Today has been an extremely exciting day for me, as after months of discussions with Doula's, Midwives and other birth care providers, we have finally launched The Psychology of Giving Birth Affiliate Program.

This program brings together Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Hypnotherapy, Neuro Linguistic Programming and Human Givens to deliver a targeted and fully downloadable antenatal course, focusing specifically on the psychology rather than the biology of birth. The affiliate program gives its members all of the information they need to integrate it within the services they currently offer which will not only differentiate themselves from competitors, but will also of course result in more calm and gentle births.

This affiliate program is pretty unique in that it's limited to only 100 members. This enables me to keep in regular contact with everyone as well as focus on working together as a team to improve the program together. As a member you receive the theory behind the program and additional information about each of the techniques used, you also get full access to a forum where you can talk about how you can integrate it within your business, raise any technical questions, chat to other affiliates, as well as telling me about anything you think should be added, changed or removed.

For those of you already signed up I truly look forward to working with you. To those of you thinking about joining the team, as I mentioned the numbers are limited, so sign up here now to avoid disappointment!

Yours for calmer births, more often,

Yesterday I went to watch a local event on Hove seafront. It was the annual Superhero 10KM race where everyone dresses up as a recognised superhero. (See this link for more information Superhuman Effort Breaks World Record )

As I was standing there it got me wondering about whether the NLP technique of "standing in someone's shoes" to improve your success in something, would result in the runners taking on elements of the superhero they were dressed up as, and whether this would actually impact their run time.

For example, would the Hulk be slowed down and more lumbering, would Spiderman feel as though he were swinging from lampost to lampost to make him quicker and would Superman run his all time best? I actually think the Silver Surfer won and as it was torrential rain at the start, maybe there is something in it!

Anyway, why am I posting this on a birthing blog you may ask? With any activity there are people who excel at them and people who don't do so well. The NLP technique I mentioned of imagining as though you were standing in someone's shoes applies just as much to birth as it does to say public speaking. If you were to speak in public and imagine you were Barack Obama, Steve Jobs or Richard Branson then this would have a huge impact on your performance. So, if whilst in labour you take on the persona of Naolí Vinaver Lopez from the Birth Day DVD (see sidebar), or maybe of someone close to you who has told you of a great birth experience, then standing in their shoes will enable you to tap into the skills they used.

This technique involves firstly finding someone who is a role model for the particular behaviour. Then you try on their body language, how they hold themselves, how they walk, how they talk, see how it feels to be them and how just by stepping into their shoes, it has an impact on you. This exercise can be done in a mirror, physically pretending to try on a coat/shoes/whatever of the role model and becoming them as they do. This technique can be seen quite easily when you know someone who wears a uniform for their work. Perhaps you know someone who is a policeman or policewoman or a traffic warden?

So why not consider who your birthing superhero might be and try their suit on for size…?

Take care… and remember…"I have the power!!!" (He-Man was a particular favourite of mine - just wish I'd thought of shouting it out whilst in labour!)

It was the middle of the day when Shirley started to go into labour. She had already transferred to the birth unit where she was to give birth; it was comfortable and familiar to her. As labour progressed she chose to walk around and get into whatever position she needed to in order to help the birth process. She was left alone so she could listen to her body and baby and do whatever she needed to birth calmly and gently.

People looked on in awe of her and what they were seeing, but nobody intervened in any way, she was completely protected in her birth environment. She felt safe, secure and in control. As the moment of birth came closer, she knew she needed to change positions and she was completely free to do so. There were no monitors, no noisy machines and no white coats to be seen. There were no examinations, no dilation cm's to be achieved within a set time frame, labour just progressed exactly as it needed to.

She intuitively knew how to breath her baby down and there was no forced pushing and absolutely no sounds of discomfort. She birthed her baby extremely gently; a beautiful natural birth. The baby stayed with her mum and they bonded. There was no cleaning or wiping, just mum and baby sharing that beautiful unique moment.

You might think that this wasn’t typical of births, however for Shirley and her friends and family at Combes Farm this is a regular experience. Now you've read the story, why not watch the birth video and see for yourself. I'm sure you'll agree that we can learn so many things from watching calm, gentle, natural births, even when the circumstances are not quite what you first perceived.

Yours for calmer births, more often,

Throughout pregnancy the body is under additional pressure from the extra weight you will be carrying, exercise will help build and maintain muscle tone, strength and stamina to help you enjoy your pregnancy more. Exercise can also make it easier to regain pre-pregnancy fitness levels after the birth, and can help offset constipation, tiredness and circulation problems. Remember as well that exercise produces our best friend in labour, endorphins, so it makes you feel good too.

