I am a Mother of five children, a qualified Nurse, Midwife, Health Visitor and Hypnotherapist.

All my children were born at home between 1984 and 1996, using hypnosis for childbirth techniques. I was blown away by the power of those techniques then, but I believe the HypnoBirthing® programme is even more effective.

I qualified as a Midwife in 1983 and as a Hypnotherapist in 1989. During this time, I worked part time in private practice teaching hypnosis for childbirth to individual couples whilst working as an NHS midwife in hospital and community settings in Sheffield.

I left paid work to be a fulltime mother and home educator in 1992. Then I spent ten (mostly!) wonderful years at home with the children.

I returned to midwifery practice in 2002.

I loved returning to midwifery but continued to be saddened by the high intervention and complication rate. I used my hypnosis techniques to help many women, both by teaching deep relaxation ante-natally and by using the techniques directly with a woman in labour to help her relax. The results were often astonishing; reducing pain, reducing intervention and speeding up labour.

I knew it worked, and many couples knew it worked but I felt frustrated not having facts and figures to back up my findings. Then I discovered HypnoBirthing. HypnoBirthing® was developed by Marie Mongan, who for over twenty years has been refining and developing this hugely successful programme. Take a look at the website www.hypnobirthing.co.uk and see how Marie's programme has gathered lots of evidence of the power of HypnoBirthing.

Marie's programme means a safer, calmer and easier birth is not only possible but very likely. 

HypnoBirthing® has helped over 10,000 couples over the years.

It continues to be a powerful way to regain your natural joyful instincts about the wonderful experience of the birth of your child.

When  I was pregnant with my first child, in 1984, I was working as a midwife in Sheffield. I was already interested in natural childbirth and had attended and assisted at some home confinements, which were wonderful. I always vowed I would have my babies at home and wanted to avoid an epidural and forcep delivery and other intervention. However, once I was pregnant, I was scared about having my own baby. I wondered if I could cope. I wondered if I was being naive, thinking I would be alright at home. Would I end up begging for an epidural!!

I had seen and supported hundreds of women giving birth by this time and many had had complications. When I mentioned home birth to my GP he laughed and said no I couldn't have one with my first baby!! Fortunately I knew differently and had colleagues at work who supported my decision. Once I was accepted by another doctor, who 'did' home confinements, I started to feel more positive about it all. I had a lovely midwife, who although not very experienced in home births was happy to look after me.

Nevertheless as the date got closer I began to have second thoughts. How would I cope? Was I kidding myself that I could relax and be calm enough to do what my body was designed to do? I remembered that lots of other women I cared for had thought the same and ended up with epidurals...and lots of other intervention. Looking back on the whole pregnancy now, I think I began to get tense about the birth around 20 weeks and was becoming determined to stay at home so I couldn't be interfered with. I was defiant and pretty tense really. THANK GOODNESS I came across hypnosis. It literally changed my life.

I was fortunate enough to find an enlightened GP who was interested in hypnosis and wanted a 'guinea pig' to test out how well it worked in labour. I was delighted. It immediately felt right. It was a very basic form of hypnosis, not anyway near as sophisticated as HypnoBirthing, but it started the ball rolling for me. I soon felt prepared for the birth, confident that I would manage fine at home and beginning to look forward to it all, instead of feeling panicky. It made a crucial difference, I am sure with my first birth. 

I had a very quick and easy, first half of labour. I started in the night about 1am and, dozed on and off til morning, wanting my midwife to get a good sleep before I woke her, to tell her I was starting. At 9am, she came and examined me. I was 5 cms dilated (half way there!) and feeling relaxed and coping really well. However after that  things changed a bit and it is only looking back now that I really understand what happened. I should have carried on doing what I was doing, relaxing and hypnotising myself.

However my polite, (non instinctive) side took over. I was coping fine and feeling relaxed so I wanted to look after the midwife and make sure she had a drink etc and I wanted to let my mum know I was in labour as she said she wanted to know. She was abroad, so I had to have a chat with her. She was worried, (about me being at home) so I had to reassure her!. My friend wanted to be there for the birth, so I felt I had to ring her......by the time I finished doing all this, I was out of hypnosis and into behaving how I had seen many others behave in labour....in pain. Never mind, I thought, it won't be long now........

