Birth in your own time.

There is a reason why I say no clocks or watches in the birth room. Focussing on the passing of time can actually slow it down, doesn't time go faster when you are not fixated on a clock or watch?

I recently came across the word Kairos, which is an ancient Greek word meaning opportune or supreme moment. The Greeks had two words for time chronos and Kairos. Chronos is about sequential time, but Kairos is time in between time, moments when we are displaced from time as we know it and when something special can happen, something out of the ordinary.

It struck me that this is how it is at birth, a time between time when something transcendental happens.

Could we access this place, this space through intentional techniques like hypnosis or meditation, or do we do it naturally? It can be either I think. When working with hypnosis in our classes we do a very deep relaxation, it only lasts about 20 minutes, but inevitably people always assume that it was 5 or 10 minutes. This is what’s known as time distortion; when we are in an altered state like hypnosis it’s as if we tumble out of physical time, and have the opportunity to roam freely in a timeless state. It’s a great experience and is incredibly energizing, it’s as if your inner psyche somehow refocuses its lens on life.

It’s very similar with mindfulness, though they way we access and experience that state can be different. During birth, mindfulness is about being in the moment, being aware of those sensations in the right now, accepting them in that moment, without experiences from the past or expectations of the future leaking into that moment. It’s a state of clarity and of connection with your body and your baby. If you are in the moment during birth, you just experience a sensation and you manage it whether it is pain or anything else. However, if you become afraid of that sensation, projecting things you have read, seen and heard onto that sensation it becomes worse and you can lose your sense of perception.

Using hypnosis during birth is about accessing a deep state of relaxation and adapting the current situation through subconscious change or through disassociation, separating ourselves from things we do not wish to experience, such as pain during labour.

When we are in the moment or deeply relaxed hypnotic state we are not thinking of the past or the future, those are where our fears or apprehensions lie. We are between time. Both meditation and hypnosis correspond with a theta brain state, the state when you brain waves slow down to a rate that is comparable to the stage when you are just slipping into sleep – you know that state, just as you are drifting off.

Being deeply relaxed whether you are using mediation or hypnosis can help your body to do what it does naturally, allowing your muscles to work optimally.

When I teach my classes, I say to couples I believe that whilst sometimes hypnosis can be useful during the birth, for example to get you back in your birthing zone, you can do it perfectly well without. I’m met enough midwives, watched enough women birthing, and spoken to women who have birthed without hypnosis to know that women automatically enter into an altered state, a theta state during birth. As a hypnotherapist I see people in that state all the time. Some women say it was as if they weren’t actually in their body but were observing what was happening.

The trick is to train yourself to let go of the fear that stops you from being in that moment, and to change how your subconscious reacts to birth. This allows you to automatically switch into a comfortable birthing zone. Hypnosis is a brilliant way of doing this. Preparation is vital, listening to mp3s, going to a class or seeing a hypnotherapist can help you prepare your mind and your body so that when you birth you are able to be in that moment, free of worry or fear and able to experience something extraordinary.

Trust me and trust yourself; what a remarkable gift, to be given access to a space between time, where something magical happens that will bring you one of the greatest gift you’ll ever receive.

A Christmas Baby?

So who’s having a baby at Christmas?

We’ve had a busy few months at Mindful Mamma and lots of babies due around Christmas. If you’ve chosen to have your baby in hospital, there may be several reasons for not wanting to be there over Christmas.

Well, you know what? My job is to make you feel positive about your birth, whenever or wherever it is. There is always a bright side, I’m definitely a glass have full person and I know better than anyone what it’s like to have a baby in hospital when everyone is on holiday.

Both my sons were born on bank holidays. My first on Christmas Day and my second May Bank Holiday, and it was wonderful for so many reasons. Ok, I couldn’t buy batteries for my MP3 player (yes it was nearly 8 years ago) and the kitchens were closed on Christmas Day so I got a salad (you are forewarned, get someone to send in a goody bag, or wrap up a Christmas lunch!) but the good reasons outweighed the bad by a mile.

The most important thing to remember is that birth is a normal event, not a medical event, so although you may choose to give birth in a hospital, you may have chosen it ‘just to be sure’. However, if you have your baby at Christmas you are more than likely to have gone into spontaneous labour and be at less risk of intervention simply because the staff avoid inductions and scheduled sections because they have reduced capacity.