Exercising while you are pregnant can also help you significantly during labour. If there's one thing that I would change about my birth experience, it's that I would have worked on my leg muscles much more than I did. During labour your body will tell you to get into positions which enable the quickest and safest birth, some of these positions you may never have spent much time in and certainly for me, I had never tried kneeling or squatting for five hours before. This resulted in severe leg shake during labour and a couple of days where my legs ached more than any other part of my body. I spent the majority of my birth day on a birthing ball so I would have benefited greatly from taking the time out during my pregnancy to do some birthing ball exercises.

I was therefore really excited when Mark & Martin from Newborn Fitness contacted me about working with them to provide a bonus for their new e-book The Essential Exercise and Birthball Handbook. I have read a review copy of the book and I can tell you that this is something I wished I had when I was pregnant. The e-book is packed full of information and advice and in it you will discover:

• Tons of easy top tips for birthing ball exercises during pregnancy.
• All the latest pregnancy exercise safety guidelines and contra-indications.
• More than 100 full colour images with easy to follow instructions.
• Lots of safe and fun ball exercises for a fit and healthy pregnancy.
• Masses of postnatal ball exercises you'll love doing with your baby!
• Advanced ball routines for more great results after the postnatal period.
• Our 8 super secrets for losing your baby weight FAST!

Who wouldn't want to know all of that? The beauty of The Essential Exercise and Birthball Handbook is that you can use it after your baby is born and continue to benefit from the good work you have started while you were pregnant. I may very well go and dust off my old birthing ball after all :-)

This e-book is great value at only $27 and it comes with 4 great bonuses, one of which is created by me. I have put together a motivation hypnosis download for you to listen to that will help you motivate yourself to get into those good habits and start benefiting from this e-book as soon as early in your pregnancy as you can. Once you have purchased the e-book you will be given a link to a special page on this site where you can access your download immediately.

I thought of the motivation download because I know from my own pregnancy that it is only natural to feel some lack of motivation around exercising when you're pregnant, especially if you've had it tough during your first trimester. The only exercise I managed to do during that time was to get myself out of bed and that was pretty difficult at times, but, if you're having a great first trimester and for those who aren’t, when your energy does come back, exercise can make a big difference to how you feel - throughout pregnancy, it will help you during labour and it will help you gain back your pregnancy body once you've had the baby too.

I can't recommend this book enough so go grab a copy of the e-book and the bonuses, get yourself a good birthing ball and let me know how you feel when you start benefitting from the birthing ball exercises you will be doing now and after your birth.

Yours for calmer births, more often,

As mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, there's a lot of focus about women achieving a natural birth. This post led me further down this road to consider what actually is a natural birth?

Many people would say for example that it's not natural when drugs are utilised, however both in my Programme and when I work with people on a one to one basis I share with them how they can maximise their endorphins during labour, which is a drug far more powerful than morphine. If they learn these techniques, is that natural? For those undertaking HypnoBirthing or HypnoBabies classes, how natural is hypnosis in childbirth? Many would say its a completely natural state which everyone enters, others would classify it as unnatural and inappropriate for birth.

Now lets look at greater intervention, Ceasearians for example are used when it is considered that a baby is in distress or where a vaginal birth is not possible. This level of intervention is generally considered as not a natural birth, however Nile crocodiles* may disagaree. If a Nile hatchling is unable to hatch itself or is in distress, the mother or father (there are no nearby obstetricians) will hear the high-pitched chirping and will open the nest, pick up the egg in their mouth, and roll it between their tongue and the upper palate of their mouth to help crack the shell, and release their offspring. Ask a crocodile whether they have natural births if you dare and I'm sure they would say they all are!

As animals evolve it is natural for new ways to secure the safe birth of our offspring. I'm sure there would have been a time when crocodiles didn’t crack open their eggs and then when they did, this was new and different to them. How different is it for another human to help a baby be born by similar means? We can so easily place women in boxes determined by what type of birth they had, maybe using different criteria would bring us more interesting results. When I'm reviewing the impact of my Programme on a birth, the key criteria for me isnt whether she had gas and air, an epidural or a Cesarean, some of the key measures I use are:

• Did mum and birth companion feel in control of their birth?
• Was the birth as calm and gentle as possible?
• Was mum relaxed throughout the birth?
• Did mum feel empowered after the birth?

What criteria do you use?

I didn’t create this post to give the answers, only to reframe the sometimes limiting views of what something is and what something isn't. Rather than this being so black and white, lets allow ourselves to be comfortable in the grey and continue to make a difference to the things which really matter to mum and baby.

Juliet

* Interestingly the ancient god of crocodiles (Sobek) was first mentioned in the Pyramid Texts for laying his eggs on the bank of the waters and starting the creation process. He was recognised as the god who created the Nile, a god of fertility and rebirth, as well as the symbolic strength of the ruler of Egypt.