Did you read my hypnobirthing story and are you wondering if the Hypnobabies Course is for you? Good on you for doing your due diligence before forking over the cash for this at-home hypnobirthing course. I know I did. I am here to reassure you of two things:
- Hypnobabies WORKS. It gave me my dream birth. I did it with no epidural. No drugs. No interventions. No episiotomy. No pain. Just by using the power of my mind. Females are strong as hell. Period.
- Hypnobabies can potentially overwhelm you. It’s a LOT of information and requires commitment. It is impossible to do all of it. Whether you do this course or not, you are doing enough. If you have found yourself here, on this random blog, you clearly care deeply about how this experience can impact both you and your baby. You are already an amazing mother. Period.
A few days after I gave birth, one of my midwives said to me, “I guess this is your first baby so you probably don’t know this, but your experience was very rare.” Really? I thought, because I didn’t feel like it was. My experience wasn’t any different from any other birthing story that I had read in the HypnoBabies Facebook Group. I think it goes to show just how few people are aware of what hypnobirthing is and what they are capable of. If I didn’t cross paths with someone who did Hypnobabies, my birth would have been a completely different experience and I think my baby would have been a little different, too. I’m grateful to the co-worker and friend who told me about this. I hope I can be that person for you.
So let’s get into it.
*If you are interested in taking the Online Hypnobirthing Course that I discuss in this blog post, please use my affiliate link here. Scroll to the end of the post to find my personalized promo code for 20% off.
Should I do Hypnobabies?
Do you want to try for a natural birth? Do you enjoy meditating? Does the idea of hypnobirthing intrigue you? Then what are you waiting for, mama?!
Hypnobabies is wonderful for little Over Achievers like myself who love structure and a program. There are little tests at the end of each chapter that give you a little oxytocin spike when you get them all right (though there was a glitch in mine that would say I didn’t score perfectly when I did, which did force me to just get over myself).
Know that there are things in life we cannot control, and while you may intend to have a natural birth, interventions or caesarean sections may be medically required. This happened to a couple of friends of mine. Both of them found that the work they did in preparation for a hypnobirth helped them tremendously leading up to and during the surgery, to stay calm and focused. Neither of them had regrets.
If you are overwhelmed by the prospect of meditating every day because who has time and patience for that, then you do you! This program is not for everyone. Only you know the right path for you and your baby. I celebrate you either way.
Hypnobabies a time commitment. You are training for a marathon.
The amount of reading is overwhelming. It’s like taking a part-time school course. If you are studious, you will relish in this, but it might also bring out the Academic Overacheiver in you that gets anxious at the sheer amount of material to be taken in, so beware. Have healthy boundaries with the course and don’t put too much pressure on yourself.
Studies have show that the amount of physical exertion and recovery required in childbirth is comparable to running three or four marathons. So I approached this birth like an athlete: I committed to a daily practise both mentally and physically. I read a bit of the course every day and listened to the tracks for at least an hour every day. I subscribed to an online prenatal yoga class and did 20-30 minutes every morning in my living room. I ate healthy. I took my prenatals. All my hard work paid off not just with an incredible birth, but a relatively easy postpartum period and a super chill newborn baby.
Hypnobabies empowers women in two ways: with education (the course) and with practical tools (the hypnosis tracks). Both must be done together in order to work.
The program is slightly dated, but don’t let that worry you.
The interface and images look dated and screams 2010s, but I assure you it doesn’t compromise the content and value of the course. The tracks and the information provided are still up-to-date and I’m telling you, it WORKS!
The information is extensive. You will require no other birthing courses.
Don’t waste your time reading any other books or taking any other information courses. Everything you will need to know about having a baby is in Hypnobabies! The breadth of information is more than you will ever need.
There was a free online information course that our hospital offered, and I do regret taking it. I had to do a fear clearing hypnosis afterwards and I felt like it was a waste of time. Beware that other information courses can give contradicting advice to Hypnobabies (discussing the need for epidurals and other interventions, showing videos of women in pain during childbirth, and/or using non-Hypno language). This can undo a lot of work you do, so it’s best to avoid them and trust in the Hypnobabies course and community.
It can easily get overwhelming.
As I’ve said, the program is extensive and covers a lot. I would argue it is not necessary to spend time memorizing and practising certain chapters, like the birthing positions to get into if your baby is not in the right position. I left that kind of stuff up to my midwife. She was responsible for getting the baby out safely, and I was responsible for staying in hypnosis in order to stay connected to my body and my baby.
I also found the calorie counting section to be irrelevant and of no use to me. If anything, it would have encouraged unhealthy body image issues, so I didn’t do it. I have no regrets about that. I already knew how to eat a balanced diet, and monitoring every food intake in my pregnancy would not have put me in a healthy or happy mindset.
Doing Hypnobabies also requires participation and commitment from your birthing partner
The ultimate reason why I chose to do HypnoBabies was because there was a clear job for my husband when the day came. His duties were clearly laid out in the course. The program opened up a very great dialogue between the two of us and we prepared for this birth together. And he nailed it!
