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Natural Birth
amandafink
member
Hypnobabies, Lamaze, both?
amandafink
member
My husband and I are due in about 10 weeks. Are on our 3rd week of our natural birthing class. It focuses on the "pure" methodology and some Lamaze techniques. We cover a wide range of ways to deal with pain and expectations, breastfeeding, some newborn info, and a lot of other things. I am wanting to look into doing the self-taught hyponobabies lesson. Do you think these things will contradict each other? I like the idea of having a comforting and encouraging hyponosis CDs while birthing. What do you guys think? It can't hurt can it?
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Re: Hypnobabies, Lamaze, both?
Well, Hypnobabies will contraindicate the use of other classes because the majority of Hypnobabies is retraining your mind and body to expect a comfortable, short and easy birthing experience.
Other methods will train you to "manage pain" and watch for roadsigns of labor which will be detrimental to the hypnosis training. Hypnobabies goes so far as to change your vocabulary about birthing (ie pressure waves=contractions, birthing time=labor, etc.) and learning to protect/prevent yourself from exposure to traumatizing or negative birth stories etc. It's a completely different focus.
Hypnobabies will be teaching you hypno-anesthesia techniques (and yes they really do work) rather than expecting and dealing with pain. Generally hypnobirths look quite different from other med-free births in that the mama is calm and not exhibiting many of the typical signs of labor/transition etc. so much of what you learn in other methods can actually be detrimental for hypnobirthing.
If hypnosis for birthing appeals to you I would recommend using it alone. It definitely wont hurt you to do a self-taught hypnobabies course along with another birthing class, but it may render your training in it much less effective.
Hope that makes sense and is helpful!
) Good luck mama!
Well said!
I think that while you could potentially do both, you are not going to get the full benefit of Hypnobabies because its core principles are vastly different. So some of the relaxation techniques may be similar, some of the partner support techniques might overlap, but at the end of the day the message is very different. As pp said a lot of approaches teach you to 'deal with the pain'. Hypnobirthing/babies is saying, it's all about how you perceive the waves/surges. When I had DD I refused to think of it as anything other than tightening and that's how I experienced my entire labor. I can honestly say that to me surges were not painful, just a very intense tightening.
This may be true, but I found no problem with using hyponobabies/birthing tracks after taking my Bradley class with my first. IMO, the self hypnosis is just another way to relax and allow your body to open, which is the main tennant of Bradley, so they worked well together for me.
Oh and all the hypno stuff I found, was focused on an easy birth, but "short" was never in the cards in anything I read or the hypnotherapist I talked with.
...baby #3 is here...
No, you certainly can't guarantee a short birthing time, but all those weeks of training do help you to perceive that it takes a fraction of the real duration. The tracks train your mind to perceive that every 20 minutes of birthing time will feel like 5 minutes. This was definitely the case for me. I did have 2 days of prodromal labor, but once active labor started it was only about 7 hours. It felt like maybe 2 hours to me. I'm told I pushed for 15 minutes, felt like 5 to me. It's as much about how you perceive the experience as it is anything.
I think it's great you had success using both methods. I had taken other classes with my first LO too. This pregnancy I just chose to focus on the Hypnobabies course, but I did have the background info from the previous class like you. I wouldn't say I found it detrimental at all either, but I wasn't taking both courses at the same time so I don't know if that would have made a big difference for me.