In June 1954, I was twenty-one years old and sure that the world was mine for the taking. On the fifth, I graduated from a small teachers college in Plymouth, New Hampshire. I had already signed a contract to teach in the fall, and now, with degree in hand, I was realizing the fruition of a childhood dream: I was going to be a teacher.
One week later, I was married. It was a fairy-tale wedding between high school sweethearts. I was assuming two new, life-changing roles at the same time, but why not?
I began teaching in September and knew that I had found the niche that would be mine for the rest of my life. My husband was discharged from the service in late fall of that year, and we began our lives together in a small lumber town in the foothills of New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
In January, I missed a period. I was sure it was the result of the bronchitis that had attacked me in December. I couldn’t be pregnant.
Anxious to get my system back on schedule, I made an appointment with my family doctor. When we sat in his office after my examination, his diagnosis sent me into a state of shock. I was pregnant.
Neither of us had even considered having a child at that point in our lives. My husband had enrolled in college under the GI Bill; I was very involved in lesson plans and adjusting to all of the experiences that come with being a first-year teacher. Our marriage was so new that we hadn’t even finished furnishing the small, one-bedroom apartment that we were renting. I wasn’t sick in the morning, I didn’t show any signs of bloating, and my appetite hadn’t taken any bizarre twists. We just couldn’t be having a baby now. Not now!
For several days I was tempted to go back to the doctor and insist that it was simply my bronchitis that was still raising havoc with my body, and I really wasn’t pregnant after all.
Then one morning I awakened feeling a strange, exciting glow about myself. There was a voice from deep inside me that kept repeating, “I’m going to have a baby.” I felt an exhilaration that was different from anything I have ever felt before, and I liked it. I don’t know where it came from, but from that moment I became enthralled with the wonderment of what was happening inside me. I became consumed with thoughts of my pregnancy and our new baby.
I decided that this was not going to be a “usual pregnancy,” complete with aching back, swollen feet or any of the other complaints common to pregnancy. My birthing was not going to be one of drugged compliance with no recollection of the experience. The premise that birthing, by nature, had to be a painful ordeal was totally unacceptable to me. I could not believe that a God who had created the body with such perfection could have designed a system of procreation that was flawed. So many questions prevented me from accepting the concept of pain in birthing. Why are the two sets of muscles of the uterus the only muscles that do not perform well under normal conditions? Why are the lesser animals blessed with smooth, easy birthing while we, the very highest of creatures, made in the image and likeness of God, are destined to suffer? And why are women in some cultures able to have gentle, comfortable births? Are we women in the Western world less loved, less indulged, less blessed than they? It didn’t make sense to me logically or physiologically.
Even more importantly, I could not believe that a loving God would commit so cruel a hoax as to make us sexual beings so that we would come together in love to conceive and then make the means through which we would birth our children so excruciatingly painful.
I read everything I could get my hands on in an attempt to support my belief that pain is inappropriate in the course of uncomplicated birthing. I summarily dismissed most of what I picked up. All of the literature of the time was laden with medical “what ifs.” The focus was on all that could go wrong in labor. I was discouraged.
Then I remembered an article in Life magazine that I had read when I was in high school. It told of a woman who birthed naturally in the Grace–New Haven Hospital in Connecticut. I knew if I could find that magazine, I could find the support for my beliefs, and I could track down the name of the English doctor whose method of natural childbirth the hospital had adopted. I found the magazine at our local library and subsequently found Dr. Grantly Dick-Read’s book, Childbirth Without Fear. I knew immediately that this concept was the answer to the drug-free, painless and safe birthing I was seeking for myself and especially for our baby. One didn’t hear much about baby’s safety or comfort at that time. It was all about the mother’s experience, but nothing about how she and her partner viewed the experience or their hopes and dreams for the birthing. The idea of family didn’t enter into birthing considerations.
I discarded all of the negative literature devoted to descriptions of laboring mothers trying to cope with and survive the “excruciating pain of childbirth,” and focused on Dick-Read’s theory of eliminating the Fear–Tension–Pain Syndrome. I was excited and looked forward to my normal, natural birth, awake, alert, and free of the fear and pain that it caused. I was also excited to learn that the doctors at Grace were in agreement that fear of pain could actually create real pain in labor. They wholly accepted the concept that “mental fears are translated into physical tensions that produce needless pain.” They generally conceded that most births—though not all—are uncomplicated and could be accomplished with a minimum of drugs, artificial aid and intervention. I liked what I read.
