My Empowering Birth Experiences & Journey to Conscious Birthing
EP. 02
In this episode of the Mae B Mindful Podcast, host Hannah Mae delves into the transformative power of birth. Sharing her journey from apprehension to empowerment, she discusses her experiences with home births and the profound impact of using hypnobirthing techniques. Hannah Mae aims to shift the narrative around childbirth from one of fear to one of joy and excitement, emphasizing the natural design of the birthing process. By eliminating fear and embracing the body's innate capabilities, she encourages listeners to view birth as a powerful, positive, and even pleasurable experience. Tune in for an inspiring and enlightening conversation about reclaiming the wonder of birth.
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Episode Transcript:
Hello, this is the Mae B Mindful Podcast, and I am your host, Hannah Mae. I’m a mother of six, conscious birth instructor, educator, spiritual growth facilitator, and certified hypnotist. This podcast is about inspiring hope, expanding awareness, and consciousness in order to revolutionize the way we live and experience our lives. You can expect thought-provoking episodes each week, spanning a range of topics drawn from my own journey of transformation and healing, as well as my work with others. I hope you find this podcast to be informative, refreshing, illuminating, and instrumental in your own soul’s evolution and growth. Let’s jump right in.
Welcome back to the Mae B Mindful Podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Mae, and this week’s episode is on birth: childbirth, home birth, calm birth, joyful birth—birth as nature intended. I got a little overwhelmed thinking about how I was going to tell you everything, so this is really just a sliver of some of my experiences and why I’m excited. My hope and goal here is to shift your perspective if you have any apprehension, so that you leave feeling as excited, inspired, and hopeful about birth as I do. I want birth to be something you look forward to, whether you’ve had birth experiences you didn’t enjoy, whether you’re a first-time mom, or whether you’ve never had a baby and don’t even know if you will, but now you think, “Damn, that’s cool. I want to do that.” So, that’s my goal.
I love these conversations that I’ve been having with people since I had my first home birth because they get people’s attention. Most people have some concerns about birth or loathe and fear it as something they have to deal with and get through, often thinking they need to block it out or anesthetize themselves in order to get their baby. Unfortunately, this is a result of the messages and rhetoric being pushed into our culture, on our women, and on our families—that birth is dangerous, that birth is a medical event, and that it has to be painful. These messages come through various outlets, whether it’s movies depicting birth poorly, birth shows, well-meaning friends, or medical professionals. The fact that other women, when I have these conversations with them, are so attentive and leave feeling inspired, saying things like, “I might call you when I have a baby,” tells me that this is not information people come across regularly. The majority of the information out there is in opposition to this, leading to a really negative and unfortunate view of birth, which is really sad to me because birth is incredible. Birth is an incredible, transformative, pivotal moment in a woman’s life, in a family’s life. When we view it differently, we will experience it differently.
So, without further ado, here we go. How do we become empowered? How do we access this information and remove those challenges and impediments if they are unnecessary, considering that the design is the same for you, for me, and for every other human in most cases? I’ve had six home births. The last four, I utilized hypnobirth techniques, practices, and self-hypnosis. This was a real game-changer and just kind of blew my mind. I can’t tell you how many moms I’ve talked to, some of them even in the medical profession, who have said, “I really want to have kids one day, but I’m really scared of giving birth and I don’t know if I can do it.” When I hear that, I do my best to reassure them because there’s not a whole lot of reassurance that goes on. Not everybody is having this experience, but this experience, I believe, is accessible for anybody.
Sometimes I leave these conversations and people say to me, “Oh my gosh, you’re amazing,” and I’m like, “Thanks, but here’s the thing: birth is amazing. The design is amazing. It is this natural, physiological process that is already amazing. The design is flawless. It doesn’t really have a lot to do with me. The part that has to do with me is that I learned through a practice how to get out of the way and allow it to unfold as nature intended without my interference.” With any natural, physiological process that has a flow where it happens on its own—like digesting your food, your heart beating, a wound healing—if you provide the correct and appropriate conditions and you’re healthy, then those things happen on their own without you having to think about it, without you having to intervene. Whereas, if you were to hyper-vigilantly stare at a cut, maybe over-clean it or rub it too much or poke it, or expose it to things that weren’t good for it, like harmful bacteria, then you might get an infection and cause more problems and impede and slow that healing process. But your body heals on its own. Our bodies are naturally self-healing organisms, and there’s nothing we actually have to do to make that happen. It’s already figured out. We just have to get with the program.
