Generally speaking people associate HypnoBirthing with gentle comfortable births and given the nature of the teachings, this expectation certainly is reasonable.  However, there is more to HypnoBirthing than gentle breathing and deep relaxation.

 We show a series of video taped births as part of the class instruction.  Some of the births take place at home and others are in the hospital.  Other differences are the location of the mother.  Some have chosen to labor in a bed, others are moving around and some of them are in a birthing pool.  The number of the attendants also varies for each birth.  One of the home birthing mothers is surrounded by family members and friends while she reclines in the birthing pool.  Another mother appears to prefer privacy.  She shares her birthing pool with her husband and the family is later joined by a midwife who remains outside of the pool.  The setting for the hospital birthing mothers is just as varied as for the home births.  One of them has chosen to sit on the edge of the bed leaning against her husband while she is birthing.   Another is reclining on her bed with eyes closed and a wet cloth on her forehead.  One mother smiles each time she has a surge and gently breathes her baby down.  The next laboring woman is seen pushing hard and apparently holding her breath.

Each scenario is showing a HypnoBirthing birth.  Each woman birthed the way she wanted to and that’s the point of HypnoBirthing: to teach the mother to follow the lead of her body so she can have a great birth of her choice.  By having the birth of her choice she will feel strong and empowered by the experience and the goal of HypnoBirthing has been reached.