I was prepared for natural birthing, but not for the reaction of other people from both within and outside of the medical field. No one thought I was serious about having a baby without taking anesthesia. Friends laughed at me for suggesting that it was possible to have a baby naturally at a time when all women were “knocked out” with general anesthesia. I was ridiculed and insulted by anesthesiologists, who were just introducing the “caudal,” a type of spinal block that required that the birthing mother lie absolutely flat for hours after she birthed to avoid recurring headaches that could be a problem for years to come. Luckily, my husband and my family, accustomed to my propensity for doing the unusual, provided skeptical support.
When I arrived at the hospital in labor, I explained that I was going to have a natural birth. Smirks appeared on the nurses’ faces immediately. Shortly after I was “prepped” for labor with a pubic shave and an enema, a nurse kindly reassured me, “When the pains get unbearable, you can have a shot of Demerol to ease them.” I was mocked when I declined the offer and was left alone in a dark labor room, listening to the insufferable ticking of a “Baby Ben” clock that was placed by my bedside so that I could “time” my “labor pains.” I was ignored by nurses who wouldn’t accept that I was in advanced labor, and I was told that when I finally went down that hall to the delivery room that I would be “yelling and screaming like the rest of them.”
A very short time later, I told the nurse that I was crowning. She reluctantly agreed to examine me and, indeed, the yelling began—but it was the nurses who were yelling, not I.
They pushed my legs together and insisted that I pant. I asked to be allowed to birth my baby then and there, but they rushed me, still holding my legs together and panting, to the delivery room. Once there, my wrists were strapped to the sides of the delivery table with leather straps, and my legs were tied into the stirrups that held my knees and legs four feet into the air. My head was held as the ether cone was forced onto my face. That was the last I remembered. I awakened sometime later, violently ill from the ether, and was informed that I had “delivered” a beautiful baby boy, whom I would be able to see in the morning. The nurse cautioned me not to be alarmed at the red bruises on his face from the forceps. “That’s normal.” My husband was allowed to visit me for ten minutes. Neither of us held or even saw our son Wayne that night.
When I did see my baby for the first time, I was horrified to think of what he must have experienced as he was being “yanked” into the world. I felt so let down, and I was terribly resentful. The natural birth I had planned for my baby had been stolen from me, and my baby had suffered needlessly. My husband saw our son only through the window of the nursery for the next five days, as no one was allowed to visit when “the babies are on the floor.” Our family bonding was nonexistent.
Two years later when I was in labor with our second son, Brian, the course of my labor was as peaceful and comfortable as it had been with my first labor, but the birthing played out as before—it was a total blank. When I was finally allowed to see Brian at the “appointed time,” I again found red blotches on my baby’s face from the pressure of forceps. Five days later when we were discharged from the hospital, my husband was able to hold him for the first time. I was beside myself with anger. I had asked for nothing more than to be allowed to birth my baby in peace. I was not asking for any extras. There was no need for me to be anesthetized, strapped and assaulted.
Very early in my third pregnancy, I approached my doctor and said, “I think we need to talk.” He laughed and responded with a question.
“Talk? What do we need to talk about, Mickey? This is your third baby; you know how it’s done.”
With a smile that lasted through my entire sentence, I replied, “Yes, Doctor, but you don’t.”
The smile saved me. He was obviously shocked that a layperson could make such an accusation, smile or no smile, but he was a friend. He recovered and asked what I meant.
I saw my opening, and I took it. I told him how disappointed I was with the way my previous births were handled. I said that I felt betrayed when, in spite of his agreement to support me in my wish for a natural birth, he was not there to support me or intercede for me when it came time for me to birth. And so, with no one to tell them differently, the nursing staff faithfully carried out their routine of “preparing” me for birthing with restraints and ether. I repeated how important it was to me to birth my baby safely without drugs. I said that this time I was determined to birth naturally, even if it meant that I would have to travel elsewhere to find a caregiver who would hear my concerns for my baby and listen to my emotional needs as a birthing mother.
Few babies were born at home at that time, so I knew my only real option was to elicit the complete support of the right caregiver—hopefully, my own doctor. He assured me that he could be that person and asked what I wanted him to do.
I asked that this information be put onto my chart so everyone would know that I didn’t want to be offered drugs and was not to be tied to the birthing table. He smiled, wrote notes on my record and asked if that would make me happy. I lowered my head and looked at him from under my brow and replied, “I’m not quite done yet.”
He picked up his pen again and said, “Okay, what else?”
My reply was spoken very quickly because I didn’t trust that the words would really come out if I hesitated. “I’d like my husband with me in the labor room and by my side in the delivery room.”
To understand how outlandish this request was, you have to realize that in the late fifties husbands were not allowed beyond the lobby of most hospitals. There were no lounge areas conveniently located near the maternity ward where fathers could pace. Most were sent home to wait for the call that would tell them, “It’s all over.”
