Hypnobabies

One of my dear friends just found out she is pregnant. Yay! As she and I were talking on the phone I realized I had a lot of information I wanted to pass along but who wants tons of advice? And just how much can you take in one sitting? So I just decided to blog about it. I can give her the link and she can read it if and when she wants to.

One of the best things we did was hypnobabies. Now in order for you to properly understand why the outcome was such a big deal for me you need to know how a I felt about childbirth. To say I was terrified was the understatement of the year. Whenever I started to think about giving birth I would feel panicky and start to cry. I am not good with pain, the sight of blood makes me throw up and I could not fathom that a baby could actually come out of a hole so small. I mean come on, that sounds more far fetched than Santa Claus! Not a really good place to be once I got pregnant. But since I was in fact pregnant and this kid had to come out somehow I knew I had to find a way to get a handle on my fears and bring them down to a more rational level.

I found them by doing internet searches for ways to alleviate the pain and fear of childbirth. I have to admit I was really skeptical, pretty much the whole way through. I mean hypnosis, really? What kind of hocus pocus is this? Once I figured out that hypnonsis is really only focused relaxation and I was not going to cluck like a chicken during childbirth I was able to get past the new agey name and learn the techniques. I liked the classes since we learned a lot and the relaxation techniques did seem to work and oftentimes put me to sleep, which is great when I woke up with pregnancy insomnia at 3:00 every night. It seemed a bit incredible to me that you could do an entire birth pain free and med free. I really just did not want to have to be restrained from running screaming from the hospital.

I had a rather high risk pregnancy and had to be induced, which I really did not want. I put it off as long as possible until my midwife finally just scheduled the induction and told us when to come in. When I started feeling contractions my husband put the hypnobabies music on the stereo and I sat in the rocking chair. I was hooked up to all sorts of monitors so I could not go much of anywhere. The only way they could tell I was having a contraction was I would drop my head, take a deep breath and stop rocking. I did end up opting for the epidural when the contractions became more intense, but we kept the music on and I just laid in bed and basically relaxed. I was so relaxed that the nurse and my husband kept thinking I was asleep. The day after my son was born our nurse came by to visit. She had never worked with someone doing hypnobabies before and she told me, "I don't know what you paid for that class, but it was worth it."

I used hypnobabies a lot after my son's birth. I ended up having an emergency c-section which left me pretty sore for a couple of days. I used it to stay relaxed when I first got up to walk, when they took my staples out and when the nurses would come in to look at my incision. It kept me from tensing up and making the pain worse and gave me a sense of control over some of the situation. I may not be able to control a lot during my son's birth, but I could control my reaction and I was able to keep myself calm