I’ve been struggling with my son, Nathan.  We’ve had a really bad patch, with yelling, tears, anger and sadness on both sides, and I’ve been at a loss as to how to deal with it.  My gurus tell me that the people in my life are my teachers, and I have found that is especially true of my children.  However, it is a truth I forget regularly.  When I find myself in pain, I learn it all over again!

My sweet, adorable, infuriating son resists everything these days!  The routines of daily life – getting out of and into bed, dressing and undressing, brushing teeth, eating meals – which, I remind him, should be no surprise because they’ve been the same all his life! – he fights.  The responsibilities expected of a boy his age – to tidy his room (occasionally, please!), to do his homework (seriously, 10 minutes!) – he squirms under like a pinned worm.  Don’t get me started on the delight he takes in almost touching his older sister with his pointer finger.  Or how the invitation to sit at the dinner table (“See how everyone else is sitting, Nathan?”) brings out the contortionist who was nowhere to be seen when he was watching television; he can sit perfectly still for that.  And why does he suddenly hate all the food that he used to eat?  And why does my normally compliant boy ignore me completely in front of my mother-in-law?  I’ve been beside myself.

“Beside myself” is actually a good position from which to observe my own behavior.  I noticed at some point how much I was participating in the struggle.  I was resisting his resistance!  My mother’s generation would say I was right, that children must be taught the correct way – that anything other than strict obedience is disrespectful.  But the truth is, I tried cracking down and it just wasn’t working.  Maybe I’m too tentative.  Maybe it just isn’t my style so when I try it on it isn’t believable.  Maybe my kids are different than I was, so what worked for my parents does not work for me.  Whatever the reason, I have found time and again that dropping the struggle is for me the more powerful position.  It’s also a position that respects the child as a person with his own thoughts and feelings but an immature ability to communicate them.  Children communicate through their behavior, and I think part of my job is to listen, even when it’s inconvenient.  So if saying “no” to him was not only not working, it was impairing our communication, then I would try saying “yes” more.

This turned out to be surprisingly hard.  He would ask me something and I would remember my resolution, easily made in a moment of enlightened clarity, but how hard to see through.   Drop what I was doing.  Now?  Really?  I discovered I had an urgent, almost physical, need to attend to my to-do list!

So I found myself saying, “Yes, but first. . .”  This just made him groan – and me, too.  I knew it was a cop-out.  What was so important?  Is this how he felt about the things he asked me to do?  Did he have a 7-year old version of a to-do list that he felt a physical need to see through?  Maybe.  It’s not at all hard to believe when I think about it.  If so, what was I modeling for him about the importance of to-do lists?  That they are more important than people?

Another compelling possibility was that he was trying very hard to get my attention through his resistance.  I saw, as I clung tenaciously to my to-do list, that it was hard indeed to get through to me.  Could I really let go of my to-do list?  What would happen if I did?

These questions flew around in my mind unresolved, like birds looking for a place to roost, until two night ago, when Nathan asked me to play ball with him. We had just been for a pleasant walk with the dog together.  Believing I had checked the Mom-and-Nathan-time box, I had been looking forward to tidying up the kitchen and starting dinner. (Bizarre, isn’t it, the things we grown ups looks forward to?)  But now here he was in the kitchen with me – he can see I’ve already started my work – asking me if I can toss the ball around in the way he’s doing:  toss up with one hand, repeat with the other hand, back and forth four times between hands, and – for the finale! – between the legs catching with both hands above the head!  “Betcha can’t do that, Mom!”

I look at him incredulously, as if to say, “You seriously expect me to interrupt my important work for ball tricks?”  What comes out, in a whiney voice and with a slight stomping of the feet, is: “Nathan!  I just want to do these dishes and then I’ll toss the stupid ball!”  That’s when I feel those questions resolve themselves into insight; the birds find their roost.  I could see myself modeling resistance and teaching Nathan that he had to disrupt my agenda in any way he could in order to get my attention.  I was habitually so focused on the next thing that I was blind to what was in front of me:  my child, asking to be with me, in this moment.