These are the reasons why you are more likely to have a well supported normal birth:

• There are very few, if any, scheduled sections or inductions, as there are fewer consultants in the hospital, this means that it’s often very very quiet, with an emphasis on normal birth.
• There were no other women in my ward, I had the whole room to myself.
• Fantastic support from midwives who had the time to spend chatting, helping me change that first nappy and get feeding established.
• Your husband gets extended time off to help because of the holiday period.
• Somebody else takes all the Christmas strain and cooks dinner at home.
• You get a Christmas present that money can’t buy.
• It’s cold outside so a great excuse to wrap up warm when you get home and stay in bed, or snuggled up on the sofa with your newly extended family watching great films!

So now my son is 8 years old, and everyone says in hushed tones, “how awful to have a birthday on Christmas Day”. But you know what, at the moment it’s not. He always gets a little bit of extra attention when he’s asked his birthdate, he gets lots of presents, we celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve and his birthday Christmas day. He’ll always have his birthday off, and when he starts going for drinks with his friends they’ll always be around on Christmas Eve to celebrate with him.

As he gets older we’ll probably set a date for an ‘unbirthday’ in the summer but it’s just fine as it is. Asked what he thinks about having a birthday on Christmas Day he says “just normal” and wonders why other people don’t get crackers on their birthday. Remember, it’s what you make of it, not what it makes of you.

So from Mindful Mamma, a big Happy Christmas for those of you expecting your baby or having your first Christmas together. Take it easy, relax and enjoy.

Help! I'm a terrible mother....

“You’re going to think I’m a terrible mother….” is one of the most frequently heard phrases in my consulting room. I always think “yup you are a terrible mother, a terribly wonderful mother that the thought and instinct to do the best you can for your child is always there and that you are looking for ways to manage your frustration and anger".

The guilt that women feel for snapping or shouting at their child is a cruel thing, perhaps there are some of you out there who have never yelled at their child, wished they would just shut up, or wanted to lock yourself in a room with noise cancelling headphones on. If you’re a mum like that I salute you, because you’re better than me.

The truth of the matter is, things are harder for new mothers than they ever have been. Two generations ago, or even a generation ago, we lived much closer to our families. We had trusted support networks that gave us a well needed break and the opportunity to find the space to care for our own wellbeing. It is hard to be mindful of ourselves and our actions as a parent, when we are so busy with interruptions and the spaces between time seem to get smaller. Thich Nhat Hanh a Buddhist monk who has done a lot of work on mindfulness in Western culture, said that children create one of the most beautiful but the most challenging lessons in mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn speaks of your time with the children as a meditation and an opportunity to become more self aware. This great blog by Myla and Jon gives wonderful guidance on how to tune into yourself.

These types of approaches are still on the fringes of our culture however and the overwhelming sense is that women are quite far removed from the opportunity offered through parenthood to become more self-aware, to adjust, to enjoy and to learn. We don't have the networks we need to support us in that journey and often our sense of self as a parent is obscured by thoughts and feelings of what is expected of us as a mother.

Historically, as women moved more and more into higher education, several things happened, we migrated away from our families to university, we became independent, we got jobs, and we stayed away. Then we got married and had children but we held onto that independence, onto our jobs and onto our children, our right to have it all. The right to be equal to men was something our mothers and their mothers before them had worked hard for, the suffragettes, the 60’s feminist movement sacrificed much to bring equality in the home and in the workplace and there is an inherent responsibility to honour that fight.

I grew up on Virginia Woolf, Mary Wollstonecraft, Germaine Greer and many more but now as a mother and career women I’ve come to realize that I can’t do both and give them 100%, it’s a cruel fallacy. Apparently Nicola Horlicks, Karren Brady and other women are proof that you can have it all, but Karren was back at work 6 weeks after the birth of her son. 6 weeks! It was the right choice for her and that’s fine, but it shouldn’t be sold as having it all, it’s being a full time businesswoman and part time mother.

My instinct is to be at home with my children, making sure that the home is running smoothly (If I’d said that to my 19 year old self, I’d have had a good talking to) but there is also my job which I love, but which I squeeze in around my children, rather than my children squeezing in around my job. That’s my choice and that’s fine too, but I’m a full-time mother and a part-time businesswoman.

When you first become a mother, balancing all these demands is tiring, it’s exhausting, often mums can become brittle and then snap. Most of us are awfully British, even when help is offered we say “no no no, don’t worry I’m fine”, when it may be abundantly clear that you are not.

