Tuesday 14 July 2015

Scientific evidence that hypnotherapy keeps you relaxed during labour

I was contacted on twitter the other day by a lady who had listened to the Natal Hypnotherapy tracks as preparation for her birth. After the birth she posted this incredible image of the tracker report from her Microsoft Band which she put on at the beginning of her home birth.


What we can see from this is the trace of her heart beat, expended energy and duration of labour.  The most striking thing is that throughout her labour her heart rate actually went down apart from a tiny increase during the birth. Her heart rate and level of energy expenditure where high in the beginning (what we term the excitement phase) when she was probably still more active and understandably super excited that she was going to have her baby very soon.

As the labour progresses she begins to slow down her activity, relaxing deeply and only experiencing an increase in heart rate during contractions.  This shows so clearly that staying calm, relaxed and focused means you expend less energy and put less strain on your heart. She burned a total of 493 calories which is the equivalent of playing golf for an hour and a half - a far cry from the Google stimate of an average labouring women burning 50,000 calories!

The reason hypnotherapy works so well in labour is that 
a) mums-to-be condition their bodies to relax so they can "actively" relax muscles on command for example when a contraction begins
b) they have practised deep breathing techniques which help the flow of oxygen to the uterus making it easier for the muscles to work effectively
c) they have over come any fears or worries so that they have little or no adrenaline which can cause tension in muscles.
d) They completely trust their bodies to know exactly what to do and so are not "fighting" the labour in any way.

If you are interested in learning more about things you can do to stay calm, relaxed and focused during labour download this informative poster Click to download your poster

Mum Jen said "This is the third birth during which I have used your Natal Hypnotherapy and all my birth experiences, while all vastly different, were amazing, empowering and life-defining. 

Paul had given me the Microsoft band for my birthday a week earlier and we had talked about using it during labour then. This was also related to an article I read about the lack of female input on technology development in Silicon Valley. While the Microsoft band is fully kitted out to support a round of golf- there aren’t any functions related to pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum experiences like breastfeeding for example. 

So I wanted to record my labour and share it with Microsoft in the hope it would catch an eye and perhaps other people would use their bands to do the same. Obviously, my data is pointless without other data to compare it to. 

Wouldn’t it be amazing if a woman, not using Natal Hypnotherapy (or similar) recorded her labour experience? I wonder if her heart rate would spike higher, or build over time (as opposed to mine). If the data would show how much ‘harder’ labour is physically if you are fearful or even the body’s response to the use of other forms of pain relief? 

So, I would love to get the word out and encourage other women to record their experiences and perhaps, even to influence the Microsoft Band’s development."




Would you consider using a band like this to monitor your physical responses during labour?

I would love to know if you used anything like this and what the reading was.

I have asked Jen to be my next guest blogger as I think her birth stories are really inspirational so click "join this site" to read that in the next few days.

You can also get info on all my latest blogs, videos, webinars etc by signing up and getting my 5 steps to a better birth poster Click to download your poster