Hypnobabies Review

While helping me to create a birth plan, my doula suggested I consider hypnosis as part of my pain management plan. She said the Hypnobabies course was ... I don't recall the word: I think she said the course was the only birth hypnosis class that DONA accepts for continuing education credit, or something along those lines, but that I should look at a bunch of different classes and pick what works for me.

I did a bunch of reading and decided the HB was right for me. I can't remember why, but I think it was at least partly because the course helps to teach you to do hypnosis while being up and moving around. The others focused on hypnosis and delivery in the on your back position as far as I could tell.

So, I went to the HB website, put out about USD$200 for the self study course and overnight shipping, and started studying away. This review is just based on my experience with my purchase: I didn't get any free stuff from the good folks at HB.

As the stalwart readers who made it through our birth story know, I did rely on the HB CDs during labor, especially some of the middle part that was long and sometimes painful. By the time I had the epidural, I had kind of given up and had figured I was going off for a surgical birth anyway, so I wasn't really trying anymore.

During labor, it was great to have had that training in managing how my brain processed the feelings of labor, and for that I'm very thankful.

However, what was especially great for me, and the main reason I'd recommend the HB course to any pregnant lady I meet is the Pregnancy Affirmations recording. I am normally a person who worries. Sometimes I literally lose sleep while worrying about stuff: ironically, I will lie awake worrying at night about oversleeping and missing a flight. Somehow missing a flight is an earth-shattering catastrophe in my mind. I worry about money, my family, my health, my family's health.. etc.

That affirmation CD helped me be the most relaxed, happy pregnant lady you'd ever want to see. I figured pretty much everything was normal and healthy. During my slightly hilarious prenatal class at the birth center, everyone else always seemed so nervous. I'm guessing it's because I had repeating over and over in my iPod that everything's fine and wonderful.

I loved how useful the CDs were for me. What I didn't love:

• the name Hypnobabies. Who came up with that? I was embarrassed to talk about it. I kept picturing zombie babies. Weird.
• the book that came along with the CDs which purported to be the only prenatal class one would need. Most of it focused on preparing for birth, which was great, but I felt like when the author veered out into other topics, their far out man started showing. The author has some pretty wacky ideas about prenatal health: grain of salt here readers! And it was desperately badly edited: spelling and grammatical errors as far as the eye could see.

It just occurred to me that I've not posted about my prenatal class, the one I had to endure every other Wednesday afternoon in order to give birth there. And then get kicked out anyway. I must share that with you all at some point.

Has anyone else tried self hypnosis for birth or anything else? Any thoughts on the difference between hypnosis and mediation? I've never been clear on what distinguishes them.

The Worried Pregnant Tourist in Barbados

I wasn’t sure what to expect from my most recent trip to Barbados. We’d selected it as our destination because we used to live there, and figured it would be both relaxing, and handy to have existing relationships with doctors, should I need one.

My midwife gave me a complete copy of all of my medical records since I started seeing her practice, to bring my OBGYN in Barbados up to date, should I need to see her. I bought travelers’ medical insurance for the first time in my life, though after paying for it, I read the longish list of exclusions and found that maternity care and childbirth are excluded. Rats.

I worried about staying regular and whether I’d be able to find prune juice at the grocery store there, so I bought some bags of dried prunes and apricots to be on the safe side.

A colleague got me worried about sunburn, saying pregnant ladies are more susceptible to sunburn than normal, so I bought some children’s SPF 50 sun block – opted for the children’s type, hoping it would have fewer weird chemicals. This is in addition to the lovely natural sun block product I’d purchased at Lush, which they say is approximately SPF 15.

I remembered our hotel room from last year where we were on the third floor with no elevator, and figured that would be hopeless, or rather, I would be hopeless trying to climb two flights of stairs right now. I called the hotel a month before we arrived and requested a room on the ground or second floor.

I have read that mosquitoes are particularly drawn to pregnant ladies, so I worried about contracting dengue fever again (you can get it up to four times) and considered buying insect repellent, but didn’t find any citronella based products before I left. I don’t use DEET based stuff under normal circumstances, and really don’t want to while pregnant.