So when people come and see me saying they’re a terrible mum or that they can’t cope, I remind them of how important their network is, how important that 'holding' has been to women throughout time, from the ancient Greeks up to the present day. When you are challenged, be mindful of the feelings and thoughts that arise in you, observe them, understand where they are coming from. Sometimes the fear you have of your child hurting itself while exploring the world around it, may have been learned by you as a child by your mother, awareness of that emotion gives you the chance to know yourself more deeply than before and to let go of obstructive thoughts.

Don't be afraid of emotions however strong or upsetting they may be, find space to explore those feelings and above all remember that as your child learns its way in the world, you are still learning to. Be kind to yourself.

Here are some quick ideas to create space to breath, focus and tap into your inner strength.

• Say yes to offers of help. If you are away from friends or family consider a postnatal doula or a night nanny. If you haven’t heard of a night nanny have a look at this site by Elizabeth Stokes who is based in Nottingham. http://www.eastmidlandsnightnanny.co.uk/
• Put your baby in a sling and go for a walk, perhaps turn it into a walking meditation.
• Use a talking meditation with your baby: Describe, the sunset, or a tree in the park, or a beautiful view in as vivid detail as you possibly can to 
your baby.
• If you ever feel at breaking point or feel you are going to snap, put your baby in safe place and go into the garden. Getting in touch with nature can be very calming, and you can use a simple walking mediation in a circle, breathing in and breathing out until you are aware of that emotion subsiding.
• Make yourself a cup of tea (even better get someone else to make it for you) tea has magical properties!

Don’t....

.....Think that you can manage on your own all the time, it’s ok to ask for help and if you do ask you will probably get it!

Where did hypnobirthing begin and where is it going?

As a hypnotherapist, I am excited about the growing awareness and revival of hypnosis for birth, which is now more commonly referred to as hypnobirthing.

Yet, I’m becoming concerned about potential changes to hypnobirthing that could stop women getting proper choices in how they prepare using hypnobirthing. The name hypnobirthing, used by so many professionals for so many years, may be trademarked in Europe, through the back door in the UK, overruling the IPO who last year made the decision that hypnobirthing was a generic term that could not be trademarked; this would put at risk the businesses of many exceptional independent practitioners I know who may be unable to use the term any longer. But more worryingly, this potentially narrows the choice for women.

There has been so much debate about what hypnobirthing actually is, or who ‘owns’ hypnobirthing, which sadly has turned into an unnecessarily mucky scrap in various hypnobirthing camps.

Women can do a course with so many different bodies, Hypnobabies, Natal Hypnotherapy, Marie Mongan – HypnoBirthing, The Leclaire Method ourselves, Mindful Mamma, or with any hypnotherapist who has had additional training in hypnosis for birth.

Couples who do Mindful Mamma go to their midwives and say “I’ve done hypnobirthing”, people who have listened to Natal Hypnotherapy CDs have come on a Mongan course and said I’ve listened to your CDs. Whatever anybody thinks, hypnobirthing is now the term for hypnosis for birth, certainly within the UK, and hypnosis for birth has been around forever.

I was first trained by a seasoned hypnotherapist, Karen Duignan, who is also an NCT teacher trainer, her course was very similar to Mongan’s course which I did at a later date, but Karen herself who is based in the uppermost reaches of Scotland barely knew anything of Mongan, that was back in 2004. I then did Leclaire’s course, which was a wonderfully creative approach to psychological preparation, again based on the same basic principles as other good hypnosis for birth courses are.

The first documented evidence of hypnosis for birth was by James Braid in 1853, when he used hypnosis to induce a baby early, following complications with two previous labours at term due to size and positioning of the baby.

“About two weeks beyond the seventh month was the period, which I had fixed on for inducing labour. I had seen the patient a few days before this period, and found her in excellent health, experiencing no inconvenience of any sort. I told her that in three or four days I intended to do something for her to bring on labour as had previously been agreed upon should be done. She was quite agreeable to this proposal, and seemed to entertain no anxiety whatever on the subject. In two days thereafter, however, I was sent for to the patient, and ascertained that the mere mental impression had been sufficient to bring on labour, for the os uteri was not only fully dilated, but, as in the three former labours, the shoulder was presenting. In this case, from the small size of the infant, I was enabled with great ease to turn and deliver the mother of a living child.”

