Hollie de Cruz - Your Baby, Your Birth: Hypnobirthing Skills For Every Birth

No matter how you birth your baby, feel calm and safe with hypnobirthing

This woman is a great healer and birth expert. This book will be brilliant. Russell Brand

Baby, Your Birth is a truly modern hypnobirthing book for ALL births.

In-demand hypnobirthing coach Hollie de Cruz provides you with the skills and tools to make any birth feel safe, calm, connected and empowering. Drawing on her experience working with new mums, including Fearne Cotton and Giovanna Fletcher, Hollie de Cruz helps you prepare for a positive (not perfect) birth experience and approach motherhood with confidence in yourself and your instincts.

Your Baby, Your Birth will teach you:

-That birth is safe - listen to your body, embrace the changes, prepare your mind and relax during pregnancy

-Exercises and breathing techniques for labour and birth for you and your birth partner, along with guided meditations to keep you calm and engaged

-How to trust your instincts, understand your body and baby, and make informed decisions throughout your pregnancy and beyond

Hollie de Cruz, creator of the award-winning yesmum positive affirmation cards, is renowned for demystifying hypnobirthing and her down-to-earth, realistic approach is highly sought after.

Whatever kind of birth you are planning, let Hollie de Cruz provide you with a set of deep relaxation, mindfulness and meditation tools for an empowering experience.

Hollie de Cruz is a mother and social entrepreneur with over 50k followers on Instagram (@the yesmummum). She is a highly successful hypnobirthing coach and the creator of the award-winning yesmum positive affirmation cards (www.yesmumcards.com). Hollie has developed a style of teaching that engages and informs couples in a way that really makes a difference to the way they embark on the most exciting adventure of their lives. Her clients include Fearne Cotton, Izzy Judd and Giovanna and Tom Fletcher.

For Oscar,

I love you more.

It is possible and it is true.

If somebody had told me years ago that I would be a hypnobirthing teacher, writing a book about childbirth, I would never have believed them. I had always thought of childbirth as something that women simply had to endure to have a family, and I honestly dreaded the day when I would have to give birth myself. Despite my own mother having had two good births, my only reference was what Id seen on TV and in films a dramatic (and often traumatic) physical experience. Imagine my angst then, when I found myself unexpectedly pregnant at the age of 25.

At this point in my life I was working for a busy corporate design agency. The environment I worked in was male-dominated and very demanding. I enjoyed my job and I enjoyed my busy life in London. I went out a lot and babies were definitely not on my radar. When I found out I was pregnant I wont lie I was terrified. For the first three months (at least) I buried my head in the sand completely, as I think many women do. When you dont yet have a bump its easy to detach yourself from the idea that theres actually something growing in there something that youre going to have to get out and thats definitely what I did until my bump started to show at around four or five months.

Around that time, I decided I should probably start turning my attention towards the birth itself, so I started watching horrific birth videos on YouTube. A word of advice: dont do that.

In hindsight it wasnt a smart move, but at the time it was my way of anticipating a worst-case scenario outcome. I watched these videos through squinted eyes and felt relieved that everyone survived. And that became my goal for birth: survival. If my baby and I were alive at the end of this, Id consider it a win.

Luckily for me, my partner was a bit older and had lots of friends with children. He seemed much calmer and more positive than me, but Id put that down to the fact he wasnt about to push a human being out of one of his orifices. He was keen to approach our pregnancy as a team and encouraged me to talk to some of his girlfriends who in his words had had good births. I was sceptical, but in an attempt to make him feel involved, I agreed.

When I spoke to his friends and asked them about their births, I couldnt really believe what they were saying. They described their births as peaceful, calm, romantic not words I had ever associated with birth before. I probed for more information, keen to uncover whatever hallucinogens theyd taken to experience it this way, and it was then that I first encountered the word hypnobirthing.

Now let me say that the second I heard that word I was cynical. Hypnobirthing? Giving birth while hypnotised? Pocket watches in the delivery room? Oh god. My first thought was that this was probably not for me, but my partner suggested we book on to a course and find out more. I wasnt massively keen, but I agreed, on the understanding that if we had to sing anything or hold hands with other couples, I was leaving.

So off we went to our first hypnobirthing class; him keen, me cynical (and scared). That was the day my life changed forever.

The thing I found most surprising about the course, right from the off, was that it was largely based on science and logic. We were taught about the female reproductive system and how our muscles were designed to work during the process of birth. This was a revelation to me. I realised I didnt know any of this stuff. Why? How are we not teaching girls about what their bodies do in mainstream education? Its a question you dont really ask until you realise how little you know about your own reproductive kit. And then we learned about the hormones of birth, too. It was enlightening to learn just how capable the system we have in place really is! I learned more about the female body on a 10-hour hypnobirthing course than I had acquired in my whole life up to that point.

And so the shift in my headspace had begun. In just a few weeks I had gone from being terrified about birth to being genuinely excited that I was a strong woman, capable and ready to bring my baby into the world in a calm and empowered way. Wed also begun to really approach the birth as a team. Rather than it being something that I was going to do while my partner looked on helplessly, this was going to be the most intimate and loving experience of both of our lives and this was a big factor in us deciding wed like to have our baby at home.

Im not suggesting you should all have your babies at home, but Im saying this because I cant emphasise enough how much of a turning point this was in our pregnancy. Rather than viewing birth as an overly medicalised procedure that could only take place in a hospital, we were suddenly talking about birth in a positive way, going to appointments together, practising our breathing, massage and relaxation techniques in the evening, making a playlist for our babys arrival and generally connecting more as a couple and as parents-to-be. It was the most incredible turnaround.

On Sunday 28 November 2010, my labour began at home. The days that followed were more intimate, euphoric and peaceful than I can do justice to in words. I have never felt so at one with myself as I did during that time. I felt invincible. While the physicality of labour and its sensations were strong and visceral, I can