Painless Childbirth: Experience Labour and Birth without Pain, Step-by-Step

By Tina Taylor

Painless Childbirth: Experience Labour and Birth without Pain, Step-by-Step uses a number of holistic techniques including self-hypnosis, NLP, breathing and relaxation to eliminate the need for drugs, extreme stress and pain during the childbirth process whether you choose to give birth in a hospital, with a mid-wife or at home.

This book includes several self-hypnosis scripts, checklists for pre-and-post birth, a how to for the birthing partner and a special chapter on birth from Dad's perspective.

Forewords by Richard Bandler & Paul McKenna

• Language: English
• Publisher: IM Press, Inc
• Release date: Sep 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465951281

Tina Taylor

My name is Tina M. Taylor, and I was born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania, by my mother, Louella Barton. I have always possessed a passion for reading, so it came to no surprise to myself when I had decided to become a writer. I would like to dedicate this book to God, for without him, none of this would be possible—also, to my four sons: Dean, and his wife Krystina; Donald, William, and Alan.

Book preview

Painless Childbirth

Experience Labour and Birth without Pain, Step-by-Step

by Tina Taylor

SMASHWORDS EDITION

978-1-4659-5128-1

Digital Version ISBN: 9780982780473

Published by I.M. Press, Inc.

www.aventesi.com

www.tina-taylor.com

Copyright © 2011-2012 Tina Taylor and IM Press, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any other form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

DISCLAIMER AND THANKS

Please note that all information in this book is provided for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as, nor replace medical advice. If you are suffering from any physical or medical condition, please seek the advice of the appropriately qualified health professional. We are grateful to those writers and thinkers who have given us permission quote their words. To those who for some reason were unable to respond to our requests, we would appreciate it if their contacted the publisher so they can be credited in later editions.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD by Richard Bandler & Paul McKenna

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: I’m Having a Baby

CHAPTER 2: Childbirth

CHAPTER 3: Hypnosis

CHAPTER 4: Trance-forming Childbirth

CHAPTER 5: Birth Plan

CHAPTER 6: If the Baby is Breech

CHAPTER 7: When Baby is Ready to be Born

CHAPTER 8: Preparing your Mind and Body for Birth

CHAPTER 9: Your Body and Birth

CHAPTER 10: The Birth

CHAPTER 11: Home Birth

CHAPTER 12: Baby’s Experience-Prenatal Bonding

CHAPTER 13: Pregnancy from Dad’s Perspective

CHAPTER 14: The Birth Partner

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

REFERENCES

ONLINE REFERENCES

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Thank you to Dr. Richard Bandler, co-creator of NLP; whose life work with Hypnosis, NLP and DHE helped to make this book possible. He awoke within me a thirst for knowledge and continues to inspire me. Through his teaching my childbirth classes evolved, and from his suggestions this book evolved. I owe you so much thank you. My journey began many years ago with Dr. Richard Bandler, Paul McKenna and Michael Breen on an NLP Practitioner course and without these people I would never have considered the life that I live now nor believed the things that I accomplish on a day to day basis were possible.

Thank you too to Dr. Natheera Indrasenan and midwife Claire Singh who helped to ensure that my medical information was accurate; to my students over the years whose questions, experiences and testimonials helped to create the outline of this publication; and Jo, who helped in so many ways.

This book is for my family, my husband Steve, daughter Joey for their love and belief in me and of course my grandsons, Joshua and Logan; whose journey into this world contributed to this book.

FOREWORD

What can I say except bravo! I have for forty years created and taught ways to make life easier and better. Tina has brought hypnosis and my work to this very important event, childbirth. This book is a guide to making childbirth a wonderful event, reducing fear and pain, embracing creation. Her work here will truly be an asset both to mothers and those preparing mothers. Tina is one of my students who become a colleague, and now is making her own contribution to the future. She is a skilled NLP trainer, a master hypnotist, and has now refined her years of experience into a guide so many will use in the future. Please read, learn, and pass it on. I know she struggled to refine this volume to be both readable and useful, and I believe she has done both very well. I do warn the reader the skills and information may not just make child birth painless but may leak into the rest of their life resulting in unexpected pleasure. It has been with joy I see one of my students do so much, with the little I taught them.

