Then the third hormone I'm going to talk about that is made in that calm part of the nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, is endorphins.

Now, I'm going to hark back.

This is my favourite example about endorphins.

Now, if you, I don't know, maybe you are a little bit younger than me, you might not recognise this.

But if you've seen the film Legally Blonde, they talk about endorphins and that, and that tends to be the place that most of us have heard about endorphins, is basically to do with, endorphins are to do with exercise.

So exercise, your body, exercising causes you to create endorphins.

And endorphins are your body's natural pain-relieving hormone.

They literally make you feel good, they make you feel energised, they make you feel happy.

This is basically the main reason why there are good links between exercise and positive mental health, because of endorphin production.

And in Legally Blonde, here's my example, Elle Woods, who is, if you don't know, a solicitor, barrister, don't know, defending somebody who's been accused of murder.

And she says that the person who's been accused is a fitness instructor.

And she says, no, because exercise gives you endorphins, and endorphins make you happy, and happy people don't kill people.

That was her example.

And that's always my go-to link for talking about endorphins.

But yeah, endorphins literally make you happy.

And exercise, in its simplest form, is the tensing and relaxing of muscles.

Now, labour, in its simplest form, is the tensing and relaxing of muscles.

So literally, being in labour is going to cause your body to create endorphins, your body's natural pain-relieving hormone.

It will literally give you energy, it will literally make you feel more comfortable.

So we want endorphins again in the bucket load when it comes to giving birth.

Now, being in labour will just cause you to create them, but other things like physical touch, if you like it, massage, a tens machine.

These also help your body to create endorphins, and there's no lid to the number of endorphins that you can make.

So you can just keep making them, and they tend to stick around in your body for a long time.

They don't just disappear as soon as you move out of this part of the nervous system.

So a really, really important thing for us to be creating.

Now, if you take one thing away, if you're listening to this and you're in labour, if you take one thing away from this whole podcast episode, let this be it.

In order to be in this part of the nervous system, and this is the part of the nervous system where birth happens, you need to feel four things.

Okay, you can write them down.

You need to feel safe.

You need to feel relaxed.

You need to feel unobserved.

And you need to feel undisturbed.

I'm going to say them again.

Safe, relaxed, unobserved, and undisturbed.

Safe, relaxed, unobserved, and undisturbed.

Those are the four things that you need to feel for birth to work.

So they are a really, really helpful thing actually to come back to.

If you are making a decision about who to have with you when you're giving birth, the type of birth that you want to have, where you might give birth to your baby, the things that you might potentially reach for to support you birthing your baby.

Good question to ask yourself is, does this make me feel safe, relaxed, unobserved, and undisturbed?

If it doesn't, if it does, if it does tick all four of those boxes, it's probably a really, really good thing to do.

If it doesn't, and it still for whatever reason feels like the right thing to do, I don't know, let's say you had a very complex pregnancy and you decided actually the right place to give birth was on a labor ward in hospital.

And actually, does it make you feel safe?

Probably, that's probably why you've picked it.

Does it make you feel relaxed?

Probably not.

Does it make you feel undisturbed?

Also probably not.

Does it make you feel undisturbed, unobserved?

Also probably not.

So then what you need to do is you need to come back to the decision making.

You need to think, okay, well, what else can I do?

What preparation can I do?

What can I bring with me?

What can I ask for?

What can I reach for?

To ensure that I still feel as safe, as relaxed, as unobserved, and as undisturbed as possible, even in a situation that might not automatically meet those four requirements.

So that is where you need to be for Birth to Work.

Now, I want to talk about another side to the nervous system, called the sympathetic nervous system.

Again, you do not need to know its name.

You can basically call it the red mode or the emergency mode.

Now, it's like our stress mode basically.

And in modern day, in 2023, we spend far, far, far too much of our lives in this part of the nervous system, kind of on, basically on high alert, ready to take action, ready to engage, ready to respond.

That is where we are basically when we're in this part of the nervous system.

And when we're in this part of the nervous system, we can potentially create some hormones that are not helpful for us when we're giving birth.

Hormones like adrenaline and our stress hormones.

Adrenaline, if you've heard of it, it's like the fear hormone.

Adrenaline junkie, people that like roller coasters, they like the feeling of feeling afraid.

And this is a hormone that we want to avoid creating for the vast majority of labour and birth.

And the key thing to understand is that you cannot be in both parts of the nervous system at the same time.

So either you are in the calm part of your nervous system where birth is working, or you are in the emergency part of your nervous system where the production of those birthing hormones completely stops.

So, what you tend to see when we are pulled out of the calm part of the nervous system and into the emergency part of the nervous system is that's when we can see labour stop, stall, slow down, become more painful, become more disrupted.

