Don’t mention the P-word and you won’t feel a thing (that’s the theory)

INCREASINGLY popular in the UK, hypnobirthing sessions – undertaken in the weeks leading up to the birth – teach women mind-over-matter techniques to help them cope with labour.

Many practitioners recommend six to 12 sessions in the run-up to the due date and these typically involve deep relaxation techniques to lull mums-to-be into a hypnotic state, and breathing exercises.

As demand rises, a growing number of NHS hospitals are offering the classes to expectant women.

The claim by some mothers that it has helped achieve almost pain-free births is at the heart of its huge appeal.

So when I became pregnant with my second baby, after a harrowing experience with my first and a gnawing anxiety about the impending birth, my husband and I went to see hypnotherapist Kristin Hayward at her South London home.

She says hypnobirthing works on the principle that ‘pain is usually caused by fear, which can be eliminated if the body is relaxed’ and that ‘a woman’s body is perfectly designed to give birth to a baby’.

I was actually extremely sceptical about what seemed at first to me to be a procedure from the ‘hippy dippy’ school of medicine. But I was intrigued by the theory that if you’re scared when you go into labour then your body tenses up and you prolong the birth.

Hypnotherapy teaches you techniques to embrace the pain, move into positions that will make the contractions stronger and hurry the whole awful business along. Or, if it’s all moving too fast, it gives you control to slow it down.

Most hypnotherapists even change the language of labour: contractions are referred to as ‘surges’ and the ‘p’ word – pain – must not be uttered. The idea is that if you don’t acknowledge pain, you can’t feel it. Right...

On my first session with Kristin

– who, as it happens, is perfectly happy to use the ‘p’ word – she hypnotised me and asked me to imagine a place where I felt safe.

Soon, in my head, I was wandering around a tropical rain forest by a waterfall, as if in a vivid dream.

Over the next few sessions, she asked me to think of my favourite colour drifting down through my body.

Another time she had me imagine that I was giving birth ‘easily and naturally’.

When she counted me ‘back into the room’ – 5,4,3,2,1 – I was almost surprised to find no baby in my arms.

She also taught me breathing exercises, and every night I listened to recordings of her soothing voice telling me to release my fears. When I went into labour, I arrived at the hospital at 3am imagining a turquoise blue colour washing over me and trying to self-hypnotise to transport myself to my woodland ‘happy place’, all the while mooing away like a farmyard animal.

Obviously it wasn’t easy and there was a last-minute scream for an epidural – far too late, apparently – and a reminder to my husband that I was never doing this again.

But, do you know what? I wasn’t scared for one minute.

I gave birth to our beautiful daughter – a whopping 10lb 4oz – in a birthing pool at 5.21am with just gas and air, no stitches, and was home for tea and toast by 8am.

I’d recommend hypnobirthing to any prospective mother. But it’s nice to know the drugs are there, too.

‘I had my 10lb 4oz baby … with just gas and air’