Dr. Richard Bandler

Tina Taylor has written an excellent book for anyone expecting a baby. It’s a goldmine of techniques and helpful information. Tina’s years of experience and dedication to helping others have created a wonderful guide to making the experience of childbirth much easier.

Paul McKenna

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HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book is to be used as a guide by the mother to be, giving her exercises to practice for use prior to, during and after the birth of her child. Most women today have their baby’s father with them at the birth and some also have other family members and friends with them for support; within this book are techniques and suggestions that enable those supporting mum at the birth to help her achieve a more comfortable birth experience. Each chapter contains information that will be useful to the mother-to-be and her birth partners as well as exercises for them to practice.

These exercises use concepts from:

NLP: Neuro Linguistic Programming®

DHE: Design Human Engineering

Hypnosis

NLP is the study of how we process information and how that affects our behaviour; or very simply how your brain works. By utilising NLP techniques you can take control of how you think. The way that we think of something, the words and pictures in our mind, create our feelings and behaviours. By learning how to change your thoughts you can change your feelings, get rid of anxieties, old beliefs, limitations that may have held you back in the past and create new more powerful beliefs that enable you to achieve your goals.

DHE contains the basic principles of NLP but whereas NLP is therapeutic and gives you techniques to fix things; DHE is a whole body/brain approach that enables you to build tools inside you mind that allow you to take control of what were thought of previously as processes out of your conscious control.

In the exercises you will be using your imagination, your five senses (seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling) learning on an unconscious level to develop breathing and visualisation techniques as well as relaxation techniques to be used during the birth.

Some of these exercises will require you to imagine, visualise certain situations; some people may think they are not visual, that they can’t see pictures in their mind.

We are all able to visualise, to imagine. Think about your bedroom, how is it decorated? What colour is your bedding, the curtains? Now imagine the room decorated in a completely different way, change all the furniture, black out the windows. What’s it like now?

To do this your mind formed some kind of image, a mental picture. Your mind creates pictures, all the time. When you think about where you parked your car, or what you did last weekend, your mind creates a mental picture. It's these mental pictures that contribute to our feelings.

As you practice the exercises regularly you will notice that not only are you developing skills for the birth but also for your day-to-day life. Whilst learning techniques that will enable you to achieve a more comfortable birth experience, they will also help you to become significantly more relaxed and confident during pregnancy; and during the birth of your child you will be able to access these resources as needed.

The key to success as with all things is to practice until these techniques become second nature to you. Practice is essential.

Whilst practicing these exercises remember each time you practice you are gaining in experience; the more that you practice the easier it becomes for you to relax. Some people find it takes practice to be able to relax deeply whereas others find it very easy to do. Many of my clients have very busy lives and are not used to spending time relaxing, they are often amazed at how easy it is for them to let go completely; and at how beneficial the relaxation process is for them during their pregnancy and also after the baby is born. There are many ways to relax, it's just a matter of finding what works best for you. Practice every day, as repetition is the key to success. Each time you practice this reinforces the process and so your ability to relax becomes easier.

Even if you are picking this book up late into your pregnancy and don’t have time to complete the plan you will still gain benefits from the techniques and exercises within this book.

These techniques can be used by you alone or with a birth partner, someone who will support you through the birth; your husband, partner, friend, sister, mother; they can all play a special part and help you during the birth.

In order for you to get the best from this book study the chapters on hypnosis and mind and body for birth and practice these techniques; then practice them some more and then practice more!

BIRTH STORY

Dear Tina

" Thank you for the hypnosis session. Even though we only managed to have a couple of hours before Ben decided to pop into the world, I still found it incredibly helpful. The time we spent with you helped me to deliver using only a TENS machine for pain relief.

Thanks again for your help, it was the most useful of all the preparation I did (and I tried lots!)." --Sonia

Joshua & Logan January 2008; Logan at a few hours old.

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BIRTH STORY

Hi Tina

"I came to you as I had had 2 miscarriages and wanted to have a baby. Anyway I thought you’d like to know I just had my beautiful baby daughter at age 43 and she is perfect!

I purchased a copy of your Trance-forming Childbirth CD which I listened to (never actually heard because I kept falling asleep listening to it!) and it really helped! I had an entire day of full-blown contractions but absolutely no pain! I’m recommending your tape to my pre-natal friends in the hope that they too can have pain free contractions!

