10 Simple Steps to Nailing your Hypnobirthing Practice
- Schedule it in. Literally set aside time. For example; on a Tuesday, Thursday & Sunday for 20 or so minutes you do one of the couple relaxations or some massage practice whilst dinner is cooking. If you tag it onto the end of the day chances are you’ll be too tired & sleepy from dinner to face it and you’ll say ‘We’ll do it tomorrow instead’. And tomorrow will come… and go… with nothing done, again.
- Build it up slowly then increase it as you get closer to your due date. Take your time to both read the two books. If you have plenty of time then doing the above practice 3x a week is great. If you’re short on time or the due date is looming, then up it a bit. You’ll never look back & say ‘Oooh we did way too much practice, we were far too prepared!’ but I sometimes hear ‘We know we didn’t do enough’. You’ve paid your money for the course, so now make the course work for you!
- Play your Baby Bumps’ positive affirmations MP3 …whilst you’re getting ready for work, in the bath, preparing dinner, pottering about, and so on. Actively listen to it and also tune out too. It is all going in and doing a whole lot of good.
- Fall asleep to the guided relaxations. Whilst the Baby Bumps’ Fear-Release MP3 is best listened to actively as it gives you the opportunity to blast away your concerns, the other MP3s can be listened to in bed and it’s more than OK if you fall asleep. It’s all going into your subconscious, helping to turn any unhelpful negative programming on its head. On maternity leave it’s a great way to take a day time nap too!
- Read some or all of the book/s together. One couple told me they would read out a chapter each in bed out loud to one another which I think is a lovely way to get the books read.
- Watch a birth video once a week – you have some as part of your course and they have all been carefully picked to not be graphic as I appreciate not everyone wants to see the whole shebang! Watching a positive birth video is really powerful and a real antidote to all the negative, dramatic rubbish we see on TV around birth.
- Daily breathing practice. It may be easy to breathe deeply and calmly now, but when in full on labour if you have not done any breathing practice then relaxing on command will be a challenge. Slow, rhythmic breathing is the basic foundation to a calm birth and will keep you clear headed whatever turn your birth takes. It’s also super useful postnatally. It really is a life skill to be able to go within and calm yourself in just a few breaths.
- Sign up to the free daily Katharine Graves birth affirmations which you can access here.
- Create a birth board with wedding pics/couple pics, scan photos, holiday photos, affirmations & positive birth quotes (all written in the current tense). If a birth board isn’t your thing then simply stick your positive affirmations and quotes all over your home on post it notes. It might not sound like much, but reading them, noticing them and repeating them will make a difference. It’s all about the repetition.
- Schedule it in! I’m leaving this one here to end on… Seriously, you will not regret having put the effort in. It really makes all the difference when a couple/woman has done regular practice. You won’t get a second chance to birth your first baby so give it all you’ve got!
Not yet done a Baby Bumps Hypnobirthing course? Short and long courses are available at Kingston Hospital, Crystal Palace & Brixton. More info on dates here.
Join the Facebook page here and if you have questions call on 07790 207363 or drop me an email via jackie@baby-bumps.net – always happy to chat.
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Jackie x