Birth Without Fear & Anxiety

During pregnancy audio books have been my go to! I struggle to fully concentrate on reading a book, but with an audio book I can actually fully concentrate. Anyway, I've gone a bit off topic there, but basically one of the books I'm listening too at the moment is called Mindful Hypno Birthing by Sophie Fletcher. After writing a post on Hypno Birthing last month I decided to give it a go and before booking into any classes I thought I'd would listen to this book to see what I thought.

"Giving birth should be your greatest achievement in life, not your greatest fear"

 Chapter 5 of this book (which I listened to today) talks about fear and anxiety in birthing and how it can really effect your birthing experience because your body and mind are SO connected when it comes to birth. I never really thought about this until now, to be completely honest I wouldn't say I'm particularly fearful of birth. Luckily I've grown up with a mother who has worked with children her whole life and also as a nursery nurse and she has always subconsciously instilled into me and my sister the normality of birth. I just realised this today. However, sometimes your own life experiences and beliefs from the moment you are born up until the present day can trigger automatic physical responses in your body, sometimes over powering what you consciously want to experience. The author spoke about how fear and expectation of pain may create pain. Understanding this can help your brain stay out of the way from a good birth experience. Our bodies are made to grow babies AND BIRTH them, so when you look at it like that, whats there to be scared of ?

The pain ?

No-ones saying labour isn't an intense & powerful thing, however, have you ever gone for a blood test or injection & physiqued yourself out before over the anticipation of pain?  If so, you'll know what I mean when I say they are always the worse ones , however if someone did it to you unexpectedly it probably wouldn't really hurt all that much. I know your probably thinking a small needle can't compare to birth, however I'm just trying to explain the concept ;)

In a birth, that is completely free of fear, and when you feel secure and private Oxytocin (hormone that progresses labour) should flow freely, with each contraction your body sends a message to your brain to produce even more Oxytocin. The more Oxytocin, the more contractions.

However ...

Stress hormones, adrenalin & nor adrenalin (the fight or flight hormones) can slow labour down when released too early in labour and this can stop your body from doing what its naturally suppose to do. This is because adrenalin & oxytocin cannot work at the same time. The less stress, the better the birth. As well as this, anxiety will create tension, and thats the opposite of what you want your muscles to be doing.

Expectation of pain does two things. Firstly it creates fear which will trigger adrenalin and cause tension in your body and second its the expectation of a painful sensation that can actually create a painful sensation. In hypo birthing, the ask that you try to not even talk or think about the word pain, since talking about it brings your attention to it. This may all sounds crazy, but if i said to you don't look or think about that plant in the corner, you immediately become aware of that plant, and in fact you'll probably look at it.

I would HIGHLY suggest reading or downloading this book to listen to or read if you have even just a smidgen of fear or anxiety over birth. I haven't given birth, so I'm not going to sit here and say it works during labour, all of it may go out the window. But just even being aware and knowledgeable of things like this can only help. This was only one chapter as well, so I'm sure its full of other great information.