A really frequent time that this happens is on arrival to hospital or meeting somebody new for the first time, car journey, those kind of disruptions that for a lot of people form like a really standard part of their birth experience.

And that's the potential impact basically that we have when those disruptions come to us in labour.

Now, you might be thinking, well, that sounds really annoying.

Why does that happen?

So from an evolutionary perspective, this is actually an incredibly helpful response that our body has.

So I want you to imagine you are a cave person giving birth, you know, how many thousands of years ago.

And you were in your cave, quietly giving birth, and then suddenly you spotted at the entrance to the cave a saber-toothed tiger, or you were giving birth in the woods and you could smell a forest fire approaching.

Now, both potentially very dangerous things for both you and your new, very vulnerable newborn baby to experience, to encounter.

So your body goes, ah, this is not safe, I cannot give birth here, we must stop this giving birth.

Labour stops and stalls to give you the opportunity to go and find a place of safety so that your very, very vulnerable newborn baby can be born into an environment that is safe.

Now, annoyingly, because we have only really been giving birth in hospitals or with unknown people around us, all of those things, that's only really what birth has looked like for the past 50, maybe for some people up to 100 years.

That's not quite long enough for evolution to have caught up with us.

So even if the kind of rational part of our mind goes, oh, look, new midwife, I'm sure she's lovely, I'm sure she's really supportive, I'm sure she's going to read my birth plan, I'm sure she's going to be great.

Even though we can kind of rationalise that in our head, the instinctive part of our body, that animalistic mammal response goes, ah, danger, I don't know this person, who are they?

This is not safe, or I don't know this space, I don't know this room, I don't know what is going on.

So even things that don't necessarily on paper feel dangerous, our body can sometimes respond in that way.

It can sometimes pull us out of that place where we are feeling safe, relaxed, unobserved and undisturbed.

And that's the kind of level of disruption that it potentially takes for birth to become disrupted.

And when birth becomes disrupted, it can be more painful, it can be unnecessarily lengthened.

And so if we then actually start to feel fearful on top of that, and we start to produce adrenaline because we feel worried or we feel afraid, that can then also take what that triggers, is something called the fight or flight response.

That tends to trigger a response in our body that moves basically the blood from around our organs, in our abdomen, our breathing organs, our digestive organs, our reproductive system, to our arms and to our legs because that is where our body has decided that energy needs to go, so that we can either fight the sensed danger or so that we can run away from it.

Now, we want our blood to be around our reproductive organs because our blood is providing the muscles of the uterus with glucose, with oxygen, basically energy for it to do what is a very, very energy-consuming job.

We don't want that blood to be in our arms and our legs.

We want it to be going to the muscles of the uterus and to our babies so that labour is as straightforward and as calm and as comfortable as possible for us.

So for all these multitude of reasons, we want to be in the calm part of our nervous system, and we don't want to be in the emergency part of our nervous system.

So if you want some practical things to go away and think about, you could write yourself a list, right?

You could write yourself a list of potential adrenaline triggers.

And I don't really want you to think, oh, somebody's walked in the room and announced that you need an emergency cesarean birth.

I want you to think like low-level disruptions, interruptions, interactions, that could stop you from feeling safe, relaxed, unobserved, and undisturbed.

And when you are aware of what those are, it might be that you can just make decisions that completely avoid them, or it might be that you can then reach for, and this is where hypnobirthing tools and techniques come into their own, reach for things that you can use whilst they are happening or alongside them to ensure that you can still feel relaxed and safe whilst they are happening.

That might be breathing techniques, guided relaxations, it might be literally closing your eyes, it might be affirmations, it might be massage techniques, it might be adapting the room to look different.

And then write yourself a list of oxytocin-producing ideas, so things that are going to make you feel safe, relaxed, unobserved, and undisturbed.

Anything that makes you feel good, that makes you feel happy, things that you can bring with you, things that you can reach for, things that you've got at home, literally anything.

And it will be slightly different list for everybody because we are all very different as to what makes us feel happy and what makes us feel comfortable.

So the more personal they are to you, that actually the bigger impact they're going to have.

So that's a really, really helpful starting point when it comes to thinking about your choices for birth.

Certainly, if you are hoping to have a vaginal physiological birth, in order for that to happen, this is really, really important that those things are protected and are taken into account.

But even if you are thinking, actually, I'm going to have a plan cesarean birth, being in that calm part of the nervous system is going to make that experience feel so much better, so much calmer, so much more positive for us than if we are feeling potentially nervous or panicked, which is a very, very normal thing to feel if you're about to have surgery whilst you're awake.

We've got a brilliant podcast episode on cesarean birth, actually, where we list some of the things that you might consider for oxytocin producing ideas in that situation as well.

And this basically is where all of this is where hypnobirthing comes into its own.

