Product Description

"Move over, Lamaze. HypnoBirthers say their form of deep relaxation takes the panting and pain out of labor."
-Time Magazine

HypnoBirthing®: A Celebration of Life - with Birth Exercise CD Included!

Childbirth is not something to be feared; it is a natural expression of life. With HypnoBirthing, your pregnancy and childbirth will become the gentle, life-affirming process it was meant to be.

In this easy-to-understand guide, HypnoBirthing founder Marie Mongan explodes the myth of pain as a natural accompaniment to birth. She proves through sound medical information that it is not our bodies but our culture that has made childbirth a moment of anguish, and that when we release the fear of birth, a fear that is keeping our bodies tense and closed, we will also release the pain.

HypnoBirthing is nature, not manipulation. It relaxes the mind in order to let the body work as it is designed. The HypnoBirthing exercises—positive thinking, relaxation, visualization, breathing and physical preparation—will lead to a happy and comfortable pregnancy, even if you are currently unsure of an intervention-free birth. Your confidence, trust and happy anticipation will in turn lead to the peaceful, fulfilling and bonding birth that is your right as a mother.

More than 10,000 happy couples have had their lives changed for the better by HypnoBirthing. More than 500 news organizations—including Good Morning America, The Today Show, Dateline, The Richard & Judy Show, Time, Newsweek, Parenting and Better Homes & Gardens—have joined the movement for better birthing.

Why is HypnoBirthing changing the way the world gives birth? That's simple. Because it works.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4861 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 326 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780757302664
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Marie Mongan, M.Ed., M.Hy., is a life-long educator, former college dean, clinical hypnotherapist, and Director of the Hypnobirthing Institute. She is the recipient of the 1995 National Guild of Hypnotists President's Award and received the coveted Charles Tebbetts Award in 2000 for the recognition she has brought to hypnotherapy. Ms. Mongan lives in New Hampshire, but spends much of her time on the road training new instructors in the techniques of hypnobirthing. She is the mother of four adult children, all born using the techniques upon which hypnobirthing is based.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preparing women for birthing by educating them in the true physiology of labor was the backbone of Dick-ReadÆs work. For many women who were preparing for natural birthing in the 1950s, that appeal to their intellect was enough to make them break with traditional attitudes and bring their children into the world unmedicated and alert. It was simpler then. Most babies came into the world with the assistance of the family doctor, a person who was probably known to the birthing mother since she, herself, was a child. While women did not expect that birth would be a picnic, they were not terrified of the experience, and families of three or four children were not uncommon. Free of debilitating fear, they often were able to bring their babies to crowning with little fuss, and were anesthetized only in time for the doctor to arrive and extract the baby with forceps. Those who subscribed to the philosophy of natural birth were free of fear, free of anesthesia and, for the most part, free of the discomfort of labor.

If you are like most pregnant women, you will find that as you move through these days and months of pregnancy, you will be met with a whole new set of feelings, anxieties, doubts, questions, decisions and tasks that you never had to consider before. Some of these will center on your pregnancy, labor and birthing, but there may be more that will cause you to look at the many transformational experiences that bringing a baby into your life will present. This is natural. As you prepare your mind and body for your babyÆs birth, you will want to be ready in this regard alsoùfree of any fears, reservations or limiting thoughts.

ItÆs helpful for both you and your partner to be able to identify feelings, experiences or recollections that may be painful or hurtful, thus limiting your ability to approach birthing free of harmful emotions. Take a look at those emotions that may foster a feeling of uneasiness, meet them head-on and release any conflict you may be harboring (consciously or subconsciously) because of them. Once you have been able to work through and resolve lingering emotions, limiting thoughts, experiences or memories that could stand in the way of an easy birthing, you will have a better sense of your own ability to approach the birth of your baby with trust and confidence.

Thoroughly search your inner feelings to discover the areas that you feel very confident about and those that you need to work through so that you can resolve any fears or misgivings that you are holding. Brushing aside matters that concern you may help you to get through your pregnancy, but these concerns can easily surface as fears when you are in labor, and they can affect the course of your labor. You will want to take advantage of the opportunity to talk with your partner, your birthing companion or a good friend who can help you explore and discuss any thoughts that could be troubling you.

Your HypnoBirthing practitioner will help you inventory and identify those areas of your life that could possibly serve as obstacles. The practitioner will help you work with fear-release sessions in class. If you still feel you need some assistance in releasing lingering fears after you do the sessions in class and talk with your partner and friends, ask your practitioner for a private session. If you are not able to work with a trained practitioner, you may find it helpful to seek the counsel of a hypnotherapist to do release work with you. A fear release hypnotherapy session is truly one of the most effective ways of eliminating toxic emotions.

Listed below are just a few areas of concern to pregnant women that surfaced in the early nineties as a result of Dr. Louis Mehl-MadronnaÆs study on turning breech babies with hypnosis. Your own inventory may reveal other issues that you would like to resolve.

