Better Birth Stories: Antenatal Hypnobirthing Classes

17/12/2024

I know that I'm not the only one who eye-rolled into oblivion when reading the Guardian app this morning... and then the BBC app after.
So, why is this reporting so bloody annoying?
Well, firstly, it's inaccurate. One in four would be 25% and for 25% to be accurate then they would be counting only planned caesareans where the woman did not go into labour prior to the operative birth.
If we add in those births where the woman laboured prior to the casearean then the actual figure is 42%.
So really this is simply lazy journalism.

On top of this it punches down onto women for both their size and age... and really, haven't we done with that yet? It simply isn't evidence based and it is horribly misogynistic.

If these reports worried you because you feel that your wonderful body may be an issue for birth I highly recommend grabbing a copy of 's excellent book 'Plus Size Pregnancy', where she dismantles this kind of nonsense page after page. Getting the right info for birth is so important and clearly our press isn't doing a great job!

And remember, there is absolutely nothing wrong with caesarean birth (my twins and I are very thankful for it) but we do need to be very honest that a 42% rate is pretty scary.

I assure you that we wonderful women are NOT the problem though.

Melanie x

17/09/2024

🤰 Pregnant and ready to start preparing for you birth? 👶
🤰 Want to feel excited, calm and confident?
🤰 Want to learn how to embrace labour, make great decisions throughout your care and have an excellent, helpful and informed birth partner?
Then get on down to our One Day Group Hypnobirthing Class held in SW11.
This course is expert led, Googe 5 Star Rated, award winning and has free parking outside! 😁
Hypnobirthing is a full antenatal education for the mum to be and her birth partner. This in-person course is accompanied by a full online hypnobirthing course & handbook (so you don't have to take notes!) and 7 excellent Hypnobirthing MP3's to ensure that you are absolutely birth ready.
You can find all the details and book here: https://www.betterbirthstories.com/london-hypnobirthing-classes
Prefer private classes in the comfort of your own home? Then we offer that too with availability from October: https://www.betterbirthstories.com/private-hypnobirthing-class

31/05/2024

I’m not very fond of Instagram right now.
😑😑😑🤯

AI is NOT the way to go. I’m getting bored of appealing.
Birth is a normal, physiological event.
People are not harmed by seeing birth.
The people that follow birth accounts are usually interested in birth and unafraid of women’s bodies.
Sigh give it a rest! Please!

23/05/2024

Need some Induction info? In this video I give you my top 6 things that you need to know before you make your decision. I also include my best reads on the subject and a few handy website links.
I do hope that you find it helpful.
Melanie x

Welcome to this induction of labour information video ✨ 6 really helpful things that you need to know before you consider whether induction is right for you....

14/05/2024

Repost:
Birth trauma is in the news this week, and I wanted to put some information together for anyone who wants to learn more, or share resources on this.

We use the term birth trauma to describe the emotional, psychological, or physical distress that occurs for some women before, during, and/or after childbirth.

It’s important to emphasise the ‘not just physical’ element of this.

“A traumatic childbirth experience refers to a woman’s experience of interactions and/or events directly related to childbirth that caused overwhelming distressing emotions and reactions; leading to short and/or long-term negative impacts on a woman’s health and wellbeing.” (Leinweber et al 2022)

Most often, the trauma is the result of the way that women are being treated in systems of maternity care.
But making tweaks to the current system is not the answer.
We have more than thirty years of reports and evidence showing that our current system of maternity care is based on flawed assumptions about the female body, physiology and birth.

Many current practices are based on fear, tradition and convenience, rather than evidence.

Women and babies have better� outcomes and experiences when they have individualised care from a known midwife.

And many of the physical problems that women and babies are experiencing are caused by an excess of unnecessary intervention, which often begins with induction of labour. Others stem from neglect, and from not listening to women.

There are potential solutions, but they aren‘t focused around profit, risk management
and the ‘business model’ approach to care.
That’s why recommendations to merely tweak an already broken system aren‘t the answer.

Especially when recommendations create more paperwork and take staff further away from being able to give good care.
What we need is for more people to read more deeply, and to understand that the problem is complex, and rooted in the approach we take towards women and birth in our modern world.
The solution begins with looking at the evidence that we have known about for decades.
There are hundreds of free blog posts and articles on www.sarawickham.com, which help explain the issues.

13/05/2024

Many of us in the UK find ourselves quite conflicted today following the UK Birth Trauma Inquiry.

We need this discussion about birth trauma and damage being done to women and their families out in the open. But we also know that this is not a new discussion. It’s been going on for years and we’re absolutely sick of it.

Parents are still surprised when I suggest that for a healthy mum and baby, home will probably be the safest place to give birth. And I get it - that flies in the face of everything we’ve been told in film and television. Hospital is where you are saved…

…but what if the current maternity system is actually creating many of the problems that women are constantly having to be saved from?

For sure there will be births that will be safer in a hospital setting but with all of the unnecessary inductions and augmentations taking place, with the burnt out and reduced midwifery work force breaking under the strain how will these births be looked after? And how will any of the recommendations made today have any positive effect at all? How will they offer the gold service that is 'continuity of care' when they can't even reinstate the midwives training bursary nor invest any of the funds required? When the fish rots from the head down how can you fix things for the end user? How do we remind the entire service that birth is a normal physiological event and the more you try to make it work like a machine the more damage you will incur.

So my loves. Get educated.
Come on a course. Use our online course. Join our Facebook group.
Get onto the websites of Dr Sara Wickham, Rachel Reed’s Midwife Thinking, AIMS or Birthrights.
Don’t go into birth under informed and under prepared.
This is so important. It really, really matters.

Melanie x

13/05/2024

There is an important theme across a few of my favourite accounts on Instagram today and it is this.