It's an amazing thing that the mind can overcome the stupid thoughts inadvertently and unhelpfully put there by well meaning people who should know better. Give us the positives as well as the tales of caution. The positives are what we need to cling to and what will heal us in the end." --Susan

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INTRODUCTION

Whilst studying NLP and Hypnosis one of the things that intrigued me was the way that the mind creates our thoughts, beliefs and responses to situations, I was drawn to the minds ability to control various sensations or our perception of sensations and the sensation labeled pain. How is it that we have different pain thresholds; and that one persons pain can be another’s pleasure. This question brought my attention to childbirth and the fact that there are women in the world today that give birth within a few hours and then return to work with their babies swaddled to them. What is it that makes birth easy for some women and difficult for others?

I began to investigate these phenomena.

My studies led me to an English Doctor, Grantly Dick Read, who grew up in a rural area of England at the beginning of the 20th Century. Having seen animal husbandry at work he could not understand why humans had such a problem giving birth. He spent many years researching this. It is his theories and findings that contributed to my childbirth classes, together with a scientist, Dr. Candice Pert, who discovered that we all have opiate receptors in our brain. There is an area of your brain that ensures a chemical called endorphin, the body’s own natural opiate, is sent around the body where and when needed. This is your body’s own pain control mechanism. In fact we are all carrying our own chemistry set around inside of us, in our mind, and we are all quite capable of producing all the chemicals needed to run our bodies the way it was designed to. For example; as you are reading this text your mind is ensuring that your hormones are regulated, that your heart keeps on beating; if you bruise yourself, it heals automatically without thinking or trying your body knows exactly what to do; and women’s bodies ensure that the embryo receives everything needed so that it can develop and grow into a baby. All these things happen automatically without any conscious thought.

Our bodies and minds are capable of so much; perfectly designed and functioning (mostly) as they should and yet we seem to need a lot of assistance to do something that our bodies were originally designed to do. Like Dr. Grantly Dick Read, I wondered has it always been this way? How did our ancestors cope? I started off looking at today’s childbirth classes, particularly those run by local authorities in the UK, and found, that mostly, they have evolved into nothing more than an information group. Informing you of the medical choices that you have, the drugs available to you; explaining what happens if something goes wrong and also giving you information on the services available to you locally after the birth. Some of these courses even suggest that pain is inevitable, a part of your destiny, the price you pay for having a baby.

Yet for centuries Yogi’s in the east and practitioners of other disciplines have been able, to alter their state and perception of sensations, physical awareness. They are able to access an area within their mind and take control of their awareness threshold. It's as if their expectations and beliefs manage to eliminate discomfort.

How can the mind do this?

The breathing techniques used by Yogi’s, in meditation and for self-hypnosis are extremely powerful. By taking control of your breathing, slowing down the speed, taking deep breaths you change your brain waves. Each breath produces chemical changes in your brain and it is possible to achieve a change of physical awareness simply by moving your focus of attention to your breathing.

Most people today do not breathe efficiently and as a result use only a fraction of their lung capacity. When people are stressed or anxious they breathe from their chest taking rapid shallow breaths or worse they hold their breath. Without sufficient oxygen we can become fatigued. You can achieve a change of physical awareness simply by changing your breathing.

I began to wonder how could hypnosis be used to help women in childbirth?

In 2001 I ran my first childbirth class, initially helping a friend with the birth of her second child. The program I put together for her was devised from my studies and over the years this has been the template that I have used with my clients and for this book. Many of my clients have achieved a pain free experience whilst giving birth, whilst others have said that the techniques I taught them enabled them to have the natural birth they desired whilst being able to manage the demands of the birth process giving them a painless experience.

Hypnosis was used for pain control for operations and medical procedures before the discovery of chemical anesthesia; there are people today who have undergone open-heart surgery successfully using hypnosis instead of drugs as an anesthetic. There are also some great advantages to using hypnosis prior to or during an operation; it's said that patients who use hypnosis experience less blood loss and heal quicker. In the Magazine for Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy published in April 2006 Daniel Elkan stated, "The Liege team are discovering that hypno-sedation has some remarkable benefits. For a start patients bleed less. This makes surgery easier to perform)

In 2000 John F. Kihlstrom presented a paper regarding the effectiveness of hypnosis in