Blissful Birth
Childbirth, Naturally

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!]

An article in The Independent (30th Jan 2007) reports:

Research at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide, where hypnosis is used for women in labour, shows it is highly effective. Women who had the therapy, which was given after 37 weeks gestation, used fewer epidurals – 36 per cent compared with 53 per cent in other women. A second study showed that women taught self-hypnosis reduced their need for analgesia by half, epidurals by 70 per cent, and were more than twice as likely to be satisfied with their pain management in labor compared with other women.

Bye for now,
Heidi

Ps – Why not start learning self hypnosis for childbirth today…

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.

The good news is that in response to client feedback, we have re-introduced our self hypnosis for childbirth MP3 programme so that people can purchase it separately again. We have also created a ’standard’ version of our programme which comes without any support. Take a look at our products page for more info on the different ways to get Blissful Birth.

The bad news is that our introductory pricing is coming to an end. Sorry folks, but if you were thinking of getting the programme and want to lock in our introductory pricing, you need to act quickly. We are going to going to revert to regular prices once we have sold 50 more copies of our programme or on 31st May, whichever comes sooner.

The great news is that we are running a competition at the moment and are giving away a copy of our full home study programme to 5 lucky winners. Even better, if you have already purchased our deluxe home study programme and you turn out to be a winner, we’ll refund your money as your prize instead. Competition also ends 31st May, and you can enter here.

Bye for now,
Heidi

We have 5 copies of our full birth preparation programme to give away. To be in with a chance to win a free copy of the Blissful Birth programme, please go to.

http://www.blissfulbirth.co.uk/competition.php

Competition closes 31st May 2008.

Good Luck
Heidi

Ps – You can still enter even if you purchase the programme during this competition. If you are a winner, we’ll just refund your money!

We had a great question on our facebook discussion board the other day from Leigh.

-> Your programme sounds very very like hypnobirthing mixed around……??

Well, it’s true that we have the same underlying philosophy as HypnoBirthing(R) – i.e. that childbirth need not be painful. We also believe that it is fear and tension which interfere with birth, causing longer labour and labour pain.

But then, this idea was not invented by HypnoBirthing(R) either. It was British obstetrician, Dr Grantly Dick-Read (1890–1959, and first president of the National Childbirth Trust here in the UK), who first proposed the idea in his 1933 book “Childbirth Without Fear”.

Now, we’re not going to knock HypnoBirthing(R), because it works, and has a lot of supporters worldwide. It is undoubtedly the best known of the hypnosis for birthing approaches using Dr Dick-Read’s philosophy.

And as Hypnotherapists ourselves, we could have saved ourselves the bother of going up against the mighty HypnoBirthing(R) empire and just paid to attend a practitioner course. That way, we could have used their name and helped mothers prepare for childbirth the “HypnoBirthing(R) way”.

But we are Cognitive Hypnotherapists by trade. And whilst traditional hypnosis techniques work well for lots of people, the cognitive approaches to hypnotherapy are being scientifically proven to work even better.

So, rather than just blindly following the herd (and wanting the best approach for our own births!), we decided to see if we could do it our way. Especially the fear removal side of things, which is at the core of the philosophy of natural birth.

Now, because of our similar philosophy, we’re pretty sure our programme would fit someone who has done HypnoBirthing(R) before, or heard good things about it.

So why would someone choose little old us instead?

Well, for starters, you can download our programme and learn at your own pace at home. With HypnoBirthing(R) you have to pay out for a HypnoBirthing(R) class to get all the fear removal stuff.

You also get personal support from experienced Cognitive Hypnotherapists (that’s us!), whereas your HypnoBirthing(R) practitioner does not even have to be a qualified hypnotherapist.

You also get a 30 day, no hassle and no quibble money back guarantee from us. Try asking your HypnoBirthing(R) practitioner for that!

Bye for now,
Heidi

Ps – our programme is now open again for May. Remember, we only have around 50 spots available each month, so if you would like to become a Blissful Birther this month, now is the best time to do it.

Scientific research has consistently found that cognitive and behavioural approaches, and hypnotherapy, work better than other forms of therapy. New research confirms that used together, they are the most effective.

Research by Smith et al (1980), who conducted a meta analysis of 475 controlled studies employing tens of thousands of participants, measured the “effect size” of different types of psychotherapy, and found that only four categories performed better than the average of all therapies. Specifically,

“Cognitive, cognitive behavioural therapies, hypnotherapy, and systematic desensitisation appeared most effective.” (Smith et al., 1980: 124).

Efficacy of Different Modalities of Psychotherapy
(Smith et al.)

1. “Other cognitive therapies.”
(Including Cognitive Hypnotherapy, d=2.38)

2. Hypnotherapy.
(Mainly of a psychodynamic nature, d=1.82)

3. Cognitive-behavioural therapy.
(d=1.13)

4. Systematic desensitisation.
(Which often employed hypnotic induction, d=1.05)

Comparison of Effect Size Graph

It appears that the use of hypnotherapy creates a “synergistic” effect when combined with cognitive-behavioural therapy.

This conclusion has been supported by the multi-factorial, controlled studies of Donald Tosi and his colleagues, which established the benefits of Cognitive Hypnotherapy over either traditional hypnotherapy or CBT alone for a range of conditions.

Similarly, an influential meta-analysis of 18 controlled studies, using 577 subjects, published by Irvine Kirsch proved that 70% of CBT clients experienced more improvement when CBT was combined with hypnosis (i.e. Cognitive Hypnotherapy).

As experienced Cognitive Hypnotherapists ourselves, it is great to see the approach we use being scientifically validated (and proven most effective!).

And, of course, the Blissful Birth programme is firmly based on the principles of Cognitive Hypnotherapy.

Well, what else would you expect!

Bye for now,
Heidi

We finally got with the technology and took the plunge on facebook.

You can visit our shiny brand new, just out of the bubble wrap Blissful Birth facebook page here:

You can also get to it by clicking the facebook logo on our blog.

If you are a facebooker, please stop by and say hi by adding yourself as a fan and leaving a comment on our wall or discussion board.

Take care,
Heidi

Ps – I’m not sure facebooker is an official term. I may have just made it up!

We have found out that a number of other hypnotists have recently released products also entitled “Blissful Birth”, including an audio programme released by Glenn Harold in September 2007 and a book by Julia Wilson in 2008. The dotcom version of our domain name has also recently gone from being parked to a website in progress.

These programmes and websites are not affiliated with us in any way, nor do they cover our stuff. The only place to get the original Blissful Birth programme is here, from us, at www.blissfulbirth.co.uk.

Blissful Birth. Created 2005. Established online in 2006.