I immediately close up the dishwasher and do the trick for him, with my whole heart, like there’s nothing more I’d rather do, because at this moment there really isn’t.  The dishes didn’t explode, and neither did I.  Dinner waited an extra three minutes to be started, and we still all got fed that night.  We even got to bed on time.  Best of all, Nathan and I had a moment fully in the present with one another, and it felt really good.

My “Say Yes” campaign was meant for him, but I feel I got just as much out of it.  He, I think, learned that I was trustworthy:  I would listen to him, and he mattered to me, so he didn’t have to be troublesome anymore.  Since the moment he finally got through to me in the kitchen, I am happy to report that for two days running he has done his homework and gotten ready for bed without even a single prompt from me.  As for me, I became aware of how out-of-balance my life had drifted:  all head, no heart; all work, no play; all control, no flow.  I learned that I could trust my son, that he was someone worth listening to.  I hope I learn these lessons for a little bit longer this time!  Chances are, though, I will backslide, slip into old habits.  Lucky for me I’ve got Nathan to bring me back home.

Genny and her daughters

I was Genny’s doula for the birth of her second child, Sophie.  During the birth I was struck by the difference between whatI saw and what the hospital staff seemed to see.  What I saw was a powerful mother; the staff seemed to see a patient.  I wrote up my vision of this birth for Genny and this was her response:

“When I initially began reading it, I easily recognized myself and the sensations of my early labor. As I continued to read, I was taken back by this woman who was enduring a powerful, intense event!  That woman was me. I AM that woman!! Through my birth experience, I found a new strength with in myself. I did feel as though I wasn’t strong enough to endure the intense surges.  Thankfully, your guidance and support helped me persevere!  I somehow mustered the strength and confidence to trust my body and get onto my knees and began to deliver my sweet Sophie’s head. That moment is one that encourages me daily. The strength I had at that moment reminds me of how powerful my mind and body can be! I continue to trust my body, as it has proved its capable strength with out a doubt.

The next generation: They deserve more humane maternity care.

Women’s bodies have been in the news lately.  Access to contraception – whether it should be a mandatory part of insurance coverage, who should pay for it, and what it says about women who take it – has dominated political talk the past week.

Also, two states have recently passed laws requiring ultrasounds – not the usual kind, run over the belly, but the trans-vaginal kind, which must be inserted into the most private part of a woman’s anatomy, while she is laying flat on her back with her feet in stirrups – before women can have abortions.  Twenty other states already have similar laws on the books, and seven other states have recently proposed them.

There’s another facet of women’s reproductive health that I’d like to bring into this discussion: birth.  It is well known that as our Cesarian-section rate has been rising, so has maternal mortality and morbidity (illness and injury) risen.  The US now ranks 40^th in maternal mortality in the developed world.

This is important, and it gets people’s attention.  But I think it’s wrong to see maternity care as just a health issue.  It belongs in the same category as contraception and access to abortion as an issue of bodily integrity and autonomy that has health implications.  The longer I study birth, the more I see it first and foremost as a women’s issue.

This opinion is not shared by more people because of a widespread misunderstanding of the inherent dangers of birth.  As long as parents believe that birth is dangerous, they will fear it and give up control of it.  Ina May Gaskin recently said, “You can make a lot of money off scared women.”  Here are a few ways that mainstream culture communicates that birth is dangerous and encourages us willingly to surrender our autonomy and bodily integrity in birth.

