Is a Painful Childbirth all in Your Head?

This is a question that is massively poignant to me, and isn't one that I ask lightly. Seasoned medical professionals and women who have experienced painful births are no doubt baring their teeth. Whilst I don't wish to trample on their experience, I am due to give birth in six weeks and I'm hoping that the title to this piece may be truer than we are currently able to anticipate.

Since becoming pregnant I have explored my options. In doing so I discovered 'Hypnobirthing - The Marie Mongan Method' and my education in natural, empowering birthing began. Whilst I've not yet put the theory to the test, I am already a superfan of the possibilities hypnobirthing holds.

Hypnobirthing starts from the premise that the pain commonly felt in childbirth is not a natural side effect of birth but rather it stems from fear. Women in our highly medicalised society are ingrained to believe that birth is frightening and as they go into labour the feeling is often one of terror. This terror may have been welling in them since childhood when stories of their own birth were recounted, or from the horror tales put to them throughout their life. A pregnant woman is often not reassured by her friends gleeful recitations of tearing, cutting, blood loss, vomiting, labors that last a week and the howling screams coming from a woman in the next room.

This understandable, but culturally driven fear naturally provokes the body's fight, flight or freeze response. All physical energy is directed away from the birthing process and a lifetime of anticipating great pain becomes true, surgery occurs, episitiotomies are dosed out, drugs are taken and birth becomes a medical traumatic situation.

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Part 2 - Fear and Pain: A Cultural Picture of Childbirth...and What We Can Do to Change It

As discussed in Part 1 of this post, the experience of childbirth - and particularly the experience of childbirth as inherently painful - is strongly influenced by cultural perceptions and norms. In America, birth is largely defined by the culture-bound idea that pain and childbirth are inextricably linked. Insofar as thoughts and beliefs can impact personal experience, women who are told repeatedly to expect that birth will be grueling, difficult and painful naturally internalize these views (and the fears that result from them) over time and, thus, their birth experience could more likely be a painful one.

Challenging Our Views of Birth
If an understanding of birth as fundamentally painful and unpleasant can lead women to experience it as such, one has to wonder if this rule can be reversed. Are women who view birth as inherently comfortable -something to be embraced rather than resisted - and themselves as calm, confident and capable, less likely to have painful, difficult birth experiences?
This idea - that one can "deprogram" the mind of the cultural mindset that childbirth must be painful - is the basic premise of one particular approach to childbirth education and "pain management:" Hypnosis for Childbirth.

The Hypnotic Mind

Remember how in Part 1 I said that my own birth experience was virtually pain-free, drug-free and without any major medical interventions? In large part, I credit hypnosis for this.

There are two major hypnosis programs/styles that cater to pregnant and birthing women: Hypnobirthing (a.k.a., the Mongan Method) and Hypnobabies. There are also a number of childbirth education methods that utilize components of hypnosis. I used the Hypnobabies program for my pregnancy and birth with Little Man.

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