I would highly recommend the Hypnobabies course, and instructor Katherine Stanglin, to anyone wanting a joyful pregnancy and a remarkable birth, throughout which your relationship with your birth partner will deepen and your confidence in yourself and your ability to birth will increase. Hypnobabies offers a complete childbirth course, shaped in a birth image many women have come to value – emphasizing how wonderfully made we are, how women and babies are meant for this birth journey, and how learning to trust ourselves and making birth decisions accordingly can create beautiful birth experiences.

Katherine’s teaching of this material is passionate, thorough, and tenacious, and she tailors each class to its attendees, addressing their needs, concerns, fears, and hopes. My worries about my ability to birth consumed me at times, due to a previous birth experience that hadn’t gone as expected, and Katherine was instrumental in helping me see that I could give birth, that I could hope for that birth experience I desired.

In order to truly use Hypnobabies during childbirth, participants must practice and practice and practice their cues and scripts to ensure they become a mother’s first response to emotional or physical discomfort, and Katherine has this firm, nurturing demeanor that made it clear to us that she wanted these things for us but that we would have to put in the time to make them happen.

Katherine brainstormed many many ways to help us work long and short practices into our busy daily life – and over time I began to turn to my bubble of peace to get through challenging situations or conversations, and using a script to unwind from a particularly hard day (physically or emotionally).

I also referred to my Hypnobabies literature countless times, not only to help me prepare for the decisions I might have to face but also to assist friends in their birthing decisions and in understanding birth more fully. During my daughter’s birthing time, I sat on the birthing ball and listened to my favorite Hypnobabies tracks as things got serious and I needed to focus through each pressure wave. My husband and doula provided gentle support as the pressure waves slowly moved closer together, and by the time transformation arrived I was clinging to the stereo chorus of my husband and my doula, telling me to release each time, to breathe, to focus.

Those cue words were essential in quelling the panic rising in me in response to this new experience, this birth which was progressing entirely differently than the last time. Each pressure wave came with a new reminder to release, a renewed desire to breathe and focus – without Hypnobabies I know the panic would have overtaken me, the wrong hormones would have likely been released, and my birth experience would not have progressed as smoothly as it did.

Falling back on the Hypnobabies teaching, I used mother-directed pushing, surprising my OB with how soon I was ready to proceed, and with what seems like relatively little effort I pushed my baby out in under a half hour with very little tearing.

My eyes were not bloodshot and I had plenty of energy left to immediately nurse her, bond with her, and just gaze at her during those first few hours. Hypnobabies made a huge different in my birth experience, and while it took time to practice practice practice it was absolutely worth it. I’m thankful to have met Katherine, and highly recommend her class to anyone wishing for a new set of “tools” in their “toolbox” to be more prepared for all the wonderfully unexpected ways a birth can progress.