POST BIRTH UPDATE
I stand by my previous write up: it’s great for
✅ Breathing techniques
✅ Relaxation techniques
But I would be wary about being given unrealistic expectations for labour, the attitude to hospital staff and the treatment of unmedicated births as being the only truly liberating form of giving birth.
* I gave birth in hospital. The chapter dealing with hospital births frames them as being more painful, that you are less likely to have a ‘natural’ birth (ie by having an epidural). She writes with the assumption that you will be forced to give birth in hospital (because you have no alternative presented), the staff will misinform you (that you will be asked for consent with full understanding of what is happening) and that the care is generic and incompassionate (you will have to fight at every stage for things like skin-to-skin, delayed cord clamping etc). In my case, this could not be further from the truth— I received exceptional care, respectful, thorough and truly kind at all times. They made sure I fully understood what was happening, even asking me to confirm that I knew by explaining it back to them. I kept forgetting that this book was only published recently for a UK audience with the way it made standard NHS procedures sound like battles to be fought.
* I read the chapter on induction once I realised I would be having one. I agree with the sentiment of holding out initially— in many countries inductions aren’t offered until 42 weeks have passed, especially for first time mums. Some of the information in the book wasn’t correct (at least for me) and crucially lacked the NHS’ current preferred induction technique (balloon catheter). The induction chapter also didn’t prepare me that labour could look very different, in fact, the chapter implied that once induced, my labour would look the same as if I had spontaneously laboured.
* I did my best to include some of these techniques in my labour. Some did nothing for me. The breathing really helped, but only to a point. My body did its own thing, and no matter how well I engaged with relaxation, there were some aspects I couldn’t control.
* I had a long, difficult, painful labour, full of tons of medical interventions and synthetic drugs! But I still had a positive birth experience. The one area this book doesn’t consider at all is how to process your birth after the fact, rather assuming that by using hypnobirthing techniques you will have a positive experience regardless of the actual experience. One of the key factors in the creation of trauma (other than the event itself) is how we process it afterwards. Because with the best will in the world, you may still have a traumatic experience even if you do everything in this book. There are many ways to have a positive experience, even if you don’t “succeed” at the hypnobirthing.
I started out really enjoying this with its breathing techniques and explanation of how birth works, but got disillusioned midway through. It feels to me that even though the author says that every birth is good and natural and you should do whatever works best for you and your situation, she still speaks disparagingly of hospital births, staff and medication. Let’s say if I met her and told her I actively wanted a hospital birth, I don’t think she would be judgmental to my face, but would privately wonder what woman in her right mind would want a hospital birth and try to work out what to say to change my mind. I very quickly went from feeling encouraged to feeling discouraged about birth, that despite my best intentions and the author’s platitudes about ‘you doing you’ I’m somehow still making ‘wrong’ decisions that will leave me with an upsetting birth experience.
Let me say here though that I’m grateful for the breathing and relaxation techniques and have been practicing them and really feeling the benefits— for those two or three chapters, I wholeheartedly recommend the book. This is the number one thing I would like to do throughout labour and I wouldn’t have known about it without reading this.
Other things I disagree with:
- unmedicated birth can be painless if you only have the right mindset
- questioning or refusing the medical recommendations— they ARE being made for good reasons, and while it’s totally OK to push back on them (if you have enough knowledge), this should be very seriously considered and not take second place to dreams of a ‘natural’ birth
- similar to the above, this book is not the substitute for the years of intense, evidence based medical training that the staff have undertaken, and any delay in latest research and current practice is because the research still needs more investigation before being the number 1 recommendation, that’s no small thing. If you haven’t trained in this area, I would question the wisdom of refusing medical recommendations because of your desire for a ‘natural’ birth. Reading a book, some online articles, a handful of YouTube videos and/or a course does not make you an expert, and I worry that this book gives people the impression they know more than they do and are better informed than the medical staff
I would personally also feel uncomfortable preaching to the midwives and surgeons about what words to use, how to perform natural caesarians and why their induction methods are wrong.
I also can’t help but notice that the majority of the 5 star ratings are written by people before experiencing labour, and I wonder if there’s something around rose tinted glasses for first time parents, which worries me even for myself. Hence why I hope to update after labour.
Disclaimer: because of how discouraged I began to feel whenever reading this book, I didn’t read every chapter. Some I skim read, others I ignored. The really helpful ones I re-read. But I feel that I got enough of the book to leave a review of my reading experience.