Sometimes you will be advised to do or take something that you might disagree with. Sometimes you will be advised to do or take something that you will not give a second thought to, until later, when the effects or results of that choice are revealed.

So, please do go and have a look at the posts above on , and . Not everything you’ll be offered will be evidence based and of course actions have consequences... sometimes good, sometimes bad.

The tricky thing in maternity care and medical care is trust.
I trust my GP & doctors to do the best for my family and myself and I trust their training, their knowledge and their opinions. I have been raised by a society that does this.
Now, for the most part they have never let me down and I am hugely grateful to them all.

Until I gave birth for the first time at which point protocols, brick walls and poor advice led to an utter sh*t show.

Because, even if you do know to challenge, question or refuse, that trust can make it very difficult to step up and say no. Even when you have knowledge and statistics on your side it can still feel awful & dangerous to say ‘No’, or ‘I want to wait’, or ‘I don’t think so’, because then the responsibility lies with us and that is not something that we have been brought up to do with medical care.

So, if you feel at any point that you are not being listened to. If you feel that you are losing confidence in your ability to advocate for yourself, please remember this:

You are enough. You are more than enough. You will always be enough. You are able to see the positives among all the negatives. You know that there is risk in life but that with knowledge you can navigate this in the best way for you. You are thoughtful and capable.

Breathe. Don’t be afraid to pause or sit in silence for a while. Let your shoulders drop down to their natural position. Your choices are yours to make, there is no wrong or right way, merely the path that is right for you in that moment.

You are not alone, you will still be cared for, whatever you choose 💕

10/05/2024

Why did we ever accept the idea that we were meant to birth and then just go back to who we were before?

How did that get sold into our culture?
Back into our jeans. Back out with our friends. Back to work. Back to exercise.

There is not a piece of elastic ready to ping you back in time but just with a baby this time.

Birth changes us and that is okay.
We can allow ourselves to be changed by birth.

We’ve become mum. A whole new person. And we’ll remain that new person for the rest of our lives.
Perhaps that is why giving birth is such a powerful event?

💕 Original screen grab courtesy of via - absolutely nailing it 💕

07/05/2024

Or perhaps we could use smoke signals? 🤔
Morse code? -… .. .-. - …

I understand that some people might get a bit upset, while eating their cornflakes, that a baby is roared out into their feed… but social media is so much more than just cat photos now.
It contains an encyclopaedic amount of birth information and knowledge and this will come with actual birth videos of actual women, actually giving birth… and this is a good thing.
So please, those in charge, stop bloody limiting, hiding and deleting birth photos and videos, because there are a lot of women who need and want them.
💕

03/05/2024

THOUGHTS ON ULTRA-RUNNING AND BIRTH

Weird, I know… But hear me out on this one… because there are many similarities….

An ultra run is usually considered anything over marathon distance, which is 26.2 miles. So, this could be 30 miles… 38 miles… 50 miles… 100 miles.. Or more.

What you know when you enter is that it is going to take a long time to finish and until you get going you’re not entirely sure how long. Mini Mars Bars and flat Coke are really helpful.

So, to birth. Well, we have a guide idea of how long a birth will take and we state that this is anything between 8-16 hours in length. Which, as you can clearly see, means that we really don’t know how long any individual birth will take.

It doesn’t matter whether your birth is spontaneous or induced, we basically haven’t got a scooby over how long the process will take to unfold for you.

Eating during labour therefore is a very good idea. Mars Bars and flat Coke may well be a great option. Or ginger biscuits.

During an ultra run you may be sick. You may get the runs (is that just a British description? I mean a VERY upset stomach). During labour you may also be sick and get an upset stomach.

You need to plan and prepare for an ultra. You need to plan and prepare for a birth.

During an ultra you will absolutely doubt yourself at times. You will also ask yourself ‘why on earth did I think that this was a good idea?’ Ditto for birth.

It is going to hurt at times. You will probably doubt that you can finish it at times. How you feel at 20 miles will be different to how you feel at 50 miles. At 30 miles you might not be able to keep any food down… at 75 miles you might be gorging on pizza.

Same for birth. At times it is going to hurt and you will need to focus and push through. You might doubt that you can do this. At one point you may be sick and tired… a little later you might be calm and confident… a little later you may be feeling powerful and slightly euphoric.

So, how about we start to approach birth like we do ultra running.
Knowledge. Training. Self-belief. Kindness. Encouragement. Can do.
Cheering teams and ‘not long now’.

Women are simply remarkable. Strong, resilient and capable.
Perhaps if we treat birthing women like ultra runners, with belief in the fact that they can birth their babies, then women will not only be better prepared for the rigours of labour but will be able to look back on the birth with a huge sense of achievement and pride.

Oh and after an ultra you get a bloody great big medal… sometimes even a belt buckle! Deep joy! After a birth you get to meet the love of your life… which I can confirm, three times over, is pretty bloody excellent too.

So come on, my running buddies… What do you reckon?

Photos 1 & 2 by the wonderful over on Instagram and photo 3 of my shero, Jasmin Paris, upon being the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathons.

01/05/2024

And as if by magic this arrives on my feed!
Brilliant and bang on theme with my last post 😁

It’s not a sprint but a marathon folks 😊💕💕

Repost from
•
Talk about recorded delivery 📮

📷: RG
-

29/04/2024

It's Monday! And I have a new hypnosis for birth for you.
This is longer than a usual meditation and I suggest that you listen to it each night as you go to sleep for the best benefits.
However you choose to birth, however knowledgeable you are or well supported you will be.. adding a dose of self-confidence will always be super helpful.
Do let me know how you get on. Melanie xx
Head on over to the YouTube channel:

It's time to believe in yourself, your body and your choices with this Hypnobirthing hypnosis. Feel confident and positive about your labour and your birth.F...