alternative hypnobirthing suggestions?

[alton]

I did a course of hypnobirthing on my first baby and found it good and bad. The good part was that it took the fear of labour out of my pregnancy, gave me a lot of confidence in my body, and I used to enjoy lovely labour dreams.
The bad is that when it came to labour I just couldn't listen to the CD at all - it made me nauseous. I couldn't even listen to the recordings I had made of myself and of my husband. But I did find that I turned inward as the labour progressed and was in a very body-centred headspace which I feel was due in part to hypnobirthing preparations.
This time I feel that listening to a CD and trying to convince myself that I'm relaxing isn't the way to go so I thought I would try writing some guided meditations of my own, maybe meditating on positive birth images, or trying to induce a deep sense of relaxation and creating anchors (NLP style) that I can use to elicit a sense of calm in labour.
I'd love to hear any ideas that you might have, especially if haven't used hypnobirthing or if you have and didn't find it wholly successful. I think some people find ways of focusing themselves through labour that are very natural - like reading a book, rocking on a chair or imagining contractions as waves. I don't seem to have that talent, but I'd love to know what helped get you through, so that I can steal some ideas :-)

[ihugtrees]

My best friend is trained in hypnotherapy and learning NLP. She plans on helping me with my next birth

You might try to find a licensed hypnotherapist to work with you.

[mommyfied]

You might find Hypnobabies more helpful. Back when I was on the yahoo group, there were several who had tried hypnobirthing but found hypnobabies to work better for them. Hypnobabies has one track for labor and another for pushing. I wouldn't consider it very body focused, but I'm not sure how it would compare to the hypnobirthing tracks you had. I would characterize it as very positive, relaxing, and baby centered... keywords for birthing = fast and comfortable. I've never listened to the pushing one, but the labor one worked well for me. I find ocean sounds relaxing so I had an ocean sounds track on my mp3 player I could switch over to if I wanted.

[Briannasmom]

I would find it annoying too to have any noise while I labored. Any chance you could find a doula who could just help you stay focused during labor? Here in my town, there's an amazing hypno instructor that also will attend a mama's birth.

I had some kind of hypno thing via my doula when I was pregnant with my first and I felt it was helpful in releasing fear and getting in touch with my baby. My first labor went so fast I didn't have any time to use any kind of hypno techniques. But I remember during my labor with my second, an image popped into my head of a flower - a California poppy actually - opening and closing. Opening with the contraction, closing when it was done. Somehow, that was very helpful to me.

I think making sure your environment is calm, dark and quiet is also very helpful...

[alton]

I should probably explain what I meant by bodycentred. That wasn't very clear. I found that as labour progressed I seemed to move into a more primitive part of my brain and I found speaking and communicating very difficult and draining. Being asked if I was having a contraction now was maddening because putting words on it made it feel much worse. At the time I felt that if I could "stay behind the words" I could manage the pain.
The other thing that I'm aware of now is that my reactions to contractions before I went to hospital were probably exactly right for the circumstances. I was compelled at one point to fall on my hands and knees and put my forehead on the floor. I wasn't making any kind of active choice to do that, but in the early stages of labour the baby was positioned back to back and that's actually a great position for getting a baby to turn over. Later in hospital when I was trying to behave the pain became so much worse, and I think now that was because I wasn't responding to the signals of my body and I was thinking about it too much.

I think that the hypnobirthing work that I did during my pregnancy prepared me to trust my body and let go of critical/analytical thoughts.

Mommyfield - I'll definitely check into hypnobabies and see if that might work better for me.

ihugtrees - I'd love to find an NLP practitioner that could work with me on this. I think ultimately NLP is a better fit for me than just hypnotherapy.

Briansmom - oh how I would love a doula but we can't afford one I love that image of the poppy opening and closing. I might try and find some images like that and work out a meditative sequence for myself. It's a beautiful image

Thank you all!

[broodymama]

I looked into Hypnobirthing several years ago, but it just wasn't a good fit for me. I used Hypnobabies (the home study course) with all of my births, and will for #4 also. During my last birth I did not listen to the CD during labor, like you I was just in a completely different (and primal) space and did not want anything that would pull me out of that space. I tend to retreat within during labor and become nonverbal. I still used my Hypnobabies tools and they were very helpful, I just did so on my own without listening to the tracks.