Thinking it through B
Self-hypnosis can ease the pain of popping a sprog, writes Leigh-Anne Hunter
TIGHT SQUEEZE: Shereen Hayes demonstrates the birth process — relaxing, she says, is the key REEZING into a Joburg coffee shop, Shereen Hayes presses “play” on a laptop video and a waiter, wideeyed, nearly trips over his shoes.
The video shows a woman in the throes of a “HypnoBirthing” labour. There’s barely a grunt. “I love watching this. I get so caught up,” says Hayes, who gives HypnoBirthing courses.
Based on the premise that women who are calm in childbirth tend to experience less pain and “enjoy the process”, HypnoBirthing has enchanted moms around the world. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, reportedly practised it before Prince George popped out the royal womb.
Women are taught self-hypnosis to help them relax in labour, says Hayes, 32. “Moms look like they’re drugged or spaced out.” Who needs an epidural when you’re wallowing in dopamine?
“Stage hypnosis is the first thing that comes to people’s minds, but we’re not removing mom from the experience. Quite the opposite: she’s more in tune with her body. She can come out of this state at any time.”
Parents-to-be enrol with a natural birth in mind. In the five-week programme, moms learn breathing techniques and visualisations, like imagining contractions as waves on a beach or sliding a “glove of anaes- thesia” over the painful parts.
In one of the many word swaps in HypnoBirthing, contractions are called “surges”. “Words provoke physiological reactions. I say ‘contraction’, you say ‘pain’.”
But picturing yourself cloaked in soft, fuchsia mist in the classroom might ot be so easy when your water breaks. Sorry, when your “membranes release”.
Joburg resident Jodie Davimes, who did the course during her first pregnancy, says she’d always wanted to go natural. “Also, I come from England, where elective Caesareans aren’t the norm.”
The more she researched natural birth on pregnancy chat rooms, the more HypnoBirthing came up. “I wanted a calm, positive birth. The idea of taking away the fear of it all and working with, not against, your body, just made sense.”
Her labour lasted just over 12 hours. “It wasn’t pain-free, but it was manageable. I didn’t even take a Panado.” That’s not the case for everyone, though. Globally, 95% of women who use HypnoBirthing have a “comfortable” birth, 60% use no pain relief, and up to 25% use “mild relief such as gas and air”, say HypnoBirthing centres. Fearful of possible side-effects on their baby, some learn about HypnoBirthing so they don’t have to overmedicate.
“Naysayers have told me the programme sets people up for disappointment. But I never tell my couples they are going to have a painfree birth,” says Hayes. “We don’t harp on about things like pain management and surgical births. We accept the reality that if we need them, we can use them.”
She comes to class armed with a pelvis model and flipchart. “We teach you what’s going to happen with your body, right from pregnancy. Women have lost touch with their innate wisdom. Watch a Hollywood movie and where’s the mom? Flat on her back, screaming. A Native American woman would just step away from the pack, birth her baby in the forest, bite off the umbilical cord, and re-join the group.”
Hayes says hypnosis may help with turning a breech baby (she says the success rate is as high as 80%), or one with an umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. Moms are encouraged to talk to their babies in utero, as one of her clients did. “She spoke to her little one every day, saying: ‘You know what, you need to unravel yourself,’ and by the end of the course, baby had untangled.”
People laugh, she says, but: “Your baby is listening”. LS