The doctor’s pen flew across the desk. He bounced forward in his swivel chair and said, “Oh, come on now, you can’t ask me to stick my neck out that far!”
I explained that I didn’t want him to do anything that he didn’t feel comfortable with. If he were not comfortable, I would understand and seek another provider. He thought for a moment and gave me the answer for which I was hoping. “Why not?”
I was ecstatic. I had his support and his promise to officially chart that I was to be accommodated in fulfilling what I believe was the original “birth plan.” I trusted that this time he would come through for me, and he did. My husband was by my side throughout my two-hour labor, and he accompanied me to the delivery room and stood by my side while our daughter was born—a first for that hospital and the entire region.
My arms and legs were free, and anesthesia was not used. I was awake and energized. My joy was unparalleled. Though I had labored naturally before, I finally had my fully natural birth. Maura came into the world safely and undrugged. The only sad part was that neither of us was able to hold our baby and bond with her immediately. She was whisked out of the room and taken to the nursery for no apparent reason.
A few minutes later, I stood at the nursery window watching them bathe my daughter—this at a time when women were hardly allowed out of bed for at least a day or more after birthing. I felt as though I could just sweep her up in my arms and go home. But that was not to be the case. Confinement at that time was at least four days.
Everyone with me that evening was on a natural high. My doctor was so excited that he stayed up until three in the morning, reading everything he had available on Dr. Grantly Dick-Read’s theory of natural childbirth. I was told that my birthing was the talk of the entire hospital for three shifts. Unfortunately, this fascination and curiosity was short-lived. Within days, my birthing was dismissed as a “fluke.” I was told that some women have an incredible tolerance for pain, and, after all, my baby girl was only six pounds, three ounces. The trail I thought I had blazed was quickly swept over. Nothing changed.
My fourth birthing followed the same smooth path, although our son Shawn weighed in at eight pounds, three ounces—a full two pounds heavier than Maura. Minutes after I was brought back to my room, I found that, once again, I had to go to the nursery to get a glimpse of my baby. When they finished bathing, weighing and dressing Shawn, they wheeled the little bassinette over to the window. He was on one side of the glass; I was on the other. That was the extent of my bonding with my baby.
My doctor, still fascinated but not at all convinced, told me that he was unbelievably impressed that someone could endure that much pain so calmly and without anesthesia. In spite of my frequent boasts of feeling nothing but tightening sensations, I was not successful in opening his mind to what natural birthing could be for the mothers who were to follow me. Leather straps, ether cones, spinals and stirrups were to prevail for women for years to come.
The First HypnoBirthing
Through the years, I shuddered each time I heard a woman speak of being in horrific agony while having her baby. It saddened me because I knew that the pain could have been eased and, in many instances, even eliminated. I felt so helpless. Whenever I spoke of easier childbirth, my listeners looked at me with shock or polite disbelief.
In 1987, I became certified in hypnotherapy for use in the counseling practice that I had maintained throughout the years that I was dean at a women’s college and later in my role as the director of a business school for women. Being involved in hypnotherapy caused me to think back to my birthings. I realized for the first time that I had, indeed, used self-hypnosis to achieve the degree of relaxation that made it possible for me to experience painless childbirth. (Grantly Dick-Read emphatically denied that his method was at all connected with hypnosis. He felt that hypnosis brought women to a totally disassociated state that took them away from the birthing experience. With a better understanding of hypnosis today, we now know that a person in a hypnotic state is fully awake, is in an even heightened state of awareness and totally in control.) I was, indeed, in self-hypnosis when I labored with my children.
A year or so after I became a hypnotherapist, my daughter, Maura, told me that she was going to have a baby. I was determined that she experience only the very best and most satisfying birthing possible. From my newly awakened interest in birthing came a childbirth education program, combining the advantages of self-hypnosis with the knowledge of natural childbirth. I called the method “HypnoBirthing.”
I began to make notes based on my own personal and professional experiences early in 1989. I delighted in the prospect of developing the program that would allow Maura, who was the first baby in the area to be born with a method of self-hypnosis, to bring her own child into the world with HypnoBirthing. There were two other moms preparing for birthing using my method, and I prayed that Maura would be the first to birth. She was.
Maura didn’t have the benefit of videos or success stories of the thousands of other women who had birthed their babies through HypnoBirthing, but she knew that she wanted to birth her baby safely and did what was necessary to achieve it. She talked with her midwife about the kind of birth she was seeking: gentle, natural and free of narcotics that could harm her baby. She won her midwife’s support and encouragement and had an uneventful, healthy and happy pregnancy.
