Blissful Birth
Childbirth, Naturally

Not birth related, but hats off to Bernadine Coady, who used self hypnosis to control the pain whilst having knee surgery.

She told surgeon Ahmed Shair of the private Orthopaedics and Spine Specialist Hospital in Cambridgeshire that she could feel only tugging and pulling. She said “I was just telling the surgeon, I felt uncomfortable as I had too many pillows! My positioning gave me more problems than the knee!”

“I didn’t feel any pain” said the 67-year-old from Cambridgeshire. “I imagine two blocks of ice on my knee to freeze it and spray the top of my knee and that’s all my preparation.”

You can see the BBC news report and video here.

What a shining example of the power of self hypnosis. Rob has written more about this on our cognitive hypnotherapy blog, but just think, if she can use self hypnosis to make a major operation pain free, how useful would it be if you could use it even a fraction as well as Bernadine did while you are giving birth?

Bye for now,
Heidi

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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…