Perinatal Anxiety, Hypnobirthing, and the Pressure to have a “Perfect Birth”
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Before I became pregnant the idea of giving birth terrified me. I am a highly sensitive person and watching birth on tv and hearing people talk about birth physically made me wince, tighten my shoulders and grimace. Growing up I heard birth described as pushing a nectarine out of your nostril and a melon out of your vagina. I was never exposed to the idea of birth as something wonderful and empowering and so I decided as a twelve year old that if I was ever to have a baby I would have a c-section. So roll on 18 years and I found myself pregnant with my first child and still with the same narrative surrounding birth. I distinctly remember sitting with my sisters in a bar and feeling this wave of fear about the impending situation engulf me! I began reading The Positive Birth Book by Milli Hill and started to reframe birth in my mind and it was within this book that I came across the idea of Hypnobirthing.
what is hypnobirthing?
Hypnobirthing is a method of managing pain, anxiety and fear before and during childbirth that involves various therapeutic relaxation technique including affirmations, visualisations, hypnosis, and breath work. The core idea of hypnobirthing is that if the body and mind are relaxed then the birthing process can happen smoothly as the body is not fighting the process. Although this way of birthing has been around for centuries, the modern term was coined in 1989 by Marie Mongan in her book Hypnobirthing: A Celebration of Life. It is commonly associated with unmedicated natural births and has become increasingly popular over the last decade. Courses are run both online and in person and can be a wonderful bonding and preparation experience for people who are expecting. It has a huge presence on social media and many celebrities champion the method in aiding their birthing experience.
However, over the past few years since I have given birth to my daughter and have made a new circle of mum friends, I have come to see a few flaws in the method and been given some great advice in managing this. Even with the best birth preparation and an arsenal of hypnobirthing practices, there may be things you experience that you can’t plan for and you can’t simply visualise and breathe away. Hypnobirthing tends to paint the idea of a perfect birth and whilst imagining this and manifesting this experience are brilliant preparation tools, what happens when it doesn’t go to plan? How do you process your birth then? How do you deal with the sense of failure, or move through any guilt or fear you may be feeling? I had no idea about this world of birth trauma and how dramatically it can impact postpartum anxiety until I saw friends struggling with turbulent emotions about their births. Whatever your thoughts and views are on birth we have a duty of care to women after they have given birth.
how can we use hypnobirthing to help with this and prevent its impact on postpartum mental health?
I was fortunate that my hypnobirthing course was more focused on the birthing mother than the birth itself. The course was aimed at preparing us for any outcome and taught us tools to manage every situation. We practiced breathing methods not just for birthing the baby but breathing methods to find our voices, to tap into our power and intuition and teaching our partners how to advocate for this when we were in the birthing world. Furthermore, we covered emotionally preparing for after the birth. We worked to create a positive image ourselves in any birthing scenario. I created a list of what I would want for differing situations so that I felt prepared and empowered. This included:
My birth plan and preferences in lots of different situations
Ideas of how could I feel positive and proud of myself in any birthing experience
What my non-negotiables were
What my expectations were of myself in any given birthing situation
Meditations surrounding giving myself grace, compassion and love
Doing this wasn’t easy because doing work on yourself never is but it did inevitably help me because I actually ended up giving birth at the beginning of a global pandemic via a Gentle C-Section and although that was wildly different to the home birth I had planned, I came away feeling positive about the birth. I was initially disappointed that I didn’t get to have a natural water birth but I made space for those emotions. I noticed when I was blaming myself, when I was feeling like a failure, comparing myself to friends who had been able to have that birth and spiraling into why I wasn’t able to. Whenever I would find myself treating myself unkindly I would refer back to the preparation I had done.
So whilst I think hypnobirthing is a wonderful tool to have in your birthing tool kit I do think that in isolation it can lead to people feeling like a failure and can contribute to postpartum anxiety and depression. Hypnobirthing can be taught in a way that leaves birth feeling very black and white. You either experience the perfect natural birth or you don’t but there is so much grey area in between this and hypnobirthing needs to be taught in a way that covers this as well. We live in a world of constant comparison and being able to positively own your birthing story is a foundation that sets you up well for the rocky road of parenthood and maternal mental health.
Self care for mums and especially new mums is such a buzz topic at the moment that perhaps we need to look at really pushing for teaching emotional self care in the perinatal period. Learning skills in this period of time would be a useful tool for navigating the postpartum journey. Rather than waiting until new mums are in the thick of mental health struggles we could use some preventative measures to help with this really tough phase of life and teaching this on antenatal, hypnobirthing and birth preparation courses would be a really great space to learn this alongside other people in the same position.
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