Marie Mongan - Hypnobirthing.

M arie Mongan is a woman who has devoted her entire life to working with women of all ages and in all walks of life. Through her book and the HypnoBirthing Method, she shares the conviction of her own personal birthing experience and her sensitivity to the emotional and spiritual needs of birthing women. The message about the normality of birth that this book delivers is an essential one for all families who believe in and care about birthing their babies in safety, calm, and peace.

This book, and the HypnoBirthing program itself, has provided me, and other doctors who share a belief in normal birth, a framework within which to practise obstetrics in the manner in which our education has qualified us and in the direction in which our hearts have led us. It has changed the way many of us practise obstetrics.

I began delivering babies in 1983. I believed in the use of drugs to manage obstetrical pain. In spite of my best efforts to use good sound medical judgment, I saw lots of complications, including babies with compromised breathing. I believed that epidurals were a medical blessing for labouring mothers. I had a 25 percent C-section rate.

Many patients demanded natural births. I then performed hundreds of deliveries using pushing and blowing while holding off analgesics until the mother could no longer take the pain. I saw babies that were no longer respiratorily compromised, but both mother and baby were exhausted. Quite often there was a need for respiratory support with oxygen. But my C-section rate had fallen to 5 percent.

Next, I used visualisation and guided imagery with patients to manage pain. On occasion, I still had to use narcotics and a rare epidural. I continued to see exhausted babies who were not fully able to bond. I still had a C-section rate of 5 percent.

Eventually, I began using hypnosis to manage pain during birth. The results were okay. Babies were less often compromised and very rarely needed oxygen; but mothers still experienced painful births. My C-section rate remained at 5 percent.

A few years ago, I made the transition to HypnoBirthing, and I now truly believe that normal birthing does not have to involve pain. I have attended over 200 births of women who prepared for birth by learning and using the techniques and philosophy of HypnoBirthingThe Mongan Method. All of the families have left their birthings excited about the birth event. I see support people meaningfully involved with the mother and assisting in many different ways. I have had no complications. No babies have needed oxygen or any support other than warming by mothers body. My C-section count is threein as many years. I have given absolutely no analgesic drugs since I began using HypnoBirthing with mothers.

Over the years, I have come to realise that during a birthing, I no longer perform deliveries; I attend and observe as mothers birth their babies in calm and comfort, and birthing companions receive the babies as they emerge. It is as if my new role is to be present to witness the miracle of HypnoBirthing.

Now I enthusiastically lecture to medical groups on a regular basis about the merits of HypnoBirthing as a means of achieving easier, more comfortable births for labouring mothers. I am more than happy to talk to health-care professionals (or anyone else) about my experiences with truly natural birthing. I have a large number of happy HypnoBirthing familiesmothers and fatherswho love to talk about their own birthing experiences.

In my position as a faculty member of the Atlanta Family Medicine Residency Program in Atlanta, Georgia, I trained medical residents to use HypnoBirthing as an option for the families they will serve.

I heartily recommend this book, and the well-thought-out program that it accompanies, for its contribution toward making the birth of our children a positive and gentle step on the way to a better world.

Lorne R. Campbell, Sr., M.D.
Clinical Professor, Family Medicine

W hen the publisher of the third edition of our HypnoBirthing textbook invited me to write a revision of the book for our 25th anniversary, it opened up a flood of memories and thoughts about the journey that has brought HypnoBirthing to where it is today. Mongan Method HypnoBirthing is the leader and most comprehensive natural and instinctive birth education programme that exists. It has, from the very beginning, reached beyond simple relaxation and introduced many advanced hypnosis techniques into the birthing classroom. The coincidence of this being our 25th anniversary year called back thoughts of experiences that bubbled over in my mind and could not be quieted. Where have we been and where have we gone in a whole quarter century?

At this time 25 years ago, Maura, my daughter for whom the programme was developed, had just given birth to our grandbaby Kyle. The other two women who also prepared for their births with HypnoBirthing were due to birth at any moment. The success of Mauras birthing had the hospital staff talking about that woman in Room 201, who had no epidural, had soft music playing, and the room dimmed all through her labour. One of the nurses on duty that day, Pat, who was also pregnant, made it a point to step into Mauras room quite regularly. Each time she just stood by the door with a quizzical look on her face and stared at Maura. On one visit, she spoke, And she hasnt had anything for pain? Really?

I remember leaving the room briefly to get a tuna fish sandwich (usually a poor choice with a birthing mother); and when I returned, I found a midwife on her knees writing the name of the artist on the tape that was in the tape player that I had placed obscurely on the floor behind a chair.

When Mauras birth was complete, Nurse Pat came back into the room and asked for an appointment with me. As she left, she told the other nurses, Hey, girls, this is the way Im having my baby. My excitement doubled.

I went home that afternoon, and with my notes taken during Mauras pregnancy and her birth, I began to set down the philosophy of birth that had been waiting all these many years since I was a child. One by one, I started to expand on the chapters of the coil-bound book I had prepared for my first three pioneer mums. I knew that I needed to put these feelings and observations down so that they could be shared with others. Writing that book was the easiest thing Ive ever done. My enthusiasm was at peak, and my mind just wouldnt shut down for anything.