Editorial Dil Se From Vimla Patil Health & Fitness Reflections Book Review In Focus Lifestyle Beauty Prev Issue Next Issue

The woman in the video is calm and composed. She is lying on a bed in a hospital room, her eyes wide open, her face alert but serene. Her husband is gently massaging her arm, running his fingertips lightly up and down. Aside from some deep breathing, the room is completely silent. The light is dim.

HypnoDoula Suzanne Fremon discusses HypnoBirthing techniques with expecting couple Michael and Rosana Beaver. Rosana is five and a half months pregnant with her first child and was introduced to HypnoBirthing through friends. (Photo: Lane Johnson)

And then, suddenly, her baby's head emerges. Then the shoulders, torso and finally two tiny legs and feet. The baby, too, is calm and quiet and has a healthy red glow. A midwife holds him up proudly for the mother and father to see. The serenity on the woman's face and in the room is the opposite of the screaming, crying, red-faced mother shown in just about every television and movie birth ever seen. It is also quite contrary to the experience most women have of giving birth.

The woman, one of several shown in the video, is giving birth using a method known as HypnoBirthing. Unlike techniques like Lamaze and the Bradley method, HypnoBirthing uses deep relaxation and visualization techniques to alleviate the pain and fear that women have about childbirth.

Marie Mongan, 71, the mother of HypnoBirthing, used similar techniques when she had her children in the 1950s and 1960s in Rochester, N.H. Sixteen years ago, she wrote her method down to help her daughter Maura through childbirth. Since then, she has trained over 2,000 practitioners, from hypnotists and doulas, to physicians and obstetricians. And the popularity of HypnoBirthing is growing steadily as women hear about it from friends, see it in action and experience its benefits.

"Everybody has an ugly birth story, a fear that is programmed into them," said Dr. Trudy Beers, a licensed hypnotherapist and practitioner of HypnoBirthing in New York.

Kelley Faulkner, 25, mother of 2-year-old Simon, agreed. "It became very clear to me after taking HypnoBirthing that I needed a lot of deprogramming. I had been exposed to negative influences in birthing, and I needed to release fears."

Faulkner, from Holliston, Mass., was so pleased with her experience that she gave up her job in financial services. "I had a beautiful one hour and 45 minute birth that inspired me to become a doula and HypnoBirthing instructor."

Women who have used the HypnoBirthing method say they have shorter and often pain-free labor and quick recovery periods. Mongan and others who practice the method frequently mention the work of Dr. Grantley Dick-Reed, who wrote the book "Childhood Without Fear" in 1944. Dick-Reed studied midwives and discovered that women who were relaxed during labor had less pain and avoided the effects of the physiological effects of the fight-flight syndrome, in which the body tenses in fear.

Julia Manetovic, 43, who used HypnoBirthing to deliver her 3-month-old, Alexandra, said she would do it again. "The best thing is the way they teach you to control your mind, how to relax and endure -- I don't want to call it pain, but very strong discomfort. It is just incredible."

Dr. Loren Campbell Sr. is a family practitioner at Wyoming County Community Hospital in Warsaw, N.Y., who has been "doing births" for 21 years. He explained that once the body is stimulated to respond because of fear, stress hormones are released that restrict blood flow and tighten the muscles of the uterus, which causes pain. If a woman is relaxed, the muscles in the uterus will work in harmony the way they were meant to.

Campbell said that when he was first approached about using hypnosis in medicine, he rolled his eyes. Now, he is considering requiring all his expectant mothers to be trained in HypnoBirthing. He has seen his cesarean section rate go from 28 percent to 1 percent. "I can actually predict which woman [will need a C-section] just by observing her commitment to using HypnoBirthing," he said.

The keys to HypnoBirthing are deep relaxation and visualization. Practitioners began by teaching expectant mothers how to release the fears that they have built up about the difficulties of childbirth.

"A deer who is out in the forest is not going to birth a fawn if they're scared," said Jill Chasse, a licensed hypnotherapist in Silver Spring, Md., who uses techniques similar to the Mongan approach with her pregnant patients. "It's a natural reaction; their body is going to hold the baby in, not allow the baby to be born. A lot of people don't realize that people have the same natural reactions that animals have. If there are doctors or a lot of noise, tension in the birth canal, the baby is going to be stuck and the mother will have to have an emergency C-section or a longer labor."

HypnoBirthing practitioners also teach mothers a whole new language to talk about their birth. Instead of pushing, women are encouraged to "bring the baby down." A mucus plug is the uterine seal or birth gel. Contractions are surges.

"Which really is a better way to describe your energy that is coming out in birthing, when the uterus is doing what it does best," said Faulkner. "We're just calling it what it is."

Mongan agrees, pointing out that in HypnoBirthing, women have birth partners or companions, not birth coaches, as in the Bradley method. "We don't feel this is an athletic event," she said.

Women usually take from three to five HypnoBirthing classes taught both one-on-one and in groups. Many practitioners like a group atmosphere because of the energy and the shared experience and advice the women can share with each other, although Chasse prefers one-on-one sessions because she sees them as more therapeutic. "You need to make sure the person is comfortable with it," she said.

Classes cost between $160 and $600, and most practitioners are willing to work out payment plans for mothers. "I feel that people should never be turned away for inability to pay," Faulkner said.

Most insurance companies will not cover the classes. "I would think that they would be the first ones," Mongan said. "Women are up right after birth, they are healthier, their babies are healthier. It is a shame because this is an option that should be available to all women."

At Frisbee Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.H., maternity clinical coordinator Sargit Dillon has trained nurses and physicians in the methods and language of HypnoBirthing. "They love the program and they promote it," she said. "You would be amazed by the physician support and the medical assistants who are actually working alongside the physicians. They've taken the time and interest to look at the tapes and get familiar with the program." Dillon estimated that 60 percent of the women giving birth at the hospital use HypnoBirthing.

Practitioners say that skeptics, both medical professionals and mothers, become believers. Campbell said he presents his research on fight-or-flight response and HypnoBirthing to groups of physicians that he speaks to and "I watch their faces light up. I tell them, 'I feel like a cheat when I send out the bill.' I say, 'I used to do births and now I don't do births anymore. I just sit back and watch miracles happen.'"

View and Post comment on this article