HypnoBirthing Class Part 1

Amazingly, I could only find one HypnoBirthing practitioner in Connecticut. Thankfully, she's fantastic and she went out of her way to offer a class that would work with our crazy boarding school schedule. So Paul and I drove over an hour to Westport today for the first of two six-hour Sunday classes with Cynthia Overgard of HypnoBirthing CT.

Having already read the HypnoBirthing "handbook," I was really excited for the class. Paul, however, has been slower in coming to understand the method's benefits and relevance to us. I would argue, however, that it takes a certain kind of man to give up his workout, his nap, and his otherwise lazy Sunday to spend that kind of time talking about (and watching very graphic videos of) natural childbirth.

It was an emotional day for me. There were eleven couples there, and we were one of three that already had children. There was one other mom who was going for a VBAC, but she had had a natural childbirth with her first and a C-section with her twins. I spent a lot of time trying not to get too teary whenever we starting talking about ways to advocate for yourself in order to avoid interventions, about the crucial mother-child bonding time that happens in the hour after birth, and about how HypnoBirthing can help protect the blessedness of the birthing experience.

The coolest part of the day was definitely the hypnosis practice. First of all, hypnosis is not what I expected it to be. The person under hypnosis is completely in control. In explaining hypnosis, practitioners often use the example of subconscious driving, which happens to all of us: you get in your car, you focus completely on some train of thought, and then you arrive at your destination without realizing how you really got there. Hypnosis is actually something we experience all the time, such when we're engrossed in a movie, when we're daydreaming, or when we're completely in tune to one thought and have blocked distractions out.

For the first, five minute practice, Cynthia put on some new-agey music, we breathed ourselves into relaxation, and she guided us through a hypnosis exercise. We ended up in a kitchen, imagining the sights and smells of a food, and then holding and tasting a lemon. I went straight back to the kitchen at 301 Rhinecliff; I could picture the funny blue wallpaper, the outdated counter tops, and the entire space perfectly. The food I imagined was the blueberry muffins my mother used to make, which cracked me up because they really weren't anything special - they came out of a box - but they must have made me happy. (And they remind me of the funniest meal ever: cold tuna-noodle salad, red jello, and blueberry muffins from a box. Does it get any more 70's than that???)

The second hypnosis exercise blew me away. I was able to be more relaxed that I ever would have imagined. I was even able to allow my subconscious to take over enough to absorb the narrative without obsessing over really "getting" it, which was so fascinating to me. In this exercise, we were guided to a comforting room, and before Cynthia mentioned that the room was blue and green, I had chosen my grandparents' living room. When she told us to sit in the comfortable chair in the room, I sat in my grandpa's chair. It just made sense to me to be there instead of this unimaginable room she was describing. Anyway, that's okay - as long as you're relaxed, there are no hard and fast rules.

What really got me about this hypnosis, however, was that I knew it was longer than the first, and at times I wondered how much longer it was going to be. Afterwards, she asked how long we thought it was, and I guessed 10 minutes. Unbelievably, it was actually twenty-five minutes. If HypnoBirthing can make twenty-five minutes of labor feel like 10, bring it on!

I'm so in "baby mode" right now. This weekend, I cleaned out four closets and bought a new crib and a pack n' play.  I just want to absorb myself in baby preparations. All I can think about is getting to write my VBAC success story because I'm so confident that HypnoBirthing will help me achieve my goals. I can't wait to hold this baby to comfort it after its journey into the world.

And then I realize that I need to savor these last 5-10 weeks of this life as we know it: our three-person (and one mule) family, the full nights of sleep, and the joy of anticipation. It will happen. It will happen.