1. Obstetricians.  OB’s are specialists in the pathology of pregnancy and birth, and they attend about 90% of births in the US.  Like all doctors, OB’s are trained to look for pathology and that’s what they find, even when a midwife – who is trained in a different model of care – would not.  OB’s talk to one another, confirming one another’s biases.  They’ve been doing birth so long this way that their research also reflects and confirms this bias.  In Born in the USA Dr. Marsden Wagner writes, “Obstetricians have no idea what a non-medicalized birth is.  The entire modern published literature in obstetrics is based on observations of medicalized birth.”  There are many other voices talking about the safety of natural birth, but our culture is simply saturated with messages to the contrary.  Obstetricians are also implicated in the next two points.
2. Routine Interventions.  A timely intervention can be life-saving to a mother or baby, but interventions performed on every laboring woman who comes in the door – from IV fluids to being made to give birth in a certain position – are called “routine.”  Routine interventions communicate to a mother that her body is not sufficient for the job.  This increases her fear, which increases her pain and feelings of dependency on the medical model.  More importantly, routine interventions introduce risk and frequently disrupt the natural flow of labor so profoundly that a “cascade of interventions” ensues, further endangering mothers and babies.
3. Cesarian-Section Rates.  Before I had my own baby, I believed that if we had a c-section rate of 30% in America, it was because 30% of women and/or babies would die without it.  That made me afraid of birth.  But the World Health Organization has been studying c-sections as they affect maternal-fetal health for many years.  They determined and then recently reaffirmed that a c-section rate of 10-15% is optimal; c-section rates greater than 15% create adverse outcomes.  That is, more women and infants die in countries where there are section rates greater than 15%.  As noted above, that is true in the US, which is even scarier.
4. Hospitals.  A surprisingly under-appreciated fact of birth is that the same hormone that causes sexual arousal and orgasm, oxytocin, is the prime mover of birth.  So in Nature’s elegant economy, the same hormone that got you pregnant will deliver your baby.  The trouble is that oxytocin is highly influenced by the environment.  It likes a dim, warm, hushed environment that the woman controls and where she is free from observation; i.e. the opposite of what she experiences in a hospital.  Furthermore, fear (see previous points) negatively affects the release of this vital hormone, causing labor to slow or stop altogether.  This makes sense if you remember how most mammal mothers give birth in nature, where predation is a daily threat.  If she senses a threat, her labor needs to stop so that she can move to a safer location or until the predator has moved on.  A human mother’s logical brain, which tells her that the hospital is a safe place, is not actually in charge of birth.  A more primitive part of her brain is, and it doesn’t like the atmosphere of a hospital – the bright lights and the constant noise  – or its messages to her – the machines whisper that her body will break down; the masks and gowns suggest that her bodily fluids are dangerous; the strangers clinically touching her during this most intimate act of opening dehumanize her; the fact that they are treating her like she is sick undermine her trust in her body.
5. Media.  I’m referring both to entertainment and information media.  Film and television exploit the dramatic and comedic potential of birth.  It’s dramatic to have a doctor rush in and “save” a laboring woman.  It’s hilarious when a hapless father passes out when faced with the sight of a baby emerging from his wife’s vagina.  Folk tales would be nothing without dead mothers to force their children into the homes of wicked step-mothers or into the forest.  Even so-called reality television must create some drama for their viewers, so they focus on interventions and abnormalities, and find a way to leave the viewers in doubt about whether mom and baby will make it.  Most births happen in hospitals now, away from home, so this is the only window onto birth that most people see, and it isn’t real.  Information media also does not disabuse us of this misperception.  It trusts doctors implicitly.  Obstetricians are always consulted when birth is in the news; the news media therefore affirm their authority.  And how many times have you seen a headline like this one:  “Doctor delivers baby in airplane”?  Who is the star of that article?  The doctor who stood by while the mother’s body gave birth perfectly, or the mother?

These are just a few ways that fear is used to control women at precisely the time they are actually the most powerful!  Only when families – women and men – understand that birth is safe for the vast majority of low-risk mothers will they take their rightful place in the event:  no longer patients, but parents and empowered authorities.

Coming up:  Why You Can Trust Nature’s Design for Birth. 

