Anthonissa Moger - Holistic Hypnobirthing

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foreword

Our bodies innately know how to birth our babies. You have within you all the strength, resilience, and peace you need to enjoy a truly empowering and positive birth experience. Hypnobirthing can help you tap into these infinite natural resources.

Growing up, I inherited powerful birth stories from my mother, who said she could have birthed in nature without assistance. This instilled a strong belief in myself and my birthing body. I approached my first birth with a few good books and no fear. I was lucky enough to see the same midwife throughout my pregnancy, and she happened to be on call when I went into labor. She was calm, quiet, respectful, and made me feel safe. My daughter Jazz was born at home in 2008. The intense, enjoyable experience catapulted me into motherhood feeling healthy, passionate, and inspired, and it soon became clear that midwifery was my calling. I began my training when Jazz turned one. My interest in natural birthing meant that hypnobirthing became part of the picture.

As an NHS midwife, I have attended many home births and now work on a busy labor ward in central London. I see firsthand the difference between women who prepare their minds and bodies for birth using hypnobirthing tools and those who come in unprepared, anxious, and afraid. The former are more calm, confident, comfortable during the birth and better able to navigate special circumstances, if they arise.

When you harness the power of your mind, believe in your body, learn how to relax deeply, and choose to give birth in a comfortable environment, supported by a caring team, you inevitably change your birthing experience for the better.

We are animals with an instinctive ability to give birth, and practices developed over millennia to help us do so. We are also modern humans with advanced medical care at our disposal. As a hypnobirthing midwife, I feel privileged to bridge the gap between the two worlds.

In this book, trimester by trimester Ill show you how to use hypnobirthing techniques, complementary therapies, and natural remedies to give birth to your baby as nature intended yet in a modern context (whether thats a hospital or your own home), with the help of a midwife who, like me, is working from the basis of their scientific training. I share the best of what I have learned over a decade as a midwife and an instructor of yoga and hypnobirthing. I have practiced everything within these pages myselfI wrote this book while pregnant with my son Indy. Writing each trimester as I experienced it has shaped the book, and I have included only the most practical and beneficial content.

I hope you will find this guidance helpful, and I wish you a wonderful journey into motherhood. Rememberyou are designed to do this!

Give birth with confidence, in
a powerful state of euphoria.

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Hypnobirthing is a practical philosophy that incorporates a range of tools and techniques designed to help you prepare your body and mind for birth during pregnancy and experience giving birth as a joyful life event.

Although hypnobirthing has become increasingly popular in recent years, it is nothing new. Women have been birthing using the breath, supported by family and community midwives, in a cozy, safe environment since time immemorial. It is only in recent times that we have come to recognize and appreciate how beneficial these factors are for having a straightforward and positive experience.

HYPNOBIRTHING PHILOSOPHY

At the heart of hypnobirthing is the belief that the body has a built-in capacity to give birth. Understanding this ability in your own body (see , can help you birth your baby in a way that is closer to how nature intended.

It is commonly believed that childbirth is an unavoidably painful or traumatic experience, something to be approached with fear and endured by women. This is not the case. Hypnobirthing retrains your state of mind and emotions to reframe birth as one of lifes most fulfilling seminal moments, an event that can be celebrated and enjoyed, in a calm environment created by yourself, in which you feel safe and nurtured.

HYPNOBIRTHING IN PRACTICE

There are four aspects to hypnobirthing practice: relaxation, mindset work, body preparation, and teamwork. Prepare your body for birth with gentle, targeted exercise. At the same time, learn relaxation skills and nurture your mental and emotional state using mindset tools so you approach the birth feeling strong, confident, and relaxed.

Surround yourself with a coterie of supportersyour partner and/or birth partner, the medical professionals involved, and anyone who makes you feel nurtured and safe. Practice using your hypnobirthing tools with their help as much as possible.

With such preparation, hypnobirthing moms experience birth as a joyous event, and happy moms make for happy babies.

Hypnobirthing promotes a healthy,
peaceful pregnancy and birth,
benefitting mom and baby.

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Hypnobirthing celebrates womens bodies as capable, powerful, and designed to birth. It encourages and teaches women to work with their innate birthing ability to birth their babies in a state similar to how other mammals give birth in nature.

We give birth within the context of a medicalized approach, so its easy to forget that female bodies are designed for birth. Although medical professionals and procedures are there to support us, by using hypnobirthing techniques, you optimize your chance of a straightforward birth and reduce the likelihood of needing medical interventions.

Womens incredible bodies have evolved to birth our babies in amazing ways. The purpose of the uterus is to nurture the growth of a baby and, when the right time comes, uterine muscles can exert powerful pressure from the top and sides, squeezing the baby down and opening the .

We have a wide pelvis compared to men, enabling a baby to pass through it. The hormone relaxin also peaks around birth, relaxing the pelvic ligaments so this capacity can increase further, and the coccyx (tailbone) becomes more flexible to enable it to move 12cm to allow the baby through.