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You're Getting Sleepy…..HypnoBirthing® uses hypnosis for easier, natural childbirth
The Providence Journal, Sunday, April 2, 2006
04/02/2006 01:00 AM EST
BY LAURA MEADE KIRK
Beth and Christopher Adamo were intrigued by HypnoBirthing® from the moment they first heard about it on a television news show: They loved the idea of women using self-hypnosis techniques to give birth easily and naturally.
"It was kind of amazing to see women in the hospital giving birth and not screaming and moaning and doing all the things you see on TV," Beth Adamo said. "The women looked like they were basically just asleep and the children just emerged. I said, 'See, that's the way it should go,' " Christopher Adamo said.
He encouraged his wife to give it a try during the birth of their first child, Roslyn Grace, three years ago. They attended a series of classes and practiced the self-hypnosis techniques.
HypnoBirthing® wasn't quite as easy as it appeared on television, Christopher said. "Our midwife was not entirely on board with the whole thing. She was a bit of a cheerleader, which disrupted the process," he said. But it still was a fairly quick, easy and drug-free delivery, the Adamos agreed. And they had the process down by the time Natalie Joy was born seven months ago.
"Throughout the day, I just relaxed and meditated," Beth recalled. "We basically got (to the hospital) just in the nick of time. I didn't push. There was (no pain). She just kind of popped out." Natalie's birth, she said, was "more what you would expect HypnoBirthing® to be." It's not like the hypnosis most people think of, she explained. "I never really felt hypnotized, like if someone said, 'Dance like a chicken' I would. It's more about getting your mind to let your body do what it's designed to do."
THE ADAMOS, WHO LIVE IN Providence, are among a growing number of people who are turning to hypnosis as the latest technique in natural childbirth.
HypnoBirthing® is the copyrighted name for a childbirth education program created by Marie "Mickey" Mongan, a hypnotherapist from Epsom, N.H. Mongan is a longtime proponent of natural childbirth who gave birth to two of her four children with no anesthesia back in the 1950s and 1960s, when women were routinely knocked out with ether. She'd asked to deliver her first two children naturally. But the hospital staff refused.
She finally convinced her doctor to allow her to deliver her third and fourth children without anesthesia. "I didn't have a smidgeon of pain," she said. She didn't realize it at the time, she said, but she was practicing self-hypnosis during each of those deliveries. "I
almost felt like I was on a hammock -- I could feel the swing. I was so totally, totally relaxed that my body was working the way it's supposed to."
A high school teacher back then, she eventually became the dean at Pierce College for Women in New Hampshire . In 1987, she became a certified hypnotherapist because she believed it was a valuable tool to help people she was counseling.
But it wasn't until her daughter, Maura, became pregnant in 1989 that she considered hypnotherapy as a tool for childbirth as well. She didn't want Maura to have to follow "this terrible routine that labor and birthing had come to be."
So Mongan created a hypnotherapy program for Maura and two pregnant friends. She explained the entire birth process, to take away the mystery and the fear of giving birth. She taught them how to relax, to help ward off pain. She told them to visualize the
baby's birth -- imagining the muscles relaxing as the baby travels down the birth canal and out into the world. She showed them how calm and beautiful the natural birthing process can be when a mother lets her body do what it's designed to do -- naturally. She taught them, in essense, self-hypnosis.
"Maura had her baby in five hours, from start to finish. For a first-time birth, particularly as calm and beautiful as it was, that was a very rare thing -- especially with no medication," Mongan said.
Maura's friends had equally stress- and drug-free births. Word of Mongan's techniques quickly spread, and she publicly presented them to the National Guild of Hypnotists in 15 years ago. Her colleagues coined the phrase HypnoBirthing®, and she's since been
teaching what she calls The Mongan Method around the world.
"HYPNOBIRTHING® IS A PHILOSOPHY of birth, more so than a technique," Mongan said. "Women were created to conceive, to nurture the development of the baby and to give birth to the baby. That's a physiological fact. Ninety-five percent of women
should be able to give birth to their babies with no more trauma than our sisters in nature. You don't see cats, for instance, walking the halls. We don't go in and interrupt their births the way human births are interrupted and disturbed. The thing is, women are so terrified of birthing all they think of is that they need drugs and anesthesia."
Mongan's goal is to help women relax so nature can simply take its course. "We're not selling pain-free at all. We're selling a more comfortable, certainly more relaxed, and easier birthing," Mongan said.
As word spread, the medical community at first was a bit skeptical, Mongan said. "They were puzzled by it more than anything, but they also were in awe." She's now found support from many hospitals. It's been slow to catch on in Rhode Island , she said, but
it's becoming a popular and accepted practice at many other facilities, especially the Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton , Mass.
"There's a lot of people doing HypnoBirthing® up here," said Michele Helgeson, a certified nurse midwife with Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates of Dedham, Mass., who delivers at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.
She said hypnosis has been used in childbirth for years, but it's experienced a resurgence in the last 10 years, thanks largely to Mongan's efforts. "She was able to coin this phrase and really started the movement going again," Helgeson said. "Little by little, classes have been popping up all over the place and people are actually seeking out this form of relaxation and pain management" as a safe, effective form of natural childbirth.
"It's not for everybody," Helgeson cautioned. "Some people are more receptive to self-hypnosis than others. But at the very least, I find that all the techniques that are learned (through HypnoBirthing®) are very helpful in helping people get through labor" with
minimal intervention.
Mongan said she had "no intention of creating an international birthing program." But it's the old story, she said: "When you build the better mousetrap, people do beat a path to your door."