A Soviet hypnosis for birth programme in the 1950’s recorded incredible results; not many people are aware that in 1954 Lamaze attended an obstetrics conference in Paris, at which the Soviets were speaking about their programme. He duly returned to the US with the soviet import of hypnosis for birth and integrated it into the early Lamaze course.

Ernst Hildegard wrote widely on hypnosis,

There are three principal methods by which the expectant mother may prepare for her confinement in the hope that the delivery will be comfortable without the use of drugs: (1) hypnotic procedures; (2) the method known as natural childbirth, introduced by Grantly Dick Read in 1933; and (3) the procedures associated with the psychoprophylactic method, introduced in Russia by Velvovski in 1949 and rather widely used in France and elsewhere, often called the “Lamaze method” in America, after the man [Dr. Fernand Lamaze] who helped bring it to France. The three practices overlap in many ways, leading some to believe that they are practically indistinguishable. We recognise the overlap but think it is a mistake to gloss over the difference.

Since then there have many references to it throughout the years, one of the specialist advisors at the National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) for pain management, Vernon Sykes, who is now in his 80’s recalls the matron looking after his wife during labour, instructing her on how to use hypnosis, I’ve even come across a 1960’s copy of a pregnancy magazine in the UK with an article on hypnosis for birth. Colleagues of mine who are much more seasoned than me have been practicing it before even I was born!

Hypnosis for birth is used, even when it’s not actually called hypnosis. I met a Brazilian doula once who was working to introduce indigenous birth practices back into the communities in the rainforests – at the time I had just trained in the Mongan Method, and we both laughed when we realized that they had been using the opening rose for hundreds of years, passed down through their women, just as Mongan uses the visualisation of the opening blossom. Of course she had never heard of hypnobirthing or Mongan.

From what I’ve learned about hypnosis for birth there are two fundamentally different approaches.

1. The belief that women’s bodies are designed to birth, and that when a women is completely relaxed, and free of fear that she is able to birth easily.

This belief is based on the work of Grantly Dick Read, and the assumption that any fear or tension creates pain in the body. In todays society it’s hard to avoid scaremongering around birth and it would be unusual to find a woman that is completely fearless around birth. Any hypnotherapist properly trained in birth will understand the mind/body connection and will focus on supporting the client to let go of any underlying fears for anxieties around the birth or about parenting. They can do this through many different ways, through hypnosis, anchoring, positive suggestion and visualisation. They will then teach hypnosis techniques for increasing relaxation and well being during labour, they are also likely to teach pain management techniques – although in some methods, the participants won’t be told that they are pain management techniques (rather deep relaxation). This avoids the suggestion of pain during labour.

2. Simple pain management approach.

Hypnosis is frequently used as a pain management technique, and people undergo surgery with just hypnosis. It’s powerful and it works. A hypnotherapist who has not undergone any specific hypnosis for birth training would probably take this approach, but may not address the underlying cause of pain during labour or any of the psychological potential disruptions to a mother who is birthing.

All formal birth hypnosis classes, Mindful Mamma, Natal, Hypnobabies, Mongan HypnoBirthing, LeClaire base themselves on the former and understand that women are designed to give birth. They teach women about the role of hormones and about how these are affected by what you are thinking, both consciously and unconsciously, by your psychological response to your environment, and to those around you during birth.

I’m principally a hypnotherapist, but I initially trained as a hypnotherapist to teach hypnobirthing after experiencing it myself. It was important to me to be a hypnotherapist to do it; I needed to really understand what I was teaching and how I could adapt it to my clients. It was then that I went onto explore different approaches and methods. I apply what I’ve learned about hormones, about the birth environment, about how we birth, to hypnosis and I draw mostly on the work of Sarah Buckley, Michel Odent, Ina May Gaskin and midwifery colleagues whose work is inspirational and who use hypnosis without even realising! A particular favourite is Desmond Morris, whose observational work on humans and other mammals for birth and parenting in the 1980’s is so simple but so spot on.

Women shouldn’t be seduced by promises of gold standards and that one method is better than the other, sometimes the best practitioners I’ve come across are one’s that are quietly, tenaciously, flexibly and brilliantly doing their own thing. Women should be able to make a choice based on the compatibility of the course with their own belief systems and expectations of birth, as well as good rapport with their practitioner.