• Your own birthùWhat stories have you heard about your own birth? Are they positive and encouraging, or negative and frightening? Do you feel that you will duplicate your motherÆs labor? If what youÆve been told is less than encouraging, you might want to work on establishing that you are not your mother, and this is not her pregnancy. You are an entirely different person at a different time and under different circumstances.
• OthersÆ birth storiesùHave you been surrounded with stories of joyful birthing, or have family members impressed upon you ôfamily patternsö of long labors, back labor, severe pain and medical intervention? Again, you do not need to assume the experiences of the people who are relating these stories. There is no reason to believe that you will birth as they did. Work at checking those kinds of thoughts so that you donÆt bring their past baggage into your birthing.
• Previous laborsùHas your own experience with labor been easy and satisfying, or are you carrying recollections of an arduous ordeal? If you had a less than satisfying labor, take hope in the fact that you are better prepared for an easier birth this time, and you now can approach birthing with more knowledge and planning than you did before. Make your HypnoBirthing skills work for you, and get rid of the memories of the previous birth or births.

¬2004. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Hypnobirthing:The breakthrough natural approach to safer, easier, more comfortable birthing - The Mongan Method, 3rd Edition Marie Mongan, M.Ed., M.Hy. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.

Customer Reviews

The perfect gift for any pregnant woman!
It is now three days since I gave birth to my first baby, a beautiful 9lb girl. In my last few weeks of pregnancy I met a neighbor who insisted I read this book as soon as I could. She described the hypnobirthing philosophy of birth with no pain or fear and how she had used it successfully with her third child. I was skeptical that it could help me much because I had heard that first babies were more difficult to deliver than second or third babies, and I thought maybe her success was due to her previous experiences with labor. Regardless, I decided to buy the book. When it arrived a few days later I skimmed through it and attempted some of the breathing techniques. I found them very difficult because my lung capacity at 9 months pregnant was pretty low. The accompanying CD, however, was very easy to use and I got sort-of addicted to it (only the relaxation part) because it helped me get back to sleep when I woke up at 4am every morning. It taught me to relax my entire body instantly, with the idea that this could help me through contractions. It also improved my breathing technique somewhat. When labor came I was able to use my relaxation skills to work through early, active, and transition labor stages with relatively little pain and a strong sense of control over my body. I was happy and thought I would get through everything fine until the pushing stage. I had not read or practiced any hypnobirthing techniques for pushing and, unfortunately relaxation was not an option. My pushing was intensely difficult and there was most certainly pain and fear. I believe, however, that had I discovered hypnobirthing earlier and practiced all the breathing techniques, I may have had an easier time. Even though my pushing stage was hard, I didn't tear and I didn't require any medication, stiches, or other interventions. I plan to recommend hypnobirthing to all my pregnant friends early in their pregnancies, based on my strongly positive experience and will use it from the get go myself if I am ever pregnant again.

Wonderful Book
I love the new edition of this book. It is far more interesting, entertaining and complete than the last edition. I especially like Dr. Lorne Campbell's letter at the beginning of the book which details how he went from a 25% c-section rate to a 1% (yes - 1%- that is not a typo) c-section rate after making some changes with his practice. The most major change he made of course was using HypnoBirthing.

Reading this book will be a very effective way of getting rid of any fear that you may have of childbirth. The first edition of this book completely changed my life and my children truly owe their lives to it. Before this book there was no way I would have ever considered getting preganant or giving birth. I was too afraid of birth.

So what will you learn? I can't do it justice in this review. It isn't only about self-hypnosis. That is only a small part of the HypnoBirthing classes and book. You will learn other tools like breathing (that actually works during birth), birth plans, laws of the mind, exercises, choosing a caregiver, how to avoid artifical inductions, c-section, nutrition, and much more.

The book also comes with a Hypnosis for Childbirth CD.

Yes, I have given birth using this method. My daughter is now three and I had almost no discomfort during birth. I love giving birth now. By the way, I also used the hypnosis technique's at this dentist. I had a several fillings that had to be re-done. I only used hypnosis and had no pain.

Sheri Menelli, speaker, author, childbirth educator, mother

I'm Sold
As opposed to Henci Goer's "Thinking Woman's Guide to Better Birth", which scares you into wanting a natural birth by making pretty much all intervention sound ghoulish and dangerous, this book makes you want a natural birth because of the beautiful experience that the author describes when talking about her own hypnobirth and the other births that she's been involved in. I can only speak for myself but I respond far better to positive motivation.

The philosophy behind this method and the book makes good sense: women have been having babies for thousands of years, our bodies are designed to do it, and a lot of the pain in labor comes from being conditioned to be afraid of it. You get scared, you tense up, and it hurts. When I went to my obstetrician today, I asked her what natural birth method has been the best in her experience, and she said that all her hypnobirths have been "beautiful". What can I say? I'm sold. I'm having a hypnobaby!