As part of our post indoctrination life, I say "our" cause Ashlee found this one, we've come across things as it pertains to childbirthing. One of those things that is not mainstream and not really anti-indoctrination is hypnobabies.
And let me clarify that when I say "really" cause sometimes I feel like indoctrination is not only purposely teaching false/misleading things to people, but also purposely not teaching them things they ought to know about.
The other day I mentioned we were doing this class to my mom and she had a "oh..." kinda moment. That "oh" is something we all know/think when we think of hypnosis. It is the thought of people up on a stage crowing like a chicken and taking all their clothes off and doing crazy/funny things that they can't control or that they're doing just to be funny or "you're getting very sleepy".
Hypnosis is "a special psychological state with certain physiological attributes, resembling sleep only superficially and marked by a functioning of the individual at a level of awareness other than the ordinary conscious state."
A couple easy examples of this are watching TV and driving. Yup. After two minutes of watching TV your brain waves switch from Alpha to Beta waves. You know hypnosis TV watching when you see...the mouth open and blankly staring unblinking at the TV screen. Time flies by while you watch. Voila! You were hypnotized.
As for driving, some call it highway hypnosis. Basically its where you're on auto pilot and you get to your destination and you don't remember hardly anything of driving. This happened to me all the time when I'd drive back on those long drives from Utah to Idaho to go to school. Bam hypnosis.
Really Hypnobabies, and hypnosis in general, is just getting deeply relaxed. May sound too simplistic, but its true. Hypnomoms have faster and easier births.
The class is great cause they teach you about all these things you had no idea about. For example at the turn of the 20th century, i.e. circa 1900, almost all babies were born at home and with the assistance of a midwife. I want to say the percentage was like 97% at home with a midwife to 3% at a hospital. That percentage now has completely flipped.
For disclosure we are having our child at a birth center run by midwives and we gladly embrace the blessing to have a hospital right down the street should there be an emergency and we need to transfer.
What I really love about the class is the focus on healthy thinking and addressing the cultural "scariness" of having a baby naturally and not in a hospital. I'll be honest I felt like every woman was doomed to a pain and torture inconceivable to the human mind while having a baby, when in fact this isn't the case. I know I know I'm gonna get haters who say...
Its crazy though cause in Hypnobabies they talk about many women having little to NO discomfort at all when having a baby. Pain isn't even there for them. Just this last week our instructor was telling us about a lady who was doing hypnobabies at the hospital for her birth. She was hooked up to the monitor and apparently a TON of activity, i.e. uterine muscles going nuts, was going on and it surprised/shocked the nurse that the mother was completely calm and relaxed.
We did a breathing exercise. The one we all know. "Hee hee whoo. Hee hee whoo." We did that for 1 minute on our first day. I about passed out. It causes you to hyperventilate. The ideal way to breathe is actually deep relaxing breathes where you actually get enough oxygen to your muscles.
Turns out having a baby on your back with your legs in the air is possibly the worst possible position to give birth. Not only cause gravity is no help at all, but the birth canal is longer. Longer birth canal = longer birthing time. Just a duh moment for me. I hadn't really thought about it till the class. Duh...
There are a lot of crazy things about the drugs used to in inducing labor I hadn't known previously. Some of the makers of the drugs say to NOT use them to induce birth cause they're actually meant for treating ulcers. A quick google search brought this up for me and corresponds to what we learned in class with proper citing being done on the class material.
In August 2000, the original manufacturer of Cytotec, G.D. Searle & Co. (Searle), sent a letter to over 200,000 OB/GYNs in the country stating the possible side effects of Cytotec when given to pregnant women, such as hyperstimulation of the uterus, uterine rupture, fetal bradycardia, amniotic fluid embolism, death of the mother, and death of the child. Subsequently, ACOG wrote a rebuttal to the FDA regarding Searle's letter, claiming not enough evidence and scientific studies warrant eliminating misoprostol's use to induce labor. Searle, however, found enough evidence in its trials of misoprostol for the treatment of ulcers to issue the letter. Searle also stated that the company did not intend to study or support the use of Cytotec for induction of labor or cervical ripening. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2684033/
We've learned about not clamping the umbilical cord till it has stopped pulsating because the cord/placenta holds much of the child's blood. Clamping at the typical less than one minute after birth literally stops the flow of blood into the baby and they have 30-40% LESS blood than they would otherwise have. http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20130711/health-highlights-july-11-2013 Crazy that this is even a practice. Hopefully though this trend gets reversed.
One of the things I liked best is the talk of where pain/discomfort comes from in birth. They talk to this a lot in class and so I wouldn't do it any justice here. Basically though it comes down to physical comfort, physical settings, expectations, and fear. Fear being the biggest factor, which leads to stress, which leads to adrenaline production, and once the adrenaline is there...game over for an easy birthing time.
There are so many crazy things they teach you in the class. I would highly recommend the class if for no other reason than...the good reasons! The class empowers the mothers and takes out the fear of childbirth for the mom and dad. It teaches them positive/TRUE things about birth and their bodies. They give the birthing mother an affirmation cd. That thing is legit even for non-mothers lol. "Babies are born on their birthday, not when a doctor says." Love that one if for no other reason to stick it the pompousness of a doctor dictating when something should or shouldn't happen when both the baby and mom are happy and healthy.
There is a lot I know I'm missing and so maybe I'll update this post or write another one later on, but ya there ya go. My little Hypnobabies blurb. Hope you liked it.
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