Our Mindful Mamma class is specifically designed to be a short, affordable class, that runs comfortably alongside NCT class or NHS class, but not designed to replace those. Unlike some other hypbobirthing courses, which can be a completely contained antenatal course, we don’t teach any physiology; we focus on teaching mindfulness, NLP and hypnosis to create an oxytocin rich environment, to give the mum-to-be and partner confidence in making the right choices for them and very simple practical techniques to help with relaxation and analgesia.

Our view is less is more, fewer techniques and more practice makes for a more effective conditioned response at birth. We don’t overtly promote it as hypnobirthing either, as whilst we are proud of what we do, there is still a certain amount of skepticism attached to hypnosis and we want to reach women that wouldn’t necessarily access a class like this.

Interestingly I found that when I ran Mindful Mamma classes, I had women attend who had never heard of hypnobirthing. but went away after the class totally converted! If that one women when on to tell friends, who did HypnoBirthing the Mongan Method, or Natal Hypnotherapy or Hypnobabies, then it's great to know that we are making a difference to all those women and their babies.

This is our way, but there are many others - all of them making a difference to how women birth, all of them contributing to a shift in bringing birth back to women. Collaboration is incredibly important in taking a philosophy like this forward.

Long may hypnobirthing continue, we should celebrate the work being done by hypnobirthing practitioners everywhere and hypnobirthing should be recognized as the valid and century old time tested method of helping birth to be as it should for women.

Make Birth Your Own.

Recently a mother who had been on one of our Mindful Mamma hypnobirthing classes gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, without pain relief in a major regional hospital. She had a wonderful experience, and even when ventouse was needed she continued to use the techniques she had learned in the class, relying on her body’s natural endorphins rather than having artificial pain relief.

I had quite a few conversations with this particular mother before her daughter was born, and I was struck by the way in which she really took on board the information she had learned in the class and made it into her own support system for birth. She was quietly and inherently confident in her abilities to birth, practiced regularly, and translated what she had learned in the class into pictures and images that would remind her of her purpose during the birth. In other words, she put the work in.

The midwives commented on how good her birth plan was, and she built a lovely, supportive relationship with the midwifery team in the hospital.

I always say everyone is different and every birth is different. In our class we teach some fundamental principles about how your thoughts can affect your physical response during birth, and some very simple but effective hypnosis techniques, but we don’t prescribe how your birth should be. It doesn’t matter whether you chose to have a hospital or a home birth, whether you chose to have the baby rubbed down first or put straight onto your chest, whether you chose to have a lotus birth or not. It all comes down to feeling secure and safe, having all the information and being able to make a choice. If you baulk at the idea of a lotus birth, then don’t have one, other people may baulk at the idea of not having one. There is a huge spectrum in terms of what a normal birth could be regarded as; in fact One World Birth only yesterday published a video that questioned what ‘normal’ birth was. Denis Walsh, Professor of Midwifery in Nottingham, called it an optimal birth experience, and a physiological birth, which is absolutely the same philosophy that I would agree with.

What is normal for you is right for you. Taking on board a different belief system for birth, that you don’t really feel comfortable with, would defeat the purpose of what hypnobirthing is. For me hypnobirthing isn’t a dogma, its a way of looking at birth differently, teaching you what your body and your hormones are capable of, that you can do things differently, what you could do differently and importantly that you are in control of how you choose to experience your birth. Whatever you choose should be based on your wishes for your birth and your baby. Most of all it gives the confidence to trust your instincts and to bring your baby into the world your way.

Classes like Mindful Mamma, give you the space to pause, to think, to explore and consider how birth could be different and why it may matter to you, how you can work with partner and your midwife, and what alternatives there are to managing your experience comfortably - with techniques, and in a way that is right for you. It’s a springboard, and you can choose to get off, just tentatively jump up and down, or dive in!

I always say to people who have bought the mp3s, great, it’s a start, but doing a class makes an enormous difference and to those who have done the class, fantastic, but now the work begins!

Practice is enormously important; hypnosis is all about conditioning your response to birth and conditioning happens through repetition. Through practice you will also uncover different, and better ways of doing things for you. You may find that it feels better to tweak the suggestions and say them in a different way, you may want to change the breathing slightly, or you may wish to have different images.

One client changed her breathing with a little mantra that went “3,2,1 release release, release’ during each of her contractions, another printed off a picture of a baby on a little surfboard, surfing the wave to look at each time she had a surge. Another had what she called her oxytocin photos laid out on a table.

