“I hadn’t realised until we conceived our second child quite how scared I had been during the labour of our first child. Don’t get me wrong the medical profession did everything they could to support us through a 36 hour labour resulting in a C-section. I vividly remember wanting to help my wife during labour but the pre labour preparation I had done had completely un prepared me for it in my opinion, bear with me this is relevant later on.
I hadn’t heard of Hypnobirthing until my wife came to me and asked me if I felt it was worth it. I asked my wife to go through what it was and got a good overview. To give some context; My wife has been going along to Yoga for many years and I had seen a difference in her after each session she attended. I also knew that there was an amount of lead meditation within each class, so I will admit to having a point of reference for some of what my wife was putting in front of me, essentially normalising some of the images I was concocting in my head.
Although I had read the literature I couldn’t get past the ‘Hypno’ word when trying to read more into it, it was like a bad ear worm. This word for me was the route of my uncomfortableness coupled with an insecurity of reading aloud; my only advice is when you see ‘Hypno’ in any literature, replace it with any other word and the whole thing normalises into something us blokes can relate to e.g Calm-birthing, Chilled-birthing, it-makes-sense- birthing and my favourite of I-want-to-help-you-birthing.
Going back to my first paragraph, what Hypno-birthing has done for me is given me something to do which I fundamentally know will help my wife. The tools I have, let me know that I can help and be actively involved in the birth. After the course, I am left feeling that I can do something to make the whole experience significantly better than the last one, and which aids and supports my wife and her wish to have a pleasurable birth experience.