Finding the Right Birth Class for You & How HypnoBirthing Is My Jam
Are you trying to figure out the right birth class for you? Or just where to even begin?
Ok, you’ve got the big three: HypnoBirthing, Lamaze, Bradley. And then you have hospital classes, classes given by doulas and birth workers not employed by hospitals, and then you’ve got podcasts, books, etc as resources.
Here’s the rundown:
Lamaze is
a 12 hour program that covers childbirth ed & relaxation techniques. From Very Well Health: “Fernand Lamaze observed the theory of psychoprophylactic childbirth (a method of pain relief that uses breathing and relaxation techniques) in the Soviet Union in the early 1950s. Using testimonies of people who had used the techniques, Lamaze popularized the method around the world.” I’ve seen some beautiful Lamaze births as a doula. And hell yeah! I know the SU was a bunch of hardass mother birthers. Shout out to Ukraine (where I served in the Peace Corps)!
The Bradley Method is
12 weeks of intensive classes covering childbirth education and natural labor prep. From their website: “Relaxation is the Key to The Bradley Method® during labor. It is the safest and most effective way to reduce unnecessary pain and to handle any pain that you do experience. While other methods seek to control the sensations of labor (emphasizing distraction as their Primary labor control technique), The Bradley Method® encourages mothers to trust their bodies (emphasizing relaxed abdominal breathing and relaxation throughout labor).”
I’m not sure if that distraction line is a dig at HypnoBirthing or not. Hmmm. Now, I’m biased because I love HypnoBirthing and had two beautiful, empowered births thanks to it. BUT, to give a general overview:
HypnoBirthing is
a comprehensive childbirth ed program that’s evidence based. It covers the basics of what to expect in labor, how to move through the waves of contractions, and how to arm yourself with the knowledge of your options, how to talk to providers, how to relax, and how to birth with calm and confidence whether that’s unmedicated or otherwise.
Most classes have similar components- the educational part about what to expect/what needs to happen to bring a baby here and then different ways to relax. I can’t tell you what’s going to be the right class for you. You know yourself better than I do. Trust your gut.
The only caution I offer is that if you limit yourself to taking childbirth education classes at your local hospital, you may not be getting everything you need.
What I tell people is that classes taught by hospital staff often teach you how to be a good patient, not necessarily how to be a good advocate for yourself in getting the birth you want.
When trying to figure out what kind of birth class I wanted to take, HypnoBirthing immediately popped up for me. I had a low opinion of Lamaze at the time, probably from stereotypical 80s movies like Look Who’s Talking who made fun of the way they (used) to breathe (Lamaze has now been updated to not include the hee-hee-haaaaa breath, and replaced it with one more closely aligned with what we learn in HypnoBirthing).
Look Who's Talking (1989)
The stereotype of the frantic, unhelpful dad in movies in sitcoms is hopefully long since dead.
The other big one I looked at was The Bradley Method, which my cousin raved about. I probably could have fit in the 12 week program at that point in my life, but I just didn’t feel pulled to it.
I should mention another big one in the birth world is Birthing From Within.
I read their book and really did enjoy it. I am not very skilled at art and found myself feeling too silly or self-conscious to want to do a full class.
What spoke to me immediately about HypnoBirthing was that it is essentially guided meditation.
The name alone is enough to put people off entirely, so I do try to highlight in my classes that it isn’t some kind of woowoo nonsense. It is an evidence based program with proven results.
I have a history of anxiety about various things (for whatever reason, birth has never been one of the things that make me anxious). A trip to the DMV for me is such a nightmare-not in the ‘this will be inconvenient’ kind of way, but in a ‘I am going to burst into tears’ kind of way, even being in that building. I get that way sometimes at the eye doctor. Which is clearer?: “Number 1” or Number 3” feels like a gun is to my head and there is a right answer, but if I don’t say the right answer, I will be killed. Hey, brain! It’s an eye exam—a bear is not chasing you. Calm down.
I have worked in therapy for a long time on this and the two things that made the biggest difference in my life were guided meditation (note: not self guided) and yoga.
I know you hear how wonderful yoga is from a vast swarth of people, so I won’t go into those details here other than to say that I was very disconnected from my body for a long time and yoga put me right there front and center IN my body. And that was tremendously helpful. And I definitely get antsy if I don’t do it nearly every day. (Also, prenatal yoga is literally amazing for birth outcomes, so check out my yoga & birth blog post.)
But for the meditation part- I couldn’t relax my mind with racing thoughts about sometimes silly things (like practicing my chipotle order in my head before reaching the counter) or catastrophizing about the state of the world (at various points in my millennial once-in-a-lifetime-events..9/11, the economic crash that greeted me out of college, covid, etc, etc). I found an amazing therapist who used some time in one of our sessions to guide me through the White Light relaxation technique. I don’t know what I thought before about hypnotherapy or meditation. I think I thought I just couldn’t do it—that meditation was simply not in my grasp. My brother became a Buddhist monk when I was in my college years and I went to a meditation session with him. I think I was too self-conscious to focus, and honestly, the most I remember about it was my back hurting from trying to have good posture.
