So far I have enjoyed my hypno-birthing sessions.  We know about the power of our mind, but often don’t know how to use them. These sessions gave us insights of how to use it… which is not only useful for me during birthing but through entire of my life. It’s a technique of believing in our own abilities.

As birthing is one of the most natural ability of women, but now days we are moving towards artificial techniques of birthing. This class taught me to believe in myself. Communicate with my unborn.

My husband, who was previously completely unaware about birthing, emotional and physical changes occurring within me during and after pregnancy, now started understanding me with a new perspective, which he learnt in the session. This is definitely helpful for my ‘happy’ mind set.

During all the sessions, we learnt about different relaxation and visualisation techniques, and prenatal exercise. After attending these classes, I have improved my awareness about my body and my baby. In daily life, we can avoid all the ‘negative’ emotions such as anger and fear, but the techniques that I have learnt will definitely be helpful to control extreme emotions.

Very often many of us think birthing is a very painful process. Some scary thoughts just linger in our mind. Experiences of our friends, relatives do add up in the horror stories. How can I forget our hindi movies where birthing is related with screaming and crying. All such things have a negative impact on our perception of birthing.

Such a fear always allows unnecessary medical intervention. Have we ever thought, as mothers, ‘do we really need all these interventions??’ Where is our natural capacity of birthing… what happened to us?? Are we really running away from nature or just a single thought of fear is causing all the unnecessary c-sections, epidurals and all the things?

All these thoughts are hanging around in my mind since I decide to become a mother. And finally I started searching for the answer during my hypno-birthing course. For me Hypno birthing is nothing but the method of analysing the fears in our mind, and trying to erase them with self-instructions whilst at the same time learning to relax yourself during panic situations.

In our session we learn how to cope up with the fears in our mind. Some more relaxation techniques. Yes it will prove to be useful only if we keep on practicing till the last day of pregnancy.

The day was full of different types of visualizations and relaxation techniques. The power of mind is really amazing. Though I have read books on the subject, it is a complete eye-opener to actually experience the power. We also received the birth companion’s script, which in my case is for my husband, as he will be helping me during my labour for achieving relax state of mind.

Yes, according to me, husbands should be involved during birthing. Before contacting Birth India, I used to say to him, I want you to be with me during labour, but I was not sure whether the doctors would allow him in the labour room. But now we are in a position, where we can find out the exact care provider who will respect our wishes or wants. This class has changed our perspective of pregnancy, birthing and parenting. We both have started thinking in that way.

When I have seen children being raised in neighbouring houses, or with relatives, my thoughts would be, “I don’t want to behave with my child in that way.” But the challenge was figuring out the right way of behaving with a child. But now I can say that we at least have a rough idea how we will behave with kid, and with each other.

We also learnt some pre-natal exercises to tone up our bodies and mind, as a flexible body and a fresh mind has proved helpful during delivery. She also suggested that we take a walk for at least half an hour each day. I thought that it would be difficult to take time out for a walk, but then, I started to go for a walk in the night, I feel the difference. The session was more interactive and we shared a lot, trying different relaxation techniques, and suggestions.

The second session was where we really started on the hypno-birthing techniques. We were supposed to do lot of reading from the reference book. All the topics were related to impact of fear during labour and how to face the stressful condition. Thus this training is not only useful during birthing but is also useful for the rest of your life!

We often hear advice from our elders, especially our mothers, saying, think good thoughts, try to use soft and positive language or don’t watch horror movies or serials during pregnancy. All this while, I have been following her instructions but never bothered to find out why she’s saying so. While reading our reference book, I found a link to what my mother kept saying.

The book talks of four important laws:

1. Law of psycho-physical response,
2. Law of harmonious attraction,
3. Law of repetition,
4. Law of motivation.

All these laws were an affirmation of what my mother kept suggesting; about positive thinking, and use of good language. As our thoughts, language has an influence on our mind. So think positive and be positive.

This class covered one of the breathing techniques, relaxation techniques & visualisation. But continuous practice of these techniques is needed because only then will the mind and body be trained and prepared for hypno birthing.

We (My husband and me) were very eager for these classes to start. Besides us, there was one more couple in the class. We had a lot of questions about the whole process. After a formal introduction, we started by sharing our experience about how we came to know about this organization.

I happened to meet Red (doula), in Gujarat, where I came to know about Birth India and since then I’ve been in constant touch with the organization.

Then we also shared our feelings about how we felt when we came to know that we were pregnant. We then proceeded to read some of the pages of the reference book, ‘Hypno birthing: The Morgan Method’, by Marie F. Morgan, which explained natural birthing process.

That day we shared our experiences, and some of our fears, about pregnancies with each other. We discussed how to choose our care provider, how to talk to him etc. Ruth gave us some templates to read.

One of it was informative, other contain new terminology for some usual practiced words such as delivery, pain etc. Also she suggested that while talking with others or with family we should use specific words: such as delivery should be called birthing.

At the same time she explained that though all of us are trying for a natural birth, there is a possibility that medical interventions will be required, so she recommended that we speak to our respective doctors about it.

We closed the session by watching some birthing films. For my husband, who hasn’t seen the process before, it was an eye-opening experience of seeing ‘the miracle of birthing’.