Imagine!  How would it change how we perceive mothers and how mothers perceive themselves if every mother had a birth in which she felt empowered and honored?  How would it change the confidence with which we mother our children?  How would it change who we mothers are in the world?

Renee Elliott

I’ve completed ten coaching sessions with Allison and I am thrilled with the work we did together.  In every situation, Allison was able to guide and support me through my difficulty.  Each time, I had a breakthrough, was able to look at the situation differently and move beyond the upset.  This, for a life coach, is not unusual, but there are two things that put Allison in a crowd of her own.  Firstly, she is a lovely mix of compassion and wholesome American with a bit of funny thrown in.  Secondly, she has an absolutely incredible ability to remember things, so much so that it almost seems like she remembered everything I said from the first to last session, down to teeny weeny details.  We would be talking about something on session 6, for example, and she would refer to some comment I had made months earlier at the beginning of our coaching and then something related from a few weeks after that – and then pull everything together to make a brilliant point.  I was floored because most people’s memories are not that good.

I have thought a lot about this and, knowing her as I do, can draw only one conclusion.  I believe it is because Allison completely LOVES what she does and really, truly cares about the people she coaches.  That is why she is such a brilliant coach.  I have recommened her to about ten of my friends, most of whom have coached with her and have been totally delighted with the results.  One girlfriend who has done more than ten sessions said, ‘Allison surprised me with things she said and really made me think.  I can’t say that about many people.’

Renée Elliott
I am the Founder of Planet Organic, UK, and author of family cookbooks and food/recipe blogs.

The Real Thing

Once again, the minute my eyes opened this morning (at 4) my mind was racing.  Thought work the past three days has been great, but perhaps it’s made me more sensitive to other painful thoughts.  It’s like I’m in a batting cage:  I hit one away and another comes.  So I tried to find the meta-thought – why have I been unable the past two days to turn off.  I keep checking e-mail and Facebook on my computer and on the phone. . . When I am confused by my feelings or behavior, I always simply ask myself, “What am I afraid of?”  In this case, what am I afraid will happen if I turn off?  “I am not enough” is the thought that bubbled up immediately in response to my question.  I think my husband’s absence has brought this thought to the fore:  not only am I creating a new business, I’m solo parenting right now.  But it’s a fundamental thought, too.  Here’s what happened:

I am not enough.

Is it true?  No.

How do I react when I believe it?  I become frantic.  I imagine what people would think of me if I didn’t respond to their inquiry or comment right away.  I scatter my energy over seven different things at once and don’t fully pay attention to anything.  I become tense.  I let the kids look after themselves, because they don’t complain.  Then I feel ungrounded and miserable.

Who would I be without the thought?  Present.  I would be a presence – radiating out and attracting – instead of an absence – needing to be needed and searching outside myself for approval, which energetically is like a black hole.  I would simply turn off the computer when the kids get home – no, I would turn it off before they get home.  I would leave the house, go outside, and walk to meet them at the corner, instead of waiting for them to come home, just so I can “squeeze in a few more tasks” before leaving my desk.  Because the kids deserve my total presence, not just the husk of a mom whose mind is elsewhere.  Actually, so do I.

Turnaround 1 (to the opposite):  I AM enough.

Proof:  Guy.  Elliot.  Nathan.  Mom.  Dad.  Jack.  Sandy.  To all these people (and one dog), I am perfect and irreplaceable.

Turnaround 2 (to the other):  Enough is me.

Proof:  Separateness is an illusion.  Oneness is the reality.  So there’s no way I could not be enough, when I am one with everything!

That felt very good, but there was more.  It kept going.  The next thought was, “I should know how to do this.”

I should know how to do this.

Is it true?  It feels true.

Can you be absolutely sure it’s true?  No.

How do I react when I believe it?  Immediately I see myself shrinking in my mind’s eye.  I become small and ineffective.  I scowl and become tense and angry with myself.  Then I push myself harder, past the point of diminishing returns, partly to punish myself.