I think I saw meditation as an elite sort of thing that wouldn’t help me- a lofty idea, one I liked and wanted to be good at, but not one I couldn’t actually do. (This is so funny to me now because of course I wasn’t good at it right away—no one is.)
Self guided meditation is still something I am not great at, but am getting better at.
But guided meditation absolutely made a difference in my anxious thoughts that would crop up.
HypnoBirthing was hands down the thing for me. When it came time for the first of the five week sessions, the instructor emailed us all that afternoon to say she was a doula with client in labor and needed to reschedule. What a great reason to need to cancel a class.
There are few doula archetypes- April was definitely the wise older mother there to help you through it all. I loved her instantly and knew I was in the right place. She really did feel instantly like an old family friend who had seen me grown up and knew exactly the right thing to say at exactly the right time. Some people are just like that. I try to find clients I connect with instantly in this same way because it makes everything go more smoothly.
I bring up instructor connection because I think that’s a big one.
The three big birth ed programs are pretty strict about keeping the education consistent across the instructors, or at least that’s their policies. I can say though that what you get out of a class—even when it’s the same exact material—can change drastically depending on who the teacher is. You want to find a teacher you can trust and who you personally connect with. Some doulas and/or childbirth educators do push an agenda. Watch out for that. I have been doing this long enough to know it does a disservice to students if I don’t talk about the realities of a medically necessary induction. Sometimes inductions ARE the saftest way to go, so I choose my words carefully when talking about them because there is enough fear out there around them.
For HypnoBirthing—my husband was on board with me right away as well. He had held maybe one baby in his life before this, so his knowledge was starting at zero. He has maintained that class really did prepare him to understand the labor process and what to expect it all to look like. He told me last year (seven years after the class) that he still uses some of those HypnoBirthing techniques to fall asleep sometimes.
HypnoBirthing is a great launching off point with the baseline scripts they give you. I loved the Rainbow Relaxation that’s included, but I found some other scripts besides the ones in the book that just fit better into my needs. There is so much out there now—there are HypnoBirthing copy cats and offshoots that have some great scripts, but I love the whole program from the original. I have a master’s in Literature, so I used that degree (for once) and wrote my own beach relaxation script that my husband read to me. It worked well.
The comprehensive education that came with it was also invaluable. It’s not that you can’t read these things in books—you can. It’s just that there’s so much information out there, it’s hard to whittle it down and figure out what is the info that you really need to pay attention to.
Teaching women to release fears surrounding childbirth makes their births better. Period.
Not everyone has to unlearn that—I was a doula, and I was telling people how much I looked forward to my labor, and that was the truth. I was so excited to experience the miracle I had seen in others a handful of times at the beginning of my career. I have a deep respect for mothers because birth is not ever an easy thing, even if it’s a quick labor.
But I know a lot of women who are truly terrified of their labors. In the classes, we talk about where these fears come from (spoiler alert: we live in a society…) (will anyone even get that reference or am I just too old now??) and how to overcome them. The class explains what to expect labor to look, feel, and sound like. It gives you the tools to know how to ask about your options if you are in a situation where a provider is giving you options.
HypnoBirthing helped me to better connect with my partner when I was pregnant. He read the scripts to me and practiced the massages. I got so many foot rubs that first pregnancy (not so much the second, or since then LOL). But HypnoBirthing was designed with helping partners get ready for birth—Marie Mongan brought her husband into the delivery room with her third and fourth babies much to the chagrin of her doctor and the standards of the time. These were the husbands-were-drunk-and-smoking-cigars-in-the-waiting-room times.
In 1982 study showed 43 percent of fathers never changed a diaper. By 2000, another study showed this figure had fallen to 3 percent. 80s motherhood was literally insane. I know the motherhood of now worries about how to teach children intrinsic motivation and doesn’t force hugging relatives (both things I do with my kids), and gentle parenting is exhausting.
Teaching My Boomer Mom About Gentle Parenting
But if my husband hadn’t changed any of our kids diapers, I would have BOY HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND on him.
For HypnoBirthing, I have heard from countless partners that they found the scripts so relaxing and it gave them peace of mind throughout labor. Some of the breathing techniques taught in the class aren’t just for childbirth, but to calm any nervous system in alarm. I’ve had dads start off the class very skeptical and saying they rather be up by mom’s shoulders when baby is crowning. We watch videos of births in each class and have students try to picture themselves in those situations so they can visualize how they’d react.
The same skeptical dad from session one was so excited for birth by session five.
I was their doula and that dad went from ‘not wanting to look’ to catching his baby. He felt so prepared and ready for it all.
That’s always the goal—to get people to a point where they feel ready for birth as it unfolds. Birth rarely goes exactly how you think it will, and having the tools to move along the way with calmness and confidence really does change everything.
Whatever childbirth education classes you take, I hope they inspire you! I hope you feel less scared, more prepared, and maybe even excited for your labor!
I offer my 5 week HypnoBirthing series seasonally every year in Severna Park and am available for individual classes or a modified version of the program at your request. I recently taught a modified version to a pregnant surrogate mom locally while having the parents-to-be join us on zoom from afar! Reach out for more information!