Unfortunately, unlike HypnoBirthing, my lessons in hypnosis had been only for me, not my husband, I didn't have anyone to tell me what I was doing wrong. I had been expecting little pain, and a natural easy build up to the birth and that happened until I was 'dehypnotised.' Jaak, my husband says now he should have told me to go into another room and stay by myself and get into hypnosis. (I didn't have any tapes either, unlike HypnoBirthing) But he didn't know what to advise and I wasn't thinking straight. It is natural when a woman is in pain, for people to try to help, from the outside...."shall I rub your back," "shall I run you a bath," "what about trying the entonox?", rather than reminding me that my body knew what it was doing, if I could only relax and go within.

Anyway I managed to progress, slowly, and I did relax for some of the time, but it took a while and I finally had my beautiful son Steven at 7.05 in the evening. I KNOW it took that long because I was tense, not relaxed. 

Very inadvisedly, but understandably, I kept 'popping into', (what we call in HypnoBirthing,) the 'Emergency room'. You will learn more about the physiology of all this in the classes. But a brief explanation of physiology may make what was happening clearer.

An exerpt from the HypnoBirthing course explains:

The Emergency Room "The role of the sympathetic nervous system, is to put the body on alert. It is the body's defence mechanism. It instantly creates the "fight or flight response." It does things like causing the pupils to dilate, the heart to pound, the body to startle, and, in general, it causes the body to prepare to deal with emergencies and life-threatening situations. It speeds up the flow of blood flow to the muscles that are needed to protect you. (And away from those organs not needed to defend yourself). Because it causes us to exist in an alert state, we should live only 2 to 5 percent of our lives in the 'Emergency Room.' according to HypnoBirthing philosopy.

The uterus is not designated a defence organ, so when fear mounts, constricting hormones--catecholamine-are secreted, the flow of blood is directed to those muscles that usually take part in the "fight or flight" response, and the muscles of the uterus are deprived of oxygenated blood that is so essential to their working effectively. Now, instead of working in harmony as they were designed, the upper and lower muscles of the uterus work in opposition, and pain is created.

On the other hand, the parasympathetic system, which we call the 'Healing Room', is designed to keep the body and mind in harmony and in balance. It maintains the body functions in a state of calm, slowing the heart rate, reducing stimulation, slowing the firing of harmful neuropeptides, and producing endorphins, nature's painkillers. We should live 95 to 98 percent of our lives in the healing room, restoring and maintaining our body functions in a normal state.

'The Healing Room' is the ideal place to be during birth. It allows all physiological functions to happen normally.

From the time that a girl child in our society is young, but old enough to understand; the messages surrounding birth that she receives and the warnings that her nervous system processes are pretty much the same. "Be afraid." Instead of learning to respect the wonders of her body and the magnificent destiny of her womanhood, she becomes programmed with fear.

When she becomes pregnant, the messages are louder, more frequent, and more threatening; and she begins to spend more and more time in the Emergency Room as the fear mounts. True to the laws of the mind, for each and every one of those threatening thoughts, a chemical and physiological response occurs within the body.

Through education and hypnosis, in HypnoBirthing, we are able to help our mothers to understand the effect that living in the Emergency Room has upon birth; and we are further able to assist them in conditioning their minds and bodies so that they remain in the calm and tranquillity of the Healing Room. At HypnoBirthing, we help them to release their fears and to develop skill and trust in their own ability to remain relaxed. Most importantly, we help them learn to appreciate birthing as a truly natural function, and with this learning comes the confidence to call upon their own natural birthing instincts for easier and more comfortable birth." 

 I knew from the birth of my first son that I wanted to share the power of hypnosis for childbirth with other mothers. 

Over the past twenty five years that is what I have done. I have refined and improved on my own practice and then I discovered HypnoBirthing.  

It is so exciting now that HypnoBirthing is gaining credibility and there are statistics to show how effective the system is. Do explore the HypnoBirthing sites www.hypnobirthing.co.uk and www.hypnobirthing.com for more information on the research that has now been compiled.