When she arrived at the hospital to birth, Maura was met by a curious, but totally supportive labor and birthing staff. During the five hours that she labored, a continuous stream of nurses and midwives found one reason or another to peek into the room to find the source of the soft music and to observe this enigma—a birthing mother, deeply connected with her baby and her birthing body, who looked, for all the world, as though she were quietly resting. There were none of the usual signs of a woman who was nearing completion. I believe that, on a deeper level, Maura’s own birth left an imprint in her subconscious of what birth should be. She fully trusted her body, and it worked for her.
On January 3, 1990, the first HypnoBirthing baby, our grandson Kyle, was born. We had gone full circle—from Maura, the first natural-birth baby in the region, to Kyle, the first HypnoBirthing baby. I can’t even begin to express how moving this experience was for me.
The hospital personnel were in awe. They had seen women experience gentle birthing before, but they knew that this birth was not to be dismissed. What they were seeing was not a fluke, but a birth that had been carefully and lovingly planned, prepared for and achieved.
Since then, we have welcomed ten more HypnoBirthing grandbabies into our family. They are a wonderful group of particularly nice human beings, showing those special qualities that other HypnoBirthing parents from all over the world are telling us they see in their HypnoBirthing babies: gentleness, compassion, self-confidence and love.
HypnoBirthing Today
I wasn’t aware when I first developed HypnoBirthing that it would grow from a local phenomenon into an international movement. I didn’t realize the extent to which birthing mothers around the world were clamoring for a birthing method that would allow them to birth their babies safely, without drugs, and to be able to do it in comfort. They are turning to HypnoBirthing to provide that means.
Each year, thousands of couples are joining the ranks of HypnoBirthing families. Like you, these couples want the very best for themselves and their children, and they are taking responsibility for seeing that it happens. They are planning and directing the course of their pregnancies, and confidently looking forward to a joyful birthing experience. Some, who already embrace the philosophy of gentle birth, are relieved to find that, in addition to offering their baby a safe birth, they also are able to achieve a comfortable birth.
HypnoBirthing is helping women reclaim their right to call upon their natural birthing instincts, and with the total involvement of their partners, they are creating one of the most memorable experiences of their lives.
Because of the growing acceptance of HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method, gentle, comfortable birth is gradually making its way into the birthing rooms of many hospitals. Many leading hospitals throughout the country are teaching gentle birthing and offering HypnoBirthing instruction in their childbirth education classes. More families are deciding to birth in the comfort and privacy of their own homes, and some are utilizing the advantages of underwater birthing in hospitals and at home. Those families who choose to birth in hospitals or birthing centers are finding a congenial and supportive atmosphere in which they can have their babies, naturally and calmly, creating joyful memories for themselves and their babies.
People within the medical field are becoming part of the sweeping HypnoBirthing movement. An increasing number of compassionate caregivers and birthing facility administrators are listening to the emotional and spiritual needs of parents and are accommodating those needs in hospitals, birth centers and homes in over twenty-two countries. They are comfortable with the notion that birth is about the birthing family and are not threatened at the thought of relinquishing the progression of birth to the parents they serve, while they attend in support. The large network of certified HypnoBirthing practitioners continues to grow as the demand for HypnoBirthing grows from families across the globe.
The concept of calm, uninterrupted birthing is now being met with far less skepticism. The countless telephone calls and testimonials we receive tell us that HypnoBirthing is succeeding in creating a shift in the view of birthing.
On the other hand, the harsh, demeaning, sometimes violent practices still in effect in many birthing facilities tell us that we cannot rest on our laurels. Our job is just beginning. Unnecessary interventions, including a growing number of needless inductions, augmentations and surgical births, are often imposed upon families who wish to birth naturally, even when there is no medical urgency. The birthing rooms of hospitals, though they give an appearance that might rival many five-star hotels, must be coupled with a shift in birthing philosophy from those who come to these settings to attend mothers in labor. Otherwise, we will continue to see many mothers birthing their babies while surrounded by machines and apparatus, hooked up to belts and tubes, looking more like scientific experiments than fulfilled and joyful birthing women.
HypnoBirthing continues to be a safe vehicle for those parents who are learning that they have options and are actively exploring them to find the optimal setting for their birthings. They are not willing to settle for anything less than the best for their babies.
Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, sums it up well with this challenge to all birthing mothers: Imagine what might happen if the majority of women emerged from their labor beds with a renewed sense of the strength and power of their bodies, and of their capacity for ecstasy through giving birth. When enough women realize that birth is a time of great opportunity to get in touch with their true power, and when they are willing to assume responsibility for this, we will reclaim the power of birth and help move technology where it belongs—in the women, not as their master.