If I could do it again, though, I would have done a dress rehearsal with him. He made a mistake when it was time to play the “Pushing Track” and instead of playing the track on the speaker for the whole room to hear, he turned off the music on my headphones and I was met with a deafening silence that threw me into a panic as a birthing wave came on. He managed to get the track playing on the speaker right after that wave, and I was able to eventually get back on track, but like … OWWW. That was only time I felt pain in the whole birth. Not fun. Though perhaps it was meant to happen because it was then that I knew that it was working!
So really, what is a hypnobirth like?
You can read about my birthing experience in my last blog, here. It was truly a dream birth. I walked to the hospital fully dilated like I wanted to and I pushed for an hour. I wouldn’t call my birth “painful”. I would call it “hard work”. I felt my power. My husband was a very involved part of the whole process and the feeling of his hand on my forehead and hearing him say “peace” was the most amazing drug I could have asked for. I often will recall that day to remind myself of what I can do.
I had no idea what the woman on the hypnosis track was saying while I was pushing. It was like listening to background music with a familiar voice in the distance. But weeks after I gave birth, I listened back to the “Pushing Track” and was amazed at what she was saying. Everything she told me to do, I had done as if it was of my own volition. Things like saying “peace” with each push and how I envisioned him coming easily down the birth canal. The power of hypnosis is incredible because our minds are incredible when we are able to focus and harness our energy on a particular goal.
I had some postpartum bleeding right after I delivered the placenta. After such a fast birth, my uterus just gave out and didn’t want to work anymore to stop the bleeding. I am grateful that the track was still playing in the background because it kept me calm while the midwives continued to work. Once the bleeding stopped and baby had latched on for his first feed, my husband changed the playlist to a party mix. I don’t feel like I truly dropped the hypnosis until I FaceTimed my best friend, looked into her face with my baby in my arms and said “I did it.”
The bonus tracks are worth their weight in gold
There are two bonus tracks that come with your Hypnobabies Birthing Course: “Peaceful Sleep Now For All ” and “After Your Baby Comes”. These are the most powerful tracks for your postpartum period. I listened to “After the Baby Comes” between feeds whenever I needed to sleep, and I swear it helped with my healing and my postpartum mindset. It gave me powerful affirmations like: “my baby sleeps when I sleep” and “my hormones regulate”, which worked.
The HypnoBabies site also has other helpful tracks for birthing mothers-to-be like “Turn Your Breech Baby” or “Come Out Baby!” (Which actually worked for a friend of mine and induced her naturally!) Since I knew that my body and mind responded so well to these tracks, I also downloaded the “Eliminate Stress and Anxiety” track when I was back to work and working on a particularly stressful set. It really is a skill that I feel like I have now moving forward.
Am I Glad I Did it?
HELL YES.
At first I thought that the birth only accounted for a small amount of time in the full scope of my child’s life, and I should be focusing my time on learning more about parenting or preparing my house for the baby’s arrival. But what I’ve learned is that the birth experience affects us and our children more than we think. Babies can feel stress in the womb. The birthing experience can be traumatic for mother and baby, and the starting point can affect the road you’re on.
What I am most grateful to HypnoBabies for is the opportunity I had to feel my power. That is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience. I am so grateful I had it!
In Conclusion: What the Medical System Often Fails To Account For
I am aware that there are people who hear my birthing story and hate my guts. That’s valid. Traumatic births and emergency c-sections happen all the time. They are not the birthing mother’s fault. I blame the medical system for not properly educating women on the power they can wield in the birthing experience and the decisions they can make during a pregnancy. Caesarean sections are the #1 in-patient surgery in Canada. I believe that the majority of them are unnecessary. They are definitely the most convenient for the medical field: why let a woman’s body set the pace for a birth when you can induce her and have the baby delivered in time for the long weekend? At the slightest sign of any risk, C-sections are recommended by doctors. I find that many medical decisions fail to factor in the entire scope of the human being they are treating. Certainly in the field of obstetrics, medicine does not factor in the power of a woman’s mind.
Perhaps there is a cultural element to this too: how often do we see television shows of traumatic births and women screaming their heads off in extreme pain? It’s enough to make anyone cower, relinquish their feeling of agency in the birthing experience, and look to a doctor for their expertise in keeping them safe. HypnoBabies is a program that gives the power back to the mother. It gave me the power to choose the path for me and my baby.
There is another kind of response I get when I tell women my birthing story: intrigue. Or even familiarity. It just sounds right. For some mothers, there is a feeling that they were just as capable of doing what I did, but they didn’t have the resources or the knowledge at the time. Other women who have not yet birthed a baby catalogue this information in their brains and tell me that they will be bugging me when the time comes. And I am here to tell you that your gut is always right. You know what is best. And you are more powerful than you know.
Good luck.
Use my affiliate link here to purchase the Hypnobabies Online Birthing Course and quote “ElenaJuatco20” to receive 20% off your HypnoBabies purchase.
Full disclosure: I do get a small commission for every purchase that is made on the Hypnobabies store via the links on this post. I am not getting paid to write this blog, so please consider it a way to keep me writing and Roque into college one day. Thank you!
