Blissful Birth
Childbirth, Naturally

Our payment processor, PayPal have recently launched a prize draw in which you can win back the cost of your purchase – in other words, you could end up getting our product for free!

Every week from now until 20 December 2009, PayPal will be paying back 500 lucky customers for one of their PayPal purchases.

Full details here:
https://www.paypal-marketing.co.uk/campaigns/win/

Bye for now
Heidi

Congratulations to Dr Denis Walsh, one of the UK’s most influential midwives, who spoke out saying that mother and child would benefit if the ‘epidural epidemic’ gave way to yoga, hypnosis and birthing pools.

The Guardian Observer reveals that Dr Denis Walsh, a senior midwife and associate professor in midwifery at Nottingham University, said that hospital maternity staff are too quick to offer an epidural injection or agree to a painkilling injection request from a mother in labour.

Dr Walsh insisted that labour pain is natural, healthy and temporary, but the current culture of celebrity has made pain relief seem normal.

Unsurprisingly, his comments prompted a furious reaction from many quarters, but in my view this backlash only served to obsure his core messages.

Giving Birth is not a medical condition – it is a natural process.

And yet the number of women having an epidural has nearly doubled, despite medical risks such as a prolonged first and second stage of labour, a heightened chance of the baby’s head being in the wrong place and lower rates of breastfeeding.

And crucially, Dr Walsh says – “in the west it has never been safer to have a baby, yet it appears that women have never been more frightened of the processes”.

In my experience, it is this fear which makes labour more painful than it needs to be – as fear causes tension which slows down the process of giving birth.

Why?

Because, in survival terms, your body (and ‘mother nature’) knows that giving birth in a ‘dangerous’ situation could be fatal to you and your baby. Fear is the alarm bell that warns the body of danger.

The thing is, your body doesn’t know you are frightened of experiencing labour pain – so a vicious circle of fear, pain and tension sets up. In other words, women experience more pain in labour than is necessary because we have been conditioned to expect it.

It doesn’t have to be like that – and whether you choose to learn birth relaxation and reduce labour pain with our Blissful Birth programme, or you choose an alternative approach like HypnoBirthing or Yoga, you owe it to yourself to break that conditioning and have as relaxed a birth experience as possible for you and your baby.

Bye for now,
Heidi

Ps – Please leave your feedback and comments below!

It has been a while since I posted a blog entry – life with two boys is busy as you might imagine, so it hasn’t left a lot of time to write.

Our eldest turned three years old last month, which made me think how quickly time goes with children around – in hypnosis we call it ‘Time Distortion’ (which, by the way, is also a very useful technique to help change your perception of contractions in labour too).

It also means that the Blissful Birth programme is three years old now – and still going strong. Thanks to everyone who has purchased the programme over the last few years, and for telling your friends too.

It’s not much in the way of a return favour, but those of you who have already been through the Blissful Birth programme and have children will probably already know about ‘Handy Manny’ – which airs on Playhouse Disney.

Our eldest loves the programme (he even had Handy Manny plates and cups at his party), as well as the songs they sing. So after some fruitless googling for the lyrics, I decided to do a public service and put them here.

Those of you who are still pregnant will thank me one day

“Work Together”
Let’s get going and fix it right,
Twist and turn, make it tight,
Trabajamos juntos (← ‘we work together’)
we work together now.

Cut it, measure em, tap it flat,
Bend and twist, just like that,
Each of us has a special job,
We work together – Todos juntos (← ‘everyone together’)
We can fix it right!

“Let’s get to work”
Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro, Cinco, Seis, Siete, Ocho, (Neuve)
Hop up jump in,
Come on let’s go
Hop up jump in
Si vamanos (← ‘yes, lets go!’)
Hop up jump in
Don’t move too slow – keep up!
Let’s get to work
Muy rapido! (← ‘quickly!’)

Bye for now,
Heidi

Ps – Glad to have these? Think I’ve finally gone mad? Did I miss something? Leave your feedback below!

Sorry, our flagship Deluxe Home Study Birth Programme is now closed, and will not reopen again until the New Year. In the meantime, you can get hold of our Standard programme for a whopping 25% off our regular price…

… call it an early Christmas present from me to you.

Bye for now,
Heidi

Ps – if you are expecting a baby around Christmas, why not say ‘hi’ by posting a comment below!

In the last week, the US Federal government has bailed out two key mortgage institutions, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank has filed for bankruptcy; Meryl Lynch has been sold off to Bank of America, and stock markets around the world have been plummeting. And on the news there are comparisons to the Great Depression of 1929.

