I was terrified of giving birth. I don’t know if it was something my Mum had always said but it had always been in my head that it was going to be tough. She had all four of us naturally and always liked to go into great detail on the longevity of each birth, especially her first, me. Each time she tells the story of when I was born, she will add an hour to her labour and until I understood the stages of labour and giving birth it sounded quite the ordeal to be in labour for 23+ hours. Surely it was some form of torture.
When we went to our NCT classes, the main motivation of which was to learn about the birth, there was lots of talk about hypno-birthing and how positive thoughts and deep breathing can help you to keep calm through labour – sometimes managing without any pain medication. The girls were talking about their experiences in another class, and how we should all get involved. I rolled my eyes at this as I always do, this isn’t really a “me” thing to enforce an air of positivity on myself. I knew I was scared, and I thought there was no way I would be able to trick my mind into thinking otherwise. Fear prevents a good birth, they said, so I thought I was destined to have a bad one.
I felt the same way when I had heard from my friend that she had recently had a fuss-free home birth and had been trying to convince me to do the same not long before these classes took place. She is one of those people who sees the good in everything, she really is. She is always smiling, I can’t imagine her having a bad day or getting angry – she is just one of those sunshine-y people – Of course YOU had a good home birth, I said, that will definitely not be the case for me, I’m not like that at all.
Despite her being my friend, we are completely different people. My boss in one of my previous jobs once remarked on my lack of positivity by saying I was surely too young to be that cynical. I am definitely not the happy relaxed type, most of the time.
In terms of the birth, they tell you to breathe through the pain as oxygen lessens its effect, and to keep calm and relaxed. A balance of Oxytocin, the love hormone and Adrenaline will help bring the baby through the birth canal. Too much stress in the form of Cortisol, will slow down labour – so the theory of positive thoughts and relaxation will give you a good chance of having a uncomplicated birth.
I did listen to some of the advice, as I was very keen to go to the midwife led birth centre. I often get “white coat syndrome” and get high blood pressure when I’m in the presence of doctors, so it made sense to avoid them if possible.* The environment is dark, with low lighting unlike the brightly lit hospital wards and the walls were painted purple. I was able to sit in the water bath for some of the process, to help relieve some of the pain like I had at home, and actually aside from the smell of disinfectant, it did feel very much like being at home. This is all meant to add to sense of Oxytocin or at least not take away from it. (It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy though, if all the ladies in the birth centre have good births it may be due to the environment but it could also be due to the fact that you have to fit a stringent set of criteria to be in there at all. I was low risk, so it was always going to be unlikely, although not impossible, that something would go wrong.)
I had a uncomplicated birth but it was anything other than the calm experience I imagined hypno-birthing to be - what I believed to be a positive birth. During the birth I screamed and I cursed and I cried. The pain was horrendous, I have never felt anything like it. When I gave birth to my second son, I was making the same guttural animalistic noises I made with my first. I couldn’t help – I didn’t recognise the sounds coming from my mouth but I was definitely the one making them. The midwife told me I should channel that energy of making the noises into pushing downwards. I kept telling her I WAS pushing, and that I had no control over it and I didn’t hide the fact that her telling me that was incredibly annoying, either, in fact looking back I think I was quite rude to her.
I was lucky, I had two simple complication free vaginal births, both in the water and both in the birth centre with only a couple of midwives present. I didn’t have the home-birth like my friend with the sunny disposition but other than the location, I think they were fairly similar. But that is all it is, it’s luck.
Many of the things that can happen at the birth are no fault of the mothers and are beyond our control. Babies are doing their own thing with their positioning and then there’s the timing of it all. The babies get tired, and so do we. But it always bothered me that the one thing I supposedly could control, my attitude, would potentially let me down. I thought my negativity was going to be something that would spoil an otherwise simple birth. I feared it was going to be my fault, but I needn’t have worried.
I may have been the grumpiest, most cynical mum-to-be, but I did have a positive birth, twice. I don’t believe in the breathing techniques and the positive mental attitude having any affect on it. My experience of birth was that the baby was doing all the work, pushing through my body at a speed that both felt like it was tunnelling through my organs and that it was taking forever. I never thought I could be the one that had the good birth, but I was.
If you too are worried about birth and are similarly perplexed by the practices of hypno-birthing, this doesn’t mean you’ll have a bad birth – you might just be fine. Scream the place down, or don’t - that baby is coming out either way.
*I also recommend avoiding books about birth until after you have experienced it, as I stupidly read This is Going to Hurt whilst I was pregnant and it didn’t help the anxiety, despite being a great book.