Waterford Times

The language of birth is full of metaphor. Words like "labor," "contraction" and "complications" speak to what women are expected to endure rather than enjoy. On TV, "They're screaming. They're yelling at their husbands," says Karen Greenwald, who teaches a technique called HypnoBirthing® out of her home in Waterford.

Greenwald is just one of more than 1,700 practitioners trained in a technique called HypnoBirthing®, a registered trademark of founder Marie Mongan of the HypnoBirthing® Institute in New Hampshire. The natural childbirth method teaches mothers and their "birthing partners" to relax their way through the birthing process through the techniques of guided imagery and self-hypnosis and to forgo pain medicine altogether. It also teaches them a new language. "It's nothing like 'pushing a bowling ball through a pinhole,'" Greenwald says. "If it really was like pushing a bowling ball through a pinhole there wouldn't be any people."

Kathy Sanders, 60, of Old Lyme, one of only eight practitioners Mongan has invited to train other practitioners to teach the method, gives all her clients buttons to wear. "Only positive birthing stories. My baby is listening," the buttons read. There's nothing like pregnancy, says Sanders, to bring horror stories out of the closet and instill fear in a future mother.

HypnoBirthing®, based upon the work of obstetrician Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, author of the 1944 book "Childbirth Without Fear in 1944," teaches mothers that the "Fear-Tension-Pain Syndrome" is the root cause of painful birthing. "If the mom is comfortable there's not going to be 'special circumstances,'" Sanders says. "Special circumstances" instead of "complications" is just one of many buzzwords HypnoBirthing® chooses in place of the usual language that surrounds birth. In HypnoBirthing®, contractions are surges, labor is the birthing process, and pain is tightening or pressure. "In HypnoBirthing® you never say 'push,' because pushing implies you're working against a force," Greenwald says.

Greenwald's first child, Spencer, 6, was a HypnoBirth after she took a course in the method. By the time she was ready to have her second child, Gabriella, now a rambunctious 2-year-old with an eye for mischief, Greenwald says she wrongly assumed that since her first birth went so well, her second would be a piece of cake. "I had this beautiful, wonderful relaxed birth with Spencer," she said.

She went into the hospital without a birthing plan -- a brief and readable document Greenwald recommends to all her clients that makes the expectant mother's wishes known to everyone who will either aid in or witness the birth. In the end, she says, it was not an easy birth, and she felt "bullied" by the doctors. "It's a very vulnerable position that you're in," Greenwald says, explaining that medical terminology in most hospitals can be frightening and negative not only for mothers but also for fathers. "His whole life is there on a table, and he has no control over what's going to happen," she says.

As the birth goes on, the mother's chosen birthing partner utilizes relaxation techniques to prevent the flight-or-fight response, which Sanders says works against the process of "letting go" that makes birth possible and creates the pain some mothers experience. Rather than lying flat on a table, mothers are encouraged to get into a number of birthing positions to aid the process. "I'm not saying you should have your babies in the woods on a tree," Greenwald says.

"You wouldn't believe the responses you get. 'Oh my God, you hippie weirdo freak.' ... I mean, please. I'm a Connecticut suburban housewife. How hippie can I be?" Those who subscribe to the technique say the concept of natural childbirth as "alternative" is ridiculous. The same insurance companies that cover the cost of Lamaze classes and other birth education courses cover HypnoBirthing®. "I would call mainstream medicine the alternative," says Sanders, a registered nurse and former nursing home administrator.

Ironically, Sanders' great-great grandfather, Nathan Cooley Keep, was the first physician in the United States to use anesthesia during childbirth, on April 7, 1847, in Cambridge, Mass. The patient was Fanny Appleton Longfellow, wife of poet and scholar Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Now, more than 150 years later, Sanders is fighting to undo the work of her ancestor. "Our bodies were made to birth babies. We know what to do, the baby knows what to do," Sanders says.

As the method gains popularity worldwide, a study published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine is making headlines. The study of 750 women giving birth for the first time found that early epidural use not only didn't increase the incidence of cesarean sections, but provided better analgesia and shorter labor. (*This is a very misleading statement about the conclusions of this study. Please take the time to follow this link to Maternity Wise for a more responsible and correct explanation of the study and it's findings.) "If a patient requests it and it's medically necessary at the time and it's medically sound, sure they can have it," says Debbie Schildt, manager at Thameside Ob-Gyn Centre in Groton.

Rose Henningsen of Mystic is a graduate of Greenwald's HypnoBirthing® classes, five sessions at two and a half hours each. Her son, Seamus, born after 29 hours, is 6 weeks old. "Mine wasn't the greatest of experiences," Henningsen admits. After 24 hours of vomiting and eventual dehydration, Henningsen, who is a pharmacist, asked for an epidural. "I really, really tried to do it without drugs," she says. Even so, Henningsen says if it hadn't been for the techniques she learned in HypnoBirthing®, she never would have gotten so far. She says it wasn't the pain that eventually made her give in, it was the vomiting. Her husband, Kyler, was a wonderful birthing partner, she says, and if she decides to have another baby, she plans to use HypnoBirthing® again.

She and her husband had the chance to witness their nephew's birth in Maine, another product of HypnoBirthing®, before she had Seamus. "(The mother) looked just like she was just kind of resting the whole time," Henningsen says. "She wasn't screaming the whole time."

This article has been edited to reflect the Register Trademark status of HypnoBirthing®.

* My comments on this study. Please link to the Maternity Wise clarification of the study results for a more correct conclusion to the study.

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