While on my moderate bed rest we hired Childbirth and Hypnobirthing Educator Rachel Yellin of One Moon to come to our home and teach us. Rachel is a wonderful, beautiful, grounded woman who had great things to share with us both from and educational and a energetic standpoint. She started us of by gathering information about how we felt about the upcoming birth. Pretty much right away I admitted that I had fear. We spent a good amount of time talking about the fear and why I had it. I felt like I was having a mini-therapy session which is something I did not expect to have or spend as much time as we did on. I felt like I was hogging or using up our valuable time but she kept me engaged with questions as well as offering ideas and possibilities that I could focus on instead.

In the end I found that spending this time on addressing the fear issue is related to the philosophy of hypnobirthing. Some of the ways in which it relates are these:

• It is important to find and work with a healthcare provider that is willing to work with me to give me the birth experience I want (unless special circumstances arise, then we take it as it comes). In my circumstance, I realized that I did need to look into an alternative provider and hospital.

• How you think and talk about things is important. Hypnobirthing is big on affirmations which work to ease and convince your mind of things that are true. The most simple example of all is that a woman’s body is designed to birth. Both the mother’s body and the baby’s body know what to do. It is now my job to get my mind (my fear) out of the way of my body so that I can let nature do what it is meant to do: birth naturally without pain.

It is interesting to read about how the body works. When it feels safe it has a releases certain chemicals to facilitate a chain of events that is the natural process of birthing.

When the body feels threatened, it shuts down the natural birthing process as a survival mechanism. In Ina May’s book Guide to Childbirth she tells how it has been observed in nature that if a gazelle begins to give birth but in the process is surprised by a predator, the gazelle can reverse the process (by shutting her cervix so that its baby remains inside its womb) until it can find a safe spot to give birth without fear, without threat.

This is true with human mothers too. If human mothers feel safe, comfortable and supported in their birthing environment then the mother gives birth naturally and with ease, without pain.