Creating Your Birth Preferences

The Birth Preferences included in your HypnoBirthing book are very detailed.  Depending on your situation, it may not be necessary to include everything listed in this document on your personal Birth Preferences.  The electronic version of this document that you’ll receive as part of your HypnoBirthing class makes it easy for you to customize the document to meet your [...]

Designing Your Birthing – Water

Many women find that spending some time during labor in water to be a very comforting experience.  You have several water options even if you are planning to give birth in a hospital.
The feeling of the water from a shower landing on your back and abdomen is very soothing for some women.  You may find that [...]

Birth Preferences: Care Providers

We’ve always found hospitals to be very respectful of our HypnoBirthing couples birth preferences.  Something that can be very helpful is to get your health care provider to sign your birth preferences.  This way the hospital knows that you haven’t just made them up without discussing them with your health care provider and it should [...]

Birth Preferences: Wording Your Plan

Remember that when you’re putting together your Birth Preferences that your goal is to create the birthing experience you want, to the best of your ability without alienating your health care providers.  This is your opportunity to clearly lay-out your preferences and desires for your birth.
When writing your Birth Preferences, use wording that is direct, [...]

Importance of Birth Preferences

In the book, A Guide to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth the authors discuss several studies.  Some of these studies reflect the importance of creating your Birth Preferences.  Here are some highlights:

A study found that the average woman encountered 6 unfamiliar professionals during labor, with some women seeing up to 14 unfamiliar professional.
Several work-sampling studies, [...]

Exercise During Pregnancy

It can be difficult to know what kinds of activities are beneficial and safe during pregnancy.  Obviously, the best thing to do is to talk with your health care provider and work out a plan together that takes into account your level of fitness prior to becoming pregnant and your unique health considerations.  Marie Mongan [...]

Perineal Massage

I know perineal massage isn’t at the top of anyone’s list of things to do.  And I wish I could say that it’s a pleasurable, foreplayish thing to do, but truly it’s not.  If you’re doing it right, you should be putting pressure on the perineal area that is significant enough to stretch this area [...]

Hospital Birth: Preparing for Triage

As you know, we focus on positive outcomes and only share more ”negative” stories in order to prepare you and strategize about how to approach your pregnancy and birthing so you can better your chances of getting what you want.  The following post by new mom, Katherine, details her experience at the hospital and in triage.  This post doesn’t [...]

Choosing Your Health Care Provider

Many women assume that the health care provider they’ve been going to for years for Gynecological services is the person they should go to during pregnancy and birthing.  For you, it may well be the case that your current health care provider is a good fit, however, you need to have an open and honest conversation with your health care [...]

Birth Preferences: Guests

Your birthing can be as private or public affair as you want it to be.  Do keep in mind that HypnoBirthing utilizes relaxation techniques, so it’s important for you to be able to relax and concentrate on birthing, not entertaining.  Sounds straight forward, but we’ve been surprised a few times by how many people our HypnoBirthing [...]