HypnoBirthing Canada

I have the honor of being invited to be on a panel about birth at the University of Toronto. The event will be held on February 16th 2010

At the beginning of December I received an anxious phone call from a
first time mother, she told me she was *VERY* scared of birth and
that she was 35wks pregnant, she also had suffered from a bad
accident which resulted in the removal of two lower vertebrae and
caused her coccyx to be permanently fused, her consultant had thus
advised she have an elective section as he thought this would
prevent a vaginal delivery. We had 3 long telephone conversations
concerning HypnoBirthing and whether I thought it would help her,
she finally booked and we started private classes when she was 36+2.

At the first class I learnt that she was a medical doctor and
actually she was working as a general surgeon in my local maternity
hospital (renowned for it’s horrifically high C-Section and
intervention rate), she said she had no faith in natural birth and
all she had seen was negative outcomes, she performed daily C-
Sections, ventouse and forceps deliveries and was terrified. She had
no faith at all in her body and had decided she wanted to be in
hospital with continuous fetal monitoring throughout and a very
hands on (medical) delivery. I actually felt she was a bit phobic of
birth. For the first time ever I began to doubt whether
HypnoBirthing and I could help her.

We finished our last class (with extra fear release and a lot of
crying and extra questioning from her!) when she was just under
39wks, it was a bit of a struggle and very tiring fitting them all
in but both she and her husband were very committed to practice. In
the space of the fortnight I had been teaching them we also did a
lot of talking about how the environment and place of birth affects
the outcome (particularly since the hospital carried such negative
associations for her as she said she had performed instrumental
deliveries in most of the rooms) and I spent a lot of extra time
discussing homebirth with them. When I left they had booked a
homebirth but she was intending on transferring into hospital when
she felt the need (i.e: using the homebirth booking just to get a
midwife to come out to the house and then transfer in with them - in
England we sometimes call this “domino scheme”). We also spoke a lot
about the baby coming at the right time - her hospital is VERY
induction happy, protocol - straight to induction at term + 10, I
was convinced the baby wouldn’t hang around though as she gave a
very strong imminent birth aura at the last meeting.

Her husband has just telephoned, the baby was born 3 days early - AT
HOME - 14 hours from first surge to baby out, no pain relief needed
and he said the mother coped fantastically. I am so happy for them
and can’t believe the turn around in her in the space of 2 weeks!
I’ll be intrigued to see if this changes her practice when she
returns to work!

Feeling very happy with HypnoBirthing at the moment, my last 4
births in December were all great natural homebirths (two of whom
booked homebirths as a direct result of learning HypnoBirthing) and
I’m currently waiting on two more to deliver within the next
fortnight, both special circumstances, both booked homebirths. One
is an insuling dependent gestational diabetic VBAC and the other has
a quite strong psychological history and is properly tokophobic (I’m
doula’ing for them too, slightly nervous about that one!).

Sarah in UK
http://www.birthfriendly.co.uk

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