AMONG MONGAN'S EARLIEST FOLLOWERS in Rhode Island was Valerie English of North Providence, a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Warwick 's Kent County Hospital .
English became certified as HypnoBirthing® practitioner in 2001, as an extension of teaching natural childbirth classes. From the moment she heard of it, she said, "I was just fascinated by it -- that the mind has such an obvious and strong effect on the body."
She's since had about 30 people go through her courses, including one woman who gave birth at home because she was so relaxed she had no idea she was as far along in labor as she was. And that's how HypnoBirthing® should work, she said. "It's simply trusting your body and training your body to relax so it can do what it has to do."
But it takes time and practice, said Rita Quinn, who's been a HypnoBirthing® practitioner since 2002. That's why expectant parents are encouraged to take the standard five-week course, privately or in small groups. Fees vary by practitioner. Quinn, for example, whose company is called Sakonnet Hypnosis for Health and Wellness, charges $350 for group and $450 for private instruction.
All the classes are essentially the same, she and others said. Participants learn basic self-hypnosis techniques using written scripts, tapes and CDs. They can then practice these in the days, weeks or months leading up to a child's birth. Most of all, Quinn said, the course "(teaches) moms and the dads to rely on their inner strength and it gives them techniques to do this."
Quinn, a retired school teacher who now works as a hypnotherapist as well as a doulah, said self-hypnosis "won't mask the pain, like an anesthetic would." Instead it helps women focus on what's going on inside their bodies to get the oxygen and blood flowing, control the stress hormones and promote the endorphins that will help them through.
It doesn't preclude the use of pain killers or medical intervention when necessary, Quinn said, "but most moms who take HypnoBirthing® (classes) have much less medication and their labor moves more rapidly" than those who don't.
ALLISON SPOONER USED HYNOBIRTHING® when she delivered her son, Teague, 18 months ago. She'd successfully used hypnosis to quit smoking years ago.
Though she and her husband, Nick, took the HypnoBirthing® course, he was out of town on business when she went into labor. She called her doulah and practiced her breathing and relaxation until it was time to go to the hospital.
Spooner recalls holding her doulah's hand as she felt her endorphins -- her natural pain relievers -- kicking in. "I said (to her doulah), 'It's just amazing. I can completely feel my body becoming numb.' "
Meanwhile, she said, her contractions -- she calls them surges -- "were getting stronger as the night went on. But I was able to relax so fully that at 1 o'clock in the morning I was just able to totally fall asleep."
Teague was born two hours later, without any pain or fuss.
Spooner said that, throughout her pregnancy, her friends thought she was crazy to consider natural childbirth this way.
"They'd say, 'I can't believe you're trying to be a hero.' " But it wasn't like that at all, she said. "All I wanted was to not have needles present at my birth. Just the thought of an epidural brought me enough distress with my needle phobia, I just couldn't fathom it."
The hypnosis was even better than she expected it would be, she says. "It was great. I was really proud of myself. And when Teague came out, when he was finally there, he was so calm. He was really mellow and so alert and it was just incredible. And that, more than anything, made me want to become a HypnoBirthing® instructor."
So she trained last fall to become a certified instructor. Her business is called BirthRIGHT.
When moms get together, Spooner said, it seems as though "everyone's vying to have the worst story about delivery and labor, or how painful it was. But it doesn't have to be that way. I feel like I want women to know there is an option available to them."
MONGAN SAYS THERE ARE nearly 2,500 certified HypnoBirthing® practitioners worldwide, not including others who use other forms of hypnosis in natural childbirth. But it's not widely practiced here in Rhode Island , where there are about a half dozen
certified practioners.
It's just one of many forms of natural childbirth Claire Garon has seen during her three years of working as a labor and delivery nurse at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence . But it's impressive when it works the way it's supposed to, she said.
Garon remembers one birth as "an amazing thing to watch." It was the couple's second child and the woman "did a phenomenal job," Garon said."I was in awe of her ability to just control herself -- how it seemed that she was not in any pain, that she was perfectly relaxed. It was an absolutely beautiful delivery."
The Alternative Birthing Center was closed at the time so the couple had to use one of the regular labor and delivery rooms, Garon said. They simply hung a sign on the door explaining that they were practicing HypnoBirthing®. They asked the staff to keep the lights dim and to speak in whispered tones, to help minimize interruptions in the birthing process.
The woman's husband and sister were there as her coaches, but she just lay back with her headphones on and "breathed through" her contractions, Garon said. "There was no yelling. There were no theatrics. There was nothing. It was just calm." She showed no signs of panic or discomfort as the baby passed through her body, Garon added. "She just calmly breathed down that baby's head and delivered. It was absolutely a beautiful thing."
It's clear this couple had really worked on the self-hypnosis techniques, Garon said. "You've really got to be committed. You've really got to believe in what you're doing. You've really got to believe that having a baby is natural and the baby knows what to do
and the body knows what to do without all this intervention." "I can't say that everyone can do this," Garon said. "But what this woman did -- I was ready to bow down and kiss her feet. I was ready to say: You are the woman. You are the goddess. You are just
phenomenal."
Quinn, who has three grown children in their 30s, said she wishes HypnoBirthing® had been around when she had children. "I would have loved to have had the opportunity to have a natural childbirth. It just empowers women. Once they feel they are able to birth naturally, they trust themselves more so they feel they can be wonderful parents as well."
This article has been edited to reflect the register trademark status of HypnoBirthing®
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