Sorry, there isn’t one! And I wouldn’t ever promise you a pain free labour by doing hypnobirthing or my course.
Tip - if any hypnobirthing or antenatal teacher is even suggesting a pain free labour.. run for the hills! Big red flag!
There are some hypnobirthing teachers and companies that don't like to use the word 'pain' and even the mention of it will cause you to focus on it in birth. Now, if you want to use the term 'comfort levels' instead and that makes you feel better during, that's great! Go with what feels right for you. But the fact that 'pain' is a forbidden word isn't helpful.
This may be controversial, but labour is painful. It is. Labour hurts. But it’s not pain in a bad way, like something is wrong. Like if you break your leg, there’s a problem. So the pain sends messages to your brain to tell it that something is wrong. But when you’re in labour, the pain is doing something good, it’s productive pain. Like if you’re doing a workout, and working really hard on some shoulder presses. It hurts. But it’s good hurt. Productive. You’re working it hard. ‘Feel the burn’ right?
When I say that birth is painful, I don't mean the typical lying on a bed in hospital, screaming your head off and squeezing your partners hand, cursing them. I mean that you feel your body is doing something, those muscles are working super bloody hard and a baby is coming out. Your body is going through a huge transformation.
In my courses, we work on reframing the pain, rather than forbidding it.
So, it’s painful. But because it’s productive pain, you seem to cope better with it. I was terrified how I would handle the pain of labour because I would cry at a small headache and be unable to cope. Birth was very different in terms of pain and what you can manage. It turns out, the mindset is very important. You tell yourself it has a purpose, there’s a reason
for the contractions, and that you can do this. Suddenly, you can. And the thing is, you need to listen to your body. The pain of contractions is very different to the pain of something 'wrong' or that your baby needs to move in to a different position.
Birth isn’t an injury. It’s a huge transformation. The important thing is to listen to your body. It will tell you if something changes and the pain is a different type of pain. Your instinct is strong.
Birth is incredibly primal. There's a reason we make moo'ing and loud noises when we push our baby out. We see many birth videos of a super calm birther, breathing and barely making a noise and suddenly, the baby is out! When a lot of people roar their babies out, like a powerful lion they are!
If you have a pain free birth (some do) that’s awesome! But if you don’t, please don’t feel like a failure. It’s meant to hurt, you didn’t do anything wrong.
If you want to book on to my course, to reframe the pain of birth and allow you to feel empowered by the pain, rather than scared by it - go to the bookings on my website and send me your details and when you want to book for. I'm telling you now, the feeling you get when you realise birth doesn't have to be agonising and terrifying is like a weights been lifted!
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