In the last days before departure and the first few days of the trip, I got myself completely worked up and convinced that I was going to go into labour while in Barbados. Happily, that turned out to be wrong and I’m still quite pregnant.

Here are my lessons learned for traveling to the Caribbean while pregnant:

• It doesn’t matter how much your traveling companion loves to have the window seat, you really need to get an aisle seat. This is not just for you to be able to get up and down to the bathroom frequently, but also for some shoulder and arm rest space: on one of the longer flights, I was stuck between my husband and a larger guy. I thought my back was going to go into spasm, I was so uncomfortable.
  
• They sell prune juice in the large grocery stores, just not the little touristy ones.
  
• The guy selling papayas out of the back of a van is also your friend: ask him for a large, very ripe one and make a basic little fruit salad with lime and brown sugar in the hotel. It will keep for days in the fridge and help with the digestion.
  
• Mosquitoes still prefer my husband (poor guy!) to me. I don’t think I got bitten once.
  
• The SPF 50 was pretty effective, but so was the stuff from Lush. I wore a hat and stayed out of the sun from 11 am to 3 pm and only got a bit singed – mostly got brown. Someone to whom I’m married doesn’t think he needs sun block or a hat, and he’s peeling now. And a lot browner than me.
  
• People are nice to pregnant ladies everywhere I go. Except those that aren’t, but they’re outnumbered. I got the best customer service I have ever received in Barbados on this trip. Even the cashiers at Big B’s grocery store were sweet to me, and that’s a minor miracle.
  
• Gobsmacked is kind of a wacky thing to say when explaining your reaction to hearing that someone is pregnant, but in a funny, irreverent way that I like.
  

So that’s what I learned on vacation in Barbados. I spent loads of time listening to the Hypnobabies recordings... or in some deep state of hypnosis where I snored, and listened to them at any rate... We had a lovely time, visited with many old friends, enjoyed perfect weather and hope to be back again soon!

UPDATE: forgot to link to the photos on Flickr. All better now.

Belly photos and a bit of love for The Parent's Journal

Here I am with my 30 weeks pregnant belly. It's still at a size which is fun, rather than too big... but I can see how it's going to get too big before it's over. I'm really enjoying the attention and enthusiasm from friends, family and strangers. The belly touching by strangers still hasn't manifested for the most part.

I have a feeling that I send a kind of standoffish vibe which only the most effusively affectionate are likely to overcome and decide they should touch me anyway. I don't intentionally cultivate this, it's just the way I roll. (Did I really say that? Funny thing is I just imagined my daughter reading this as a twelve year old, cringing at the old fashioned idioms I use(d). Sorry dear!)

I've been listening to some quality content on the iPod these days. I'll talk about hypnobabies another day - today is the day I want to give some love to The Parent's Journal. It's a radio show on NPR which on my affiliate is on at a crazy time on Saturday mornings... so I like to load their podcast onto my iPod and listen to it in the afternoons when I'm walking home from work. 

Each week, the host, Bobbi Conner, interviews a series of parents, pediatric or obstetric health practitioners and others with interest and expertise in child rearing. Her interviewees largely seem to have written books and I suspect the show is sort of a stop on the book tour for many. However, I really like what a lot of them have to say. 

Many seem to have a fairly relaxed view of parenting - often somewhat in line with Lenore Skenazy is trying to convey with her Free Range Kids movement. I listen to it all, topics ranging from raising resilient toddlers, to childbirth options, to being a good parent during divorce. Like a lot of other things, I take it all in, and spit out the stuff I think is hokum, such as the folks who say that eating peanuts during pregnancy will cause a peanut allergy in the child. 

The show covers a wide range of topics and I find each segment usually has something that might be worth filing away for the future.  Sometimes when Conner is interviewing someone over the phone, I find the audio frustrating to listen to on my headphones. Her voice ends up being a bit too loud and the interviewee's voice a bit too soft. But that's really my only complaint. It's a great source of ideas and things to think about. 

Of course, when it comes to applying these suggestions to reality, we'll see how it goes...