The message that the mother at the beginning for all other mums was that you have to make it your own and she was absolutely right. This is your baby, your birth, have the confidence and the self-belief to do it your way and practise, practise, practise

A dad's journey from fertility to birth.

(This guest blog is written by Russell Davis who is the creator of The Fertile Mind (www.thefertilemind.net) fertility hypnosis programs for natural and assisted conception.)

" The serene home-birth we hoped for ended up being interrupted with a mad dash to the hospital in an ambulance as with ‘blues and twos’ as complications arose. However, we were able to remain surprisingly calm.

Recently I was reflecting with Alice Domar, a women’s natural health and fertility expert, about the how differently men and woman behave on the infertility journey. We also talked about the role the man takes in the relationship and I blogged recently on my experience in our fertility journey. Like most men I thought my role was to be the ‘strong one’ however this isn’t what my wife wanted. She wanted me to be real and feel united in the emotional rollercoaster that is infertility.

It wasn’t until eight years in to our journey I was diagnosed with male infertilty (we didn’t see that one coming!) and the last scrap of hope I had which enabled me to be the ‘strong one’ fell apart. We found ourselves united in the grief and pain. Bizarrely, my diagnosis was both a curse and a blessing. It enabled me to wake up to my feelings ,be real about my grief and enabled us to continue our journey feeling untied, going on to conceive naturally a couple of years later. I had been the catalyst for me to stop being the strong one and be the soul mate in the journey my wife wanted and we both needed.

I think this experience, the male not being sure of their role can be true for childbirth. We wanted a home birth, however I was extremely nervous about the idea, being our first child I really didn’t know what to expect. Looking back I now realise it was fear generated by me not knowing my role in the whole procedure. Gone are the days of the man being in the pub around the corner from the hospital waiting until it is all over - not that I would want that, I very much wanted to be there to experience this miraculous event take place.

We did a course similar to Mindful Mamma (it wasn’t around then) and it gave both my wife and me the confidence that we could have a home birth and feel in control. It enabled me to realise how natural child-birth is and it is not something to fear. Although nothing about the circumstances had changed, we were still planning a home birth, it was still our first child, my thinking about it changed which enabled me to be more relaxed about it.

Child birth may be natural but it doesn’t always go to plan. However, even in the midst rushing around the house thinking of what we need to take to the hospital, what to do with the dog…(yes I know, ‘even though you are planning a home birth always have a bag packed’ etc...did we do it? No!) I was able to stay relatively calm and focussed on my role - to protect my wife’s space and assist her in remaining calm and relaxed.

Although it wasn’t the home birth we planned, despite the complications and extended final stage, it was natural and without any pain relief apart from a tens machine which was only turned up half way! This was thanks to the techniques we had learnt to help us stay in the present moment, focus on our breathing and feel more calm and relaxed. I would encourage you to play with this technique which does just that:

7-11 Breathing:

This technique utilises a natural biological relaxation process (increasing the amount of carbon dioxide you breathe in) as well as bringing your mind to the present moment. Focusing on your breathing brings you back to the ‘here and now’ rather than time travelling to the future worrying about the next pregnancy test or fertility treatment outcomes.

◦ Simply concentrate on your breathing and count from 1-7 as you breathe in and from 1-11 as you exhale.

◦ You can count out loud or in your head but if possible out loud can make it more effective.

◦ It doesn’t need to be big breaths, just normal relaxed breathing adjusting the pace of the counting to your breath.

◦ Alternatively you can count from 1 to 3 and 1 to 5 instead of 7 & 11 (which is what I do, having a small lung capacity).

◦ After 10-15 breaths you may start to notice how much more relaxed you’re beginning to feel.

◦ If your mind wanders just bring it gently back to your breath. The beauty of this exercise is that you can do it any time, any place without anyone knowing what you are doing.

Seven months pregnant and counting.

Seven. This seems to be a significant number when it comes to birth.

Phone calls from mums enquiring about our Mindful Mamma antenatal classes often come at 7 - 8 months, a frantic “I’ve only got 12 weeks to go, is it too late?” “The fact that I’ve got to give birth in 8 weeks has only just dawned on me”. Why is it that mums to be suddenly make a psychological shift to thinking about the birth at this stage in their pregnancy?

