Easy Does It
By putting their minds to it, students of hypnobirthing — a trancelike technique — hope to have a calm, pain-free delivery.
TUESDAY, 6:30 P.M. "Imagine you are standing in a kitchen, a favorite kitchen, filled with warm food and warm memories," says nurse Mary Goldsmith. The first-time moms and dads seated in a small conference room at Beverly Hospital are learning about a pain-control technique called hypnobirthing.
During the visualization exercise, Goldsmith speaks slowly to the four couples, who all have their eyes closed. "You can smell the food cooking on the stove, hear the bubbling of the pot." She pauses for a moment. "Imagine you move to the counter. You see a lemon on a cutting board. You pick up the lemon and feel the texture of its skin. You cut the lemon in half and hold it up to your nose. You bite into the lemon and taste it in your mouth.
"Now bring yourselves slowly back, and slowly open your eyes." She looks around the room expectantly. "Did everyone see the kitchen? Were you able to taste the lemon?"
One by one, the future parents nod or answer yes. All except one.
"I didn't see anything," says Amy Goulas of Salem, a mom-to-be who has removed her felt clogs and sits, cross-legged, on a stiff conference-room chair.
"Don't force it; it will come," says Goldsmith. "It's not about trying. Just let it happen."
One could use those same words to describe Goldsmith's approach to childbirth. She believes every woman is entitled to a calm, relaxed, and relatively pain-free birth. Although the term "hypnobirthing" may sound a bit fringe, the concept is growing in recognition and simple enough to understand — using deep, trancelike relaxation to keep the body quiet and comfortable through a process that many describe as agonizing.
"I call it meditation with a purpose," Goldsmith tells the class members, who have paid $250 a couple for four two-hour sessions. "The goal is to create a blueprint in your mind of how you want your birth to be," she explains. "If the mind leads, then the body follows. Other childbirth classes talk about the what-ifs and the things that can go wrong. Here the focus is on what you want your birth to be like."
To illustrate the concept of hypnobirthing, the teacher shows a video of four drug-free births. The women in the video are calm and relaxed. None of them speaks much. Some of them appear to be sleeping. Yet the end result is the same: a newborn baby, tears of joy, and, sometimes, happy, relieved laughter.
"In this country, childbirth is associated with fear and pain," Goldsmith says. "If you are fearful, you produce stress hormones like adrenalin. If you are calm and relaxed, your body produces feel-good hormones like endorphin and serotonins. You can imagine the effect these two different sets of hormones have on the childbirth process."
As she wraps up the class, the teacher promises Goulas that next week she will learn how to visualize in her own way. "Trust your body and your baby," Goldsmith says. "They know what to do." 