Who would I be without the thought?  Curious.  Like a child learning something without any judgment of herself.  Laughing when I did something well, no matter how small, clapping for myself.

Turnaround:  I should NOT know how to do this.

Proof:  Of course I shouldn’t!  I haven’t done this before!  If I already knew how to do it, it would either be old hat for me — why would I continue doing the same old thing?  Or I would be repeating someone else’s work, and what’s the point of that when someone else has already done it?  No, I am creating something unique, as I go. Yes, I’ve been prepared for it, but the path is new.

Ah!  Relief!  Freedom!  That was it.  Free from those thoughts that conflict with reality – the reality of oneness, the reality that we’re here not to “get things done,” but to experience joy – in rushed fresh inspiration for the day.  Today I will be a presence.  Today I will let everything be new.

Into my head popped Juliet’s incandescent lines in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. 

The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.

Oh, Shakespeare!  You understood!  More than that, you remind me how falling in love effortlessly gives one the perspective I needed Thought Work to find today.

My challenge to you and to myself today is to be a lover.  Really see the people and the things in your life today.  As you experience them, remember how you fell in love.  Allow yourself to feel those feelings again, as if for the first time!  Notice what happens when you do.

Just crinkle them all up!

The reason I began this writing project at all, rather than staying in hiding and self-imposed captivity, is Thought Work.  Thought Work is the process I use to question and then dismantle the thoughts that keep me in my mental cage.  The result of Thought Work is one less bar, and in its place, a little more freedom, and room for inspiration.

Many of you, I know, are already familiar with Thought Work from any number of sources.  In case you aren’t, the idea behind it is that, most of the time, our circumstances don’t cause us pain.  Our thoughts about our circumstances cause us pain.  My teacher, Dr. Martha Beck, has a great explanation of this in her latest (wonderful!) book, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.  She says if you can explain your problem to a wordless creature – say, your hamster or your pre-verbal child – it’s a real problem.  If you can’t, it’s a story – a string of thoughts – that your mind is spinning and you’re believing.  This is not to say you’re not in pain, quite the contrary.  It is to show us that changing our circumstances is seldom needed to end our pain.  Rather, changing our thoughts is usually more powerful.

There are many methods for doing Thought Work, but my favorite is The Work of Byron Katie, also called Inquiry.  In The Work, you identify a thought that’s causing you pain and then ask four questions about it:  Is it true?  Can you be absolutely certain it’s true?  How do you react when you believe the thought?  Who would you be without the thought?  Once you’ve done that process – and it must be experienced to be understood – you then turn the thought around to its opposites, to see if those might be just as true or truer.  The process is simple and absolutely transformational.  I’ll demonstrate The Work I did this morning below, but go ahead and watch the master, Katie, at www.thework.com.  Watch videos, download worksheets, it’s all there.

To find a thought that causes you pain, ask yourself simply, “What sucks right now?”  The minute I opened my eyes yesterday morning, my mind began spinning with Things That Needed To Be Done.  Before my feet had touched the floor Monday morning, I already felt behind!  I have a practice, though, that I have done every morning for about five years that grounds me.  It’s the one I encouraged you to do yesterday:  ten minutes of deep breathing.  At the end of this ten minutes I usually drift into some kind of meditation – I can’t say I’m “good” at it, but I keep doing it, because I notice when I don’t.  I feel like I might float away on days I skip it, so I usually don’t.

At the end of my breathing, I remembered Martha’s book, in which she describes techniques for falling into wordlessness – a break from thought – which I needed.  One of the techniques is Thought Work, so I asked myself, “What sucks right now?”  The answer:  “I have too much to do.”  I did The Work on that thought.  This is how it went:

I have too much to do.

Is it true?  Yes.

Can I be absolutely certain it’s true?  No.