The pragmatists amongst us would say, well of course the closer we get to something the more we think about it, so it stands to reason that the closer we get to birth, the more prominent that event becomes in our thinking until at one point, at about 7 months, it begins to dominate our thoughts.

Putting pragmatism aside, I still believe that it is uncannily consistent and this interests me; why always seven months? Then I read some research by Cyna et al, one of the better meta analyses of hypnosis for birth, and their findings showed that the best time to start was around the 30-34 mark – the 7- 8 month mark.

I’m sure that it’s because there is shift in the mother towards the birth. For me this is similar to a microcosmic maternal individuation process, an unconscious shift, that begins to integrate the parts of the mother, the baby and the father as well as the surrounding community, in preparation for their new relationship as father and mother and their unit as a family.

Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, talked about individuation as being a process that we undertake largely in the second part of our lives, but I strongly believe that a similar process of individuation takes place, on a smaller scale, in a mother during pregnancy and the birth itself and that this process begins in earnest at around 7 months.

“Jung understood individuation to be something that began in the second half of life, when individuals reach the zenith of their lives and suddenly find themselves facing an unknown vista or some unforeseen upheaval. Sometimes this turning point takes the form of a crisis: such as a financial failure, a health problem, a broken relationship, or a change of residence or profession - something which upsets the status quo. Sometimes this experience assumes the form of a profound self-doubt, a loss of meaning or religious conviction, a questioning of everything previously held so dear. Sometimes it presents itself as a deep yearning or a call to change direction. And many times, it can manifest itself in powerful dreams and fantasies.”

We all know that women have pregnant women have powerful dreams, often difficult to understand. These dreams surface from a maelstrom of feelings and emotions during a time of profound change in true Jungian style.

At this stage all sorts of doubts and worries may begin to come up to the surface, doubts in their ability to birth, doubts as to whether they will be a good mother, feelings about their own childhood or their own relationship to their mother might arise. I’ve even heard some women say that they were faced with their own fear of death, during labour, something described by Leboyer in his landmark video “Birth without Violence”. But how empowering. Imagine being able to face your deepest fears, knowing you are loved and supported by all those around you, and to be able to conquer those fears and to come out on the other side, richer for the experience.

Just as with the formal process of Jungian individuation, with birth we become stronger, different, more aware of our own abilities to reach deep within our own resources and to come out understanding the extent of our own personal power. It is transformational, a gift and it upsets me that this is taken away, damped down and denied by unnecessary interventions or drugs during birth. When people ask me "why not take the drugs", "what's the point in experiencing a normal birth when you don't have to feel anything", I want to tell them that it is important to feel something, to be aware, to be in command, to be immersed in your true capabilities, but it's quite an abstract concept to describe to someone who is set on an epidural.

It’s my belief that for some reason 7 months marks the start of this process. In the wonderful book ‘Birth Traditions’ by Jacqueline Vincent Priya different traditions across the world are explored, and they are remarkably consistent, the same themes emerge, but in different ways. One of those that is the ‘7 month ceremony”.

Priya writes that “Seven is a number with magical and spiritual significance…in many places this is the time for a special ceremony. Often this is carried out in the first pregnancy so that as well as protecting the couple and their unborn baby, preparing them for birth, it also established the couple socially in the status of potential family”.

Nowadays I see more of my clients undertaking what’s known as Bessingways to begin this 7 month journey and see it as a more meaningful alternative to a baby shower. It’s an opportunity to invite just a few close friends and have a celebration of the baby’s life and your journey into motherhood.

Here are some suggestions for a few things to do if you wanted to created your own blessingway, to begin your journey towards birth.

Poems – Each friend can bring a poem that represents something they want to share with you as part of your birth journey.

Beads – Some women like to create a bead bracelet for the birth, each friend gives you a bead with a few words to take into the birth with you. So that each time you twist or touch each bead, you are reminded of that friend and their support for you.

Belly Casting - Another popular activity for a blessingway.

Welcoming Wish – Each person writes a small wish for your baby onto a card and ties it to a tree, the mother can then take these down to read during labour and to save for the baby.

Welcome Gifts – Each friend makes a promise to do something to help you after baby is born, eg. your ironing, meals for a few days, to take your baby for a walk while you get some sleep…use your imagination!

These little steps which begin the gentle transformation from mum-to be, to mother in a away that unconsciously strengthens you and prepares you for the incredible experience of birth.