Calmly does it! Beautifully Born feature in Fit Pregnancy Mag.

Beautifully Born HypnoBirthing is featured in the Feb / Mar edition of South Africa's FitPregnancy magazine! The article:


Calmly does it

If you are looking for a method of controlling pain during labour – without medication – HypnoBirthing could be for you.

Pregnancy is a time filled with excitement and anticipation, but also with anxiety. For many women, particularly first-timers, their fear of labour is all-comsuming. It’s easy to understand why; we’ve all heard horror stories of endless and agonising labours.
Yet, many women want to have a natural birth with as little pain medication and intervention as possible. That’s where HypnoBirthing comes in, says practitioner Kim Young. “It is designed to alleviate the factors that cause fear, allowing you to birth your baby using your body’s natural, perfectly designed, and ultra-efficient muscles and pain relief to manage the process calmly and with minimal discomfort.” Here, Kim answers some frequently asked questions about HypnoBirthing.

How does pain occur?
At the onset of labour, all the senses become heightened and, all too often, the fear responses take hold and begin to govern the progress of the labour. In physiological terms, the body’s response to fear is to release adrenaline, causing muscles to tighten (the flight, fight or freeze response), and blood to divert to the major survival organs (of which the uterus is not one).
Thus, the very muscles designed perfectly to birth your baby begin to work against each other and cause pain. The pain causes the body to release more adrenaline, and a cycle of pain-adrenaline-pain is triggered. Added to this, the lack of oxygen in the uterine muscles creates lactic acid, increasing the level of pain even further.

How is your body supposed to work?
In contrast, when a woman is relaxed, she releases endorphins, the body’s natural relaxant, at the onset of labour, which supplement the hormones specifically released to allow her to birth her baby easily. This powerful natural combination of endorphins (which help the muscles relax and are also 200 times more potent than morphine!) and hormones makes the birth an exhilarating and exciting process, rather than one filled with escalating pain and discomfort.

How does it work?
By using a range of simple self-hypnosis, breathing and relaxation techniques, from around 28 weeks of pregnancy, HypnoBirthing moms are, with practice, able to reach a deep state of relaxation, allowing them to switch off the part of the mind responsible for triggering the adrenaline release.
“will I be ‘out of it’ if I use hypnosis?”
Absolutely not. All hypnotherapy is self-hypnosis; you are always fully conscious and able to open your eyes or talk at any time. It is not possible to hypnotise an unwilling participant. Hypnosis is a state that everybody passes through during their day – daydreaming, watching TV or reading.

Can you guarantee a pain-free birth?
Unfortunately not but statistics speak for themselves: 95 per cent of women are capable of having a “comfortable” birth without medical intervention; sixty per cent of women that have used HypnoBirthing used no pain relief at all; a further 20-25 per cent used only something mild such as Entonox (gas and air). There are occasionally “special circumstances” when a mother will need assistance, but using HypnoBirthing will allow her to make informed choices about the options she has.

What is the history of HypnoBirthing?
It was founded in the US by Marie Mongan in the late 1980s and is now taught in 34 countries. Only practitioners affiliated with the HypnoBirthing Institute are qualified to teach the course.

Have you used it yourself?
Our daughter, Kiera, was born in 2005 in hospital, after a fairly “typical” first labour – 14 hours, lots of shouting, stalling and screaming, all of which was exhausting and painful. I discovered HypnoBirthing shortly after falling pregnant for the second time in 2007. This time I was determined to have a more positive experience. After learning the HypnoBirthing methods, our son, James, was born, at home, in under two hours following a pain-free, drug-free labour.

For more information, contact Kim, visit beautifullyborn.co.za or, for a practitioner near you, go to hypnobirthing.com/south_africa