Birth is really the same. A lot of women are under the misconception that they have to be told how to birth or that they have to learn how to birth, when actually it’s instinctual and already built in. I think the reason why this subject is so fascinating to people is that I never walk away from a birth conversation feeling like it was a stupid conversation. I always leave feeling lifted up and inspired, and that is because of the dynamic of the connection through this incredible conversation. We have all experienced birth ourselves at one point. It is a very pivotal part of our own life’s experience. The memory of that is pressed into the fibers of our being and our consciousness. The memory is held in our body, whether our conscious mind remembers it or not—our subconscious, our unconscious, does. There’s a lot of incredible research and studies about how impactful life in utero and our birth actually is in shaping who we are, how we see ourselves, and how we see the world we’re coming into. As a hypnotist, I have worked with clients who have regressed back to their birthday and remember clear and vivid details about that. They also remember in utero, what they were thinking, the things they were noticing, and the tone or environment outside that was impacting their experience. Those things, positive or negative, can be carried into life in the present. It is pretty incredible.
I think putting an emphasis on and looking forward to our birthing day with positive expectation, and viewing it as our baby’s first birthday—because that’s what it is—can make a big difference. As parents, we put a lot of emphasis and importance on birthdays, making the child feel special, and planning it so that it’s a day to remember. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t put just as much importance on this sacred day and do everything we can to provide the best possible experience for ourselves, our babies, and our families. Some people have said to me, “That’s irresponsible. Birth is dangerous.” Yes, if you want to magnify that small percentage of complications. I’m not talking about complications that result from unnecessary interventions; I’m talking about naturally occurring complications in roughly 5% of cases. I’m not going to focus on that today because I want to talk about the 95%, which is the majority. I am the first to tip my hat to medical professionals. I have profound gratitude for skilled physicians, obstetricians, and our medical and scientific advancements, so that we can intervene and save a life when necessary. That is wonderful, and I’m so grateful for that. But as with any scientific or technological advancement, sometimes things tend to swing too far, and we lose balance. When birth is viewed solely through a medical lens, it can become scary.
Let me share with you my first birth. It was planned as a hospital birth because I wasn’t yet comfortable with the idea of a home birth. Towards the end of the birth class, which was geared towards natural childbirth, I started to become more comfortable with the idea. My mother had me at home, and I witnessed my second youngest brother being born in a birthing center when I was 9 years old. I really came to see the profound impact of that later. At the time, I was like, “Okay, I don’t know,” but it became something I really valued. Watching my mother do it was incredible. Once I got comfortable with the idea, I was a little sad that I wasn’t having a home birth, but my midwife no longer delivered at home. She had delivery privileges at a couple of different hospitals, so that’s where I was scheduled to do it. My baby had other plans. I believe that what we want and visualize is important as a tool in having the kind of birth we want. I held this vision of having a home birth in my heart, but I let it go, thinking, “Next time.”
Lo and behold, the baby came fast, and my husband had to call the midwife. She asked if he could drive me in, and he said no. She decided to come check on me. She arrived about an hour later, and I was really laboring by then. Up until that point, my surges (a hypnobirthing term for contractions) were roughly 10 to 15 minutes apart, not textbook at all. Relaxed and hypnobirthing mothers often rewrite the textbook because, when they’re more relaxed, their surges are more efficient, and the births are usually quicker. She checked me, and I was fully dilated. She told my husband to get everything out of her car, and luckily she came prepared. He brought everything in, including her iPod and iced tea, and I had my baby 15 minutes later. She said, “Okay, you’re a good home birth candidate. Otherwise, I would’ve had to come up with some other reason to transfer you.” That was my first home birth.
With my subsequent births, I learned how to self-hypnotize and utilize hypnosis and hypnobirth techniques to their fullest extent, making my births extremely comfortable, joyful, and even pleasurable. That’s the part where people go, “What?” But it’s true. Our bodies are designed to do this. The muscles of the uterus are perfectly designed to work together to birth the baby, and the hormones released during birth help to make it a joyful and pleasurable experience. When we can tap into that and allow it to happen without fear or tension, it changes everything. Fear causes tension, and tension causes pain. When we can eliminate the fear, the tension goes away, and we are left with this beautiful, natural process that unfolds perfectly. The design is flawless, and when we get out of the way, it works beautifully.
I hope this has given you a new perspective on birth. Remember, the way we view birth can shape our experience of it. Let’s look forward to it with positive expectations and embrace it as the incredible, transformative event that it is. Thank you for joining me on the Mae B Mindful Podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Mae, and I look forward to our next conversation. Until then, be well and stay mindful.