Right Mindset, Right Experiences

In one of my hypnobirthing classes, one of the fathers asked me, “If you filter all the information that the hypnobirthing program gives us, can you tell us what the most important thing is when it comes to labor and birthing?” I thought about it for a moment and then said, “Mindset. Without a doubt, mindset is the most important.” I think about that conversation often, and each time I do, I realize how true those words are. 

The hypnobirthing program is indeed a wonderful way to prepare a pregnant body for birth, but it is more than that. All the techniques and scripts taught in the program are great and important to learn. They all work on some level, and some work better than others depending on the parent. The skills are versatile and can be used long after the babies are born. Some of them can even be taught to our children later on. Yet, without the right mindset, all those exercises are just that: exercises. If a mother is not fully present, the techniques are useless. It all rests on the ability of a pregnant person to create an open and uninterrupted mind-body connection. Parents have to prepare their minds for success first; everything else can be improvised. 

Reacting vs. Responding

Having the right mindset allows us to surrender to the experience and actively respond to whatever comes our way. Actively responding to an event and passively reacting to it are two very different things. One empowers us, while the other one makes us feel powerless. When we actively respond, we listen to our bodies, our babies, our care team, and our intuition. We are co-creators of the process and actively make decisions in situations when decisions need to be made. On the other hand, when we passively react, it is as if we cross our fingers and superstitiously hope for the best. If things become challenging or do not go our way, we feel betrayed and disappointed, helpless to change anything. 

When I was pregnant with my first child, I thought I did not need to “prepare” for labor. I thought that since, technically speaking, it was my body and not me that was growing my baby, and since my body had done an amazing job during pregnancy, it would surely know how to birth the baby. Even though there was a lot of truth in that, in reality it was a different story. I thought I could simply listen to my body, and it would show me everything I needed to know when the time came for labor. It turned out that my body did know what to do, but it relied on me to be in the right state of mind in order for me to truly let go and surrender to the process. It is paradoxical to think that by surrendering to the process, we gain a lot more control. However, with my first labor, I did not surrender. I got scared and tense. I felt powerless. I lost all my natural ability to deal with things as they came. 

I realized afterward that it is one thing to intellectually learn about what happens in labor, and it is another one to go through it and fully experience it. It is not a matter of lacking information; nowadays, parents have ample information on what happens physiologically as their babies are born. Books have been written on it, and a simple Google search lists page after page of information that describes the process. I was no different than any other parent the first time around. I did my research and asked the right questions. I listened to other parents’ stories. Yet somehow, despite gathering information, I did not fully comprehend that labor and birthing required as much mental and emotional preparation as physical. Even though I more or less knew what was going to happen, somehow I did not comprehend that it was going to happen to me, nor that it was going to happen today. 

Experiencing Loneliness 

For example, there was a moment when I was in labor when all of a sudden, I felt very lonely. No one prepared me for that. It was a different kind of loneliness, the kind that was not caused by a lack of people or support. On the contrary, I had my wonderful and loving husband by my side and our nurse, who was an absolute angel. I still remember the love, warmth, support, and patience that both of them gave me. It was thanks to them that I kept going when all I wanted was to quit and beg for an epidural, even a C-section, just to be done.

The loneliness I experienced came from the realization that in the end, it was I alone who was giving birth. Not anyone else. Just me. It was the sheer responsibility of the task that made me feel so isolated and small. My baby and my body depended on me to fully stay present so that they could do what needed to be done. The fear of the unknown made me feel smaller than a grain of sand, and the fear of pain made me feel vulnerable. Fear overrode everything that I had previously accepted as normal and natural. 

Thoughts and Labor

I did not expect labor and birthing to be more of a spiritual and mental event than a purely physical one. It would have been a much simpler affair if childbirth was as simple as the physical relocation of our babies from the internal environment to the outside world and the emotional and spiritual aspects of the experience were bypassed. Then a lot of parents would not ever feel confused or hurt or like they “failed” the process. I found that the process was more about mindfulness, resilience, perseverance, surrender, and taking a chance. Coincidentally, I believe that those are all the skills that are necessary for good parenting.

Being in labor and giving birth requires us to be fully present in the here and now as we move from one surge to another. That work of ‘being present’ is a different kind of labor. We associate labor with hours of dealing with contractions and pushing the baby out. Yet, thoughts that we picked up along the way about who and what we are as people, and what giving birth was “supposed” to be like, creep up if we let them. Unfortunately, or fortunately for those parents who know to protect their minds, what we think becomes our reality. To quote Stephen Covey, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are—or, as we are conditioned to see it.” If we learned to associate labor and birthing with pain, screaming, chaos, and more pain, we often get that. 

Research supports the notion that mindset plays a crucial role in birth outcomes. In a study conducted by Hoffmann, Hilger, and Banse, “women who held a more natural mindset prenatally were more likely to have low-intervention births, which resulted in a more positive evaluation of the birth experience, which in turn predicted well-being in the first weeks after birth (measured with ecological momentary assessment), and subsequently postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms 8 weeks after birth as well as mother-infant bonding 6 months after birth.” 

Furthermore, researchers show us that “antenatal depression and anxiety also have a direct impact on postnatal parental stress and physiologically will cause uterine contractions to feel more painful.”

Dr. Grantly Dick-Read alluded to something similar in the early 1940s by describing the Fear-Tension-Pain Cycle. He proposed that women who anticipate painful labor and birth would inevitably feel fear, which would make them tense. The tension increases pain, which in turn makes her feel even more fear, and so on. The cycle continues and increases in intensity unless something interrupts it. Therefore, the focus of anyone who supports mothers in labor should be on supporting them not only physically but mentally and spiritually, so they can find a way to remain calm, strong, and in control of their internal and external experiences. 

Conclusion

The majority of pregnant parents grew up hearing stories of labors that were long, difficult, and almost physically impossible to achieve. If anyone ever hears about a birth that is calm, empowering, or even enjoyable, they probably dismiss it as a “one-off” occurrence and react to the story as if they came face to face with a unicorn—mythical and very rare. However, that is precisely what labor and birthing can be. Bringing a child into the world is transformational for all parties involved, and the stakes are high. Having the right mindset is crucial to accomplish this huge task.

Years after my two children were born, I realized what the biggest difference was between labor and the birth of my first child vs. the second. The isolation and loneliness I felt during labor the first time was gone. The second time around, I was fully present and participated in each step of the experience. I felt fully connected to my baby, my husband, my instincts, and that ancestral rhythm of all women who have borne children before me and have passed down the wisdom. The difference was that I did not feel like I was the only one laboring and giving birth to the baby. It felt like we were all going through the shared experience where the baby, my husband, and I were connected.