How do I react when I believe it?  I feel heavy and frantic.  I feel small, no match for the towering piles of What Must Be Done.  I have no idea where to start, so I do nothing.  It feels terrible, futile, lonely, cold.

Who would I be without the thought?  I would be the still presence inside the storm.  Curious.  Open.  Sensitive to The Thing That Wants To Be Done.  I can feel where Flow is strongest and I can jump into it!  I feel powerful!

Turnaround:  I do not have too much to do.

How might that be true?  I’m not doing a thing right now, and I’m okay.  If I never do another thing, the world will continue and I’ll be fine.  In fact, I’ll still love and be loved, what else is the point?  Eckhardt Tolle sat on a park bench for two years and did nothing and look at him now!

Free from the thought, “I have too much to do,” I felt light and free.  And when I sat down at my desk, the Thing That Wanted To Be Done was writing.  So I looked at my cache of ideas for blog posts and found the dolphin.  I had stopped writing the post because I didn’t know what I wanted to say, I didn’t know what it meant.  But when I looked at it yesterday, I knew.  Not only did I know what it wanted to be, but it inspired me.

All that freedom and inspiration from doing The Work on one little thought!

My challenge for you today is to ask yourself, “What sucks right now?”  If you’re unused to noticing your thoughts, just noticing is enough for now.  If you’re used to noticing, go ahead and do The Work on your thought.  Then notice what inspiration spills in once you’re free from the thought.

 2012 February 7

They're a lot like us.

We recently visited an aquarium in Tokyo.  A smiling dolphin is the mascot of the place, and the twice-daily dolphin shows are the highlight of a visit there.  As space is at such a premium in Tokyo, the tanks are small — by American standards, or (it must be said) in comparison to the ocean from which all the creatures had been taken.  Before the show we watched a pair of dolphins swim round and round a tank the size of my living room.  Their eyes were closed as they swam, and it made me wonder if they swam that way in nature, or if they did that to avoid the dozens of eyes that watched them on the other side of the glass.  Were they imagining that they were really swimming in the sea?  Maybe it was relaxing to swim that way.  I don’t know.

I was ambivalent about being there at all.  I had recently watched the movie, “The Cove,” about a cove here in Japan into which fishermen drive pods of dolphins.  They put metal pipes down into the sea beyond the cove and beat the pipes.  This metal cacophony would confuse any sea creature, but it is torture for the dolphin, who navigates its world through sonar.  The confused and frightened dolphins swim as fast as they can away from the noise only to end up trapped in the cove.  The fishermen then capture the ones who seem fit for sale to aquariums – they can fetch $100,000 per dolphin – and the rest they kill and sell as “whale meat,” which Japanese people began eating after WWII.  Japanese people would not knowingly eat dolphin for the same reasons Americans wouldn’t.  Dolphin flesh is saturated with mercury, so it is toxic to the body.  But the thought of eating a dolphin. . . well, it’s toxic to the soul, as well.

I learned from the movie that aquarium dolphins often die soon after they are captured.  Those who live develop ulcers and have short life spans compared to wild dolphins.

The activist behind “The Cove” is actually the man who trained Flipper.  He says he realized the harm he was perpetuating by keeping dolphins in captivity when the main dolphin who played Flipper, whom he called Kathy, whom he loved like a child, swam into his arms and stopped breathing.  Unlike us, dolphins are conscious breathers; they choose when – and if, apparently – to breathe.  He says Kathy “committed suicide” by choosing not to breathe.  Since that moment he has made it his life’s work to free captive dolphins everywhere.  Once he learned of the source of captured dolphins, this Cove, he has risked his life again and again to expose it.

And there I was, choosing to support an aquarium that drives the market for captured dolphins because I wanted to entertain my children for the day.

