Many of you have seen these posts and expressed interest in finding out more about Hypnobirthing. You can find all the posts I've written about it here:
My Discovery of Hypnobirthing:
The Hypnobabies Lessons I've blogged through:
And also be sure visit the Hypnobabies website, www.hypnobabies.com, for more great information. (Some of the Hypnobabies links embedded in my posts may be outdated since Hypnobabies has updated their website). If you have any questions or want more details, please feel free to send me a message and ask away!
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Lesson 3 is a short but crucial one: how to create the all-important "anesthesia" that will make the birthing process peaceful instead of traumatic for both mom and baby. It's a simple concept that builds on Lesson 2: once turning off your "lightswitch" and relaxing every muscle completely, you're instructed to imagine anesthesia flowing through your body, making it blissfully numb.
When creating anesthesia in the Hypnobabies program, a woman has two options (can you tell I'm an artist?):
1. Staying "off" in the completely relaxed hypnotic state while keeping your entire body under "general anesthesia," though your mind is still totally alert and aware of everything that's going on:
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| Full-body anesthesia |
2. Move from "off" to "center" (eyes-open hypnosis) and essentially create an anesthetic "block," meaning that you can open your eyes, walk, talk, and move around, but still maintain that blissful numbness in specific areas. This type of technique has actually been used in modern medicine for things like surgery, and dental procedures for patients who are allergic to other anesthesia (crazy, huh?). In the case of birthing, the block occurs from your upper arms, through your midsection to the mid-thighs, allowing you to maintain complete faculty of your arms and legs but still feel no pain as the birthing muscles contract.
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| Partial block anesthesia |
Why these options? Because women need respond to whatever their body needs at any given time during the birthing process. Option one allows a woman to remain calm, restful, and comfortable as the pressure waves build on their own, or if she needs to take a break and re-gain some energy. Option two allows her to remain comfortable while taking a more active role to participate in techniques that help with the baby's descent (also useful if the process seems to have stalled a bit), using things like walking, squatting, changing position, or the belly lift to help move things along.
This anesthesia--especially in the "center" or eyes open stage--is the meat and potatoes of the Hypnobabies approach, the specific technique that helps a woman alter interpret the concept of pain as simply pressure. This definitely sounded too good to be true when I first read about hypnobirthing--that it was possible to 'imagine' the pain away--but I truly experienced it working to my full benefit with my last birth. When I remained relaxed as the self-hypnosis taught, I was able to envision a cool blue anesthesia flowing to wear my pain was, changing my perception of what I thought was "pain" to just strong pressure. It was still hard work and took all of my concentration to remain relaxed, but when I did, I was able to marvel at the absolute power and significance in my body's ability to bring our child into the world--pain free!
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