It is extra ideas, extra tools, extra techniques that you can use to ensure that you are in that calm part of the nervous system.

So both to use during pregnancy so that the choices that you make are based, are made in this place of feeling calm, and they are not based on that fear or that assumption or that panic, but also that you can use if you want to during labour and birth to make you feel more comfortable, to make you feel more relaxed, to really, really support the normal physiological processes that need to happen in your body and your baby's body for birth to work.

So that is where those hypnobirthing tools and techniques really come into account.

And the main point of that hypnobirthing approach is to build your confidence.

So it is building a relationship between your mind and your body, encouraging you and building your trust in your body.

So not just trust that birth will work, to a point, yes, for the majority of people, birth will work, but trust to believe whatever it is communicating with you, even if you can't make rational sense of it.

If it is saying to you, lie down with your legs in the air, it's trust to believe that, rather than what somebody on the outside is telling you.

If it is telling you, this is happening and it's happening quickly, the baby is coming, and somebody is saying, no, it's your first baby, you've got ages yet, it's trust in yourself, trust in what you are feeling.

If actually you're feeling sensations and you're like, this doesn't feel right, something just feels off, it is trust about believing what your body is trying to communicate with you.

So that is the first thing that hypnobirthing is used to build confidence and build trust in.

When we have that trust and we have that confidence in ourself, it makes it much easier to make decisions that feel right for ourselves.

Not just doing what you are told, but actually taking the information, asking the questions, and working out actually what do I want to do for me and for my baby.

And it can feel very nerve wracking to communicate that back, particularly if you decide that you don't want to do what is recommended immediately.

You want to ask her something else, you would like to give birth at home, you would like to plan a cesarean, you want to decline an induction, whatever it is you're deciding.

You actually need to feel very self-confident to be able to communicate that back to the people that are looking after you throughout pregnancy and birth.

And with all of this, with this newfound confidence comes the confidence that you have in yourself and in birth to not feel afraid, to kind of eliminate unnecessary fear, irrational fear.

Some fear is very normal and to fear things that could happen is absolutely normal, but the kind of irrational fear, when we have confidence in ourselves, we can get rid of that much, much more easily.

And this confidence comes from two places, which is everything that I've been talking about today.

So it is, first of all, the education and the knowledge, the what happens, your options, your choices and your rights, understanding all of those things.

And then the second is addressing those fears and assumptions about birth that are sitting in that subconscious part of your mind.

So this is basically the hypnobirthing tools and techniques, the actual approach to birth preparation.

So all of this, all the actual tools and techniques, all the actual knowledge and information is covered in absolutely tons of depth in our courses.

So our online course is probably the one that most people are reaching for if you are not local to me.

There are all of the practical tools and techniques, guided relaxations with MP3s, to breathing techniques, affirmations, anchors, massage techniques, videos and practice that you can do for optimal positioning, all of that, plus the antenatal education side of things.

So covering all your pain relief options, your comfort measure options, both medical and natural, your birthplace choices, the potential interventions, the general maternity care and choices that you might get to make, positioning of your baby, putting together birth plans, all of this is really, really important.

And this is what makes Birth-Ed different to some other hypnobirthing or some other antenatal courses.

It is the combination of the two things and the really thorough and honest nature of the preparation.

So it is no good having one without the other.

Having the knowledge without the tools to make it happen is no good.

Having the tools to make it happen without the knowledge of what your options are or how to navigate them, again, no good.

So that is what we are able to provide at Birth-Ed through our online courses.

Or if you are feeling like you need a little bit more handholding, I do one-to-one sessions online or in person if you happen to live near southwest London or Surrey in the UK.

But our online course is just £40 or $49.

It is available literally all over the world.

I think at last count it was being used in 102 countries.

It is all pre-recorded, so you can access it instantly.

You can recap it as frequently as you need to.

You just need access to the internet.

So I will post a link to where you can access all of this in the notes of the podcast, but you can go to www.birthed.co.uk and it is all accessible on there.

If you have got any questions or you want to find out a little bit more about what might be the most appropriate course, please do just email me, message me on Instagram, and I am always more than happy to chat to people.

It will be really, really brilliant to see you on a course soon.

Thank you so much for listening to the Birth-ed podcast.

If you enjoyed today's episode, it would mean the world if you could leave us a five-star review, and hit subscribe.

It is actually these things that send us up the podcast charts, which means we appear on more people's podcast apps, and therefore quite literally improve more people's births and change babies' lives.

If you can't wait till next week for another episode, go back and check out the entire back catalogue of podcast episodes.

Follow us on Instagram at birth-ed, or join our online course today at www.birthed.co.uk.

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Podcast: Navigating Pregnancy Choices with Midwife Laura Green

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Podcast: Induction of Labour with Dr Sara Wickham