I’m a life coach, and I identified with this activist and dolphin liberator, because it’s my life’s work to liberate mothers from captivity – not physical captivity but the captivity of self-defeating thoughts.  Most of us swim in our own invisible tank, the glass walls made of self-criticism and our culture’s impossible expectations of women, but especially of mothers.  We swim round and round with our eyes closed – telling ourselves it’s enough, telling ourselves it’s safe here, maybe opening our eyes to watch go by the world on the other side, maybe wondering if the spectators think we look fat from behind.  Like the captive dolphins, many of us develop stress-related illness – I am not a doctor but I have read enough Christiane Northrup and Deepak Chopra to know how mental and emotional distress causes physical illness.  We also forget to breathe – not the little, shallow breaths that just get the job done, but deep belly breaths that come naturally to babies and animals, and which communicate to our bodies that we are fine.

My cognitive dissonance – identifying with this activist and liberator and then working against him anyway by supporting the market for captured dolphins – has made me wonder how I work against myself, keep myself in captivity while exhorting my clients to be free.

Inspired by my Martha Beck Certified Life Coach colleagues, weight loss coach Betsy Salzer (http://www.denverpost.com/fitness/ci_19691671) and executive coach Susan Foster (http://susancfoster.com/30-days-of-positivity-it-begins-day-1), I’m setting myself a public challenge:  to write and publish a blog post every day about the ways in which I walk-the-walk of liberation.  The reason I’m doing this is that it’s what I’m most afraid of.  On the glass walls of my captivity are written thoughts like this:  “Sure, I can write, but publish?  What if people don’t like it?  What if no one reads it? People will think I’m self-absorbed to be writing about my own experiences.  Who am I to be adding my voice to an already crowded blogosphere?”  I actually could go on, but you get the point!

Join me?

I’m challenging myself.  I’d like to challenge you, too.  Kathy, the dolphin, ended her life by choosing not to breathe anymore.  My challenge to you today is to affirm your commitment to living by breathing deeply.  Spend ten minutes sitting comfortably, feet on the ground, and breathe in all the way down to your toes.  Inhale through your nose to a count of ten and exhale out your nose to a count of ten.  Fill your lungs then keep pulling air in, allowing your diaphragm to expand deeply into your belly, until your entire torso feels full of breath.  Allow the muscles of your face to relax, relax your jaw, your shoulders, then your pelvic floor.  Notice how it feels in your body to breathe so deeply and to relax so profoundly.

What do you notice?

2012 February 6

Day One: new baby, new mum

Allison’s HypnoBirthing training allowed me to feel confident and sure of myself about the birth of my child. I’m not sure if I could have done anything to prepare myself better for the roller coaster ride of the first few months of motherhood, but the New Mums coaching sessions I receive from Allison are a vital part of surviving and thriving through them!

First, it is very comforting to know that every week, you are able to pour your heart out to someone who isn’t going to judge you about your worries, your frustrations, your middle-of-the-night inspired “I’m a bad mother” moments.

After Allison listens to your outpouring, you both question some of the thoughts you’ve expressed, imagining how you’d feel without them and analyzing if the opposite of the thoughts could also be true. I find this work challenging actually, but I love it, and the process always leaves me feeling physically and mentally lighter.

I love practical solutions, and I’ve been able to go away after each session equipped with another tool to help me at first cope, then grow and thrive as a new mum.

Chrissy, teacher and mum to Ella

Tokyo

Ella, 5 months

I really wanted a natural birth because of my desire to move around and use any position I liked during birth, and because of my belief that a birth without any medical interventions is best for baby and mother. Giving birth at Aqua Birth house, using HypnoBirthing techniques allowed me to achieve this dream!

On Monday the 5th of September, I had to visit the doctor affiliated with Aqua Birth house as I had reached week 41 of my pregnancy with no sign of baby. You can only give birth at the birth center between 37 and 42 weeks and if there are no complications. The doctor said my cervix was soft and I was 1.5cm dilated and that I’d have to come in to his clinic to be induced with Pitocin the following Monday if baby hadn’t appeared by then.