Now, I’m no financial expert, but it looks like tough times are ahead… and we already know how financially stretching it can be when you are preparing to give birth (even when times are good!)

So, we’ve decided to do our bit to help out by bringing back our popular ‘Pay What You Like’ promotion.

Yes, that’s right – we’ve listed our regular selling prices as a guide, but it really is up to you to decide what you can afford to pay for our Self Hypnosis for Childbirth MP3 programme and our Standard Self Hypnosis and Relaxation Birth Programme.

We’ll try keep this promotion running as long as we can, but reserve the right to withdraw it at any time without notice, so please order asap.

You can pay whatever you can afford, from one penny to full price (or more if you are feeling particularly flush – we won’t mind!)

Oh, and of course you still get our unconditional 30 day money back guarantee too.

Bye for now,
Heidi

Ps – You really can just pay whatever you can afford, because we would rather that you get benefit from the programme and then tell all your friends than miss out because things are tough right now. So choose the programme that is right for you and order now.

[Edit: Sorry, this promotion has now ended!]

I came across an article in the Independent which reports that many English hospitals had to turn away women in labour last year because they were full.

The BBC reports that of the 70 per cent of hospital trusts that provided data, more than 40 per cent said they had been forced to shut their doors or divert women to other sites at least once.

One in 10 said it happened more than 10 times…

“It is difficult to precisely predict when a mother will go into labour and sometimes, at times of peak demand, maternity units do temporarily divert women to nearby facilities,” a Department of Health spokesman told the BBC.

“When this does happen it is often only for a few hours and to ensure mother and baby can receive the best care possible.”

For me, this is an important reminder that many things in the process of giving birth are just outside of your control – and the only thing you do have choice over is how you respond to the situation.

As Blissful Birth mothers know, our programme helps you relax and mentally prepare for birth, so that if these unexpected things happen, you are better able to cope and remain in control.

Bye for now,
Heidi

Ps – If you have a comment or story to share, please post it below.

We didn’t really know what to expect when we launched our ‘pay what you like‘ promotion to celebrate our oldest son’s second birthday last month (2 years!! – time certainly flies when you have children!).

We thought maybe people would just take advantage, especially with the world in the middle of a credit crunch.

But, to our very pleasant surprise, the vast majority of people were very respectful when deciding how much to pay.

So, to say thank you, we have decided to extend the promotion another month on our Birth Hypnosis MP3s and Standard Birth Programme.

Bye for now,
Heidi

[Edit: Sorry, this promotion has now ended!]

I can hardly believe that our eldest son is 2 this month, which means that Blissful Birth is fast approaching 3 years old.

To celebrate, we have decided to ‘do a Radiohead’ – in other words, from now until the end of June, you can pay what you want for our programmes.

Yes, that’s right – we’ve listed our regular selling prices as a guide, but it really is up to you to decide what our programme is worth to you.

But hurry, because we only have 50 copies of our Deluxe home study programme available this month. After that, you will only be able to get the Standard programme or Self Hypnosis MP3.

Find out more about our Blissful Birth programmes here.

Bye for now,
Heidi

Ps – Full programme goes back on public sale at 18:00 GMT on 20th June 2008…

[Edit: Sorry, this promotion has now ended!]

We had a really tough time choosing the winners of our competition. People entered from all over the world – from Alaska to Australia – and with every possible reason for wanting our programme.

There were first-time mums, women planning their last baby, women planning to get pregnant, women due any day now, midwives and doulas wanting to better help their clients, people wanting to help pregnant friends or family members and more.

As we went through all the entries and read why so many people want our programme, we were really touched.

But at the same time, we came to the realisation that we made a mistake in setting that competition question, because to choose winners would be like saying one person’s need was greater than someone else’s.

So, we decided… to make everyone who entered a winner.

(I can just imagine our accountant choking on his coffee right about now…)

Winners will shortly receive an email with the details you need to download our programme. If you entered, but don’t get an email within the next 24 hours, please contact us.

We hope that all you winners will enjoy using our programme and we look forward to hearing back from you with your experiences and birth stories. And if our programme helps you, please “pay it forward” by telling others about us too.

Your feedback and personal recommendations help us spread the Blissful Birth message faster so that we can help even more women give birth feeling confident, relaxed and in control.

Bye for now,
Heidi

Ps – Please leave us a comment below.

Click on the Blissful Birth Workbook image to get a sneak look at the table of contents and a chapter sample from our programme workbook.

The workbook comes with both our Standard and Deluxe birth programme packages.

Bye for now,
Heidi

Ps – Please leave a comment & tell me what you think.