Perhaps Ella didn’t like the sound of induction, perhaps it was down to all the combined efforts of natural induction I tried that evening- lots of pineapple, acupressure points and clary sage oil, or perhaps this day was my real due date after all! Whatever it was, I was woken up by my first surge (contraction) at around 11pm. I immediately used the HypnoBirthing breathing and vizualisation techniques I knew so well. I can’t express how much they help! They allow you to work with your body through each surge and I can honestly say I quite enjoyed most of the surges- the ones towards the end were a bit more intense!

The surges came every half an hour throughout the night, waking me up each time but I slept in-between. By the morning, they were about 15 minutes apart but not regular. My mother-in-law and husband were at home with me but I liked keeping the surges secret for the moment! I went ahead with a normal day with stretching and a good breakfast. By midday it was obvious the surges were the real thing as they were getting more intense and closer together. My mum-in-law massaged my back throughout each one, and my husband chose a rom-com for me to watch for distraction! I was too distracted to watch it though, and I remember doing some much needed vacuuming and dusting instead (very last minute nesting!). The surges continued to intensify and I spent most of the afternoon in the bath listening to the HypnoBirthing relaxation tracks. By 6pm, it was obvious I should think about getting to the birth center as the surges were getting close to 6 minutes apart. I hadn’t eaten yet, and I have to say: prepare something quick and easy before! I hadn’t, and my husband’s efforts were unfortunately not quick or tasty enough and I didn’t manage to eat much as my surges were quickly getting closer together. I recommend using a contraction app on your smart phone by the way- easiest way to time them. By 7pm the surges were coming regularly at 5 minutes apart and we left in a taxi for the birth center.

When I arrived at the birth center, my surges were monitored and the midwife found that they had become weaker and irregular. I was 4cm dilated. She said that I could either return home or stay over and hope that they resumed in the morning. My husband tells me that I became quite annoyed by the suggestion I had to wait and that I insisted I was going to have the baby that evening and I’d walk up and down the stairs to get the surges going again.

The next few hours really are a blur, but the surges certainly returned and by 11 pm I was already 10cm dilated and wanting to push. The time between 8 and 11 was spent in the tatami room upstairs and then in the delivery room downstairs, changing positions between all-fours and on my side, with lots of cushions in-between my legs. I listened to the birth affirmations section of the HypnoBirthing CD most of the time and used lavender oil. I felt very calm and relaxed.

My primary midwife called a second midwife and my bath was run. I got in the bath, which felt extremely relaxing. I got too relaxed it seems as my surges weakened. The midwives suggested that I would get too tired to push if I remained in the water. Perhaps this is where I could have been more insistent about my wish to give birth gently in water by bearing down rather than by pushing but the offer that it would be faster and less tiring if I squatted tempted me, so I got out of the bath and went to the birth stool. I remember noticing that it was 11:45PM on the 6th at this point and I thought it would be cool if I could birth my baby by midnight! It wasn’t to be the 3 easy pushes I had hoped for. Ella was posterior so it was a bit more difficult to get her down the birth canal, but there’s no backing out so you just go for it!

I felt her head and she was still in her sac, my waters hadn’t broken even at this stage. At 12:39pm the midwives started telling me to put my hands down to catch her but I almost missed her as I thought they were still telling me to point my chin down as they’d been telling me the whole time. Luckily I got their meaning and, along with my husband who reached round me, we caught our baby girl. We brought her up onto my chest and we lay back onto the bed. The cord was left connected for a good 3 minutes while Ella was on my chest. She found my breast soon after and suckled. The midwives left her there for about half an hour before taking her to be weighed and measured. She came back quickly and my husband, Ella and I were left alone for about an hour. We were helped up to our tatami room and spent the rest of the night sleeping all together on the futon. I fully recommend the birth center if you speak a little Japanese. Feel free to mail me if you are considering a HypnoBirthing or drug-free birth center birth! chrissybodington@gmail.com