Imagine being the unborn baby floating comfortably in the warm, soft,
dark, fluid space of your mother's womb, drifting in and out of sleep,
surrounded by muffled sounds and heartbeats.
Then imagine the
sudden shock of being awakened suddenly, and pushed and squeezed into the
harsh, stark, and noisy outside world, amid your mother's pained shrieks,
racing heart, and adrenalin charged system! Add to that the strain of an
unusually long labour, painful forced delivery, or a life-threatening
situation. Then add the inevitable distress of the mother, to whom the baby is
psychologically and energetically linked, and you have birth trauma. Now try to
imagine, on top of all that, the added distress on the newborn infant of being
removed from the mother for emergency treatment without the all important skin
to skin contact or the initial bonding between mum and baby. What an incredibly
cruel, loveless, unpredictable and scary place the world would seem to the
distressed newborn. That is the experience and sensation that is imprinted onto
the traumatised baby’s untainted mind. A newborn's immature nervous system is
purely unconscious mind, combined with life or death driven emotion, so it does
not have the cognitive capacity to be able to sort experiences and make sense
of the world in a logical, conscious way. Its mind is like a blank sheet on
which is printed the fi rst experiences. And this imprint becomes a vital part
of the child's life and future experiences. What are the long-term
psychological effects for children who have had traumatic births and are they
more likely to be anxious or aggressive than their easy-birth counterparts? Of
course genetics and many other factors come into the equation too, but, if all
else was equal, the child who was traumatised at birth would be more vulnerable
to psychological problems. Separation from the mother at birth, as well as the
mother's own post-trauma stress response, can affect the early bonding between
the mother and child, which is another major factor in the child's psychological
development. As a HypnoBirthing practitioner and doula, whenever I am presented
with a highly anxious, angry, or oppositional child, I always ask the parents
about the child's trauma history, including their birth experience. Actually I
do this with my HypnoBirthing couples too. And very often the links are
obvious. I have two very different children. My first birth was very traumatic
resulting in an assisted delivery with baby needing to spend the fi rst week of
his life in the special care baby unit. For my second birth I had found
HypnoBirthing and how lucky did I feel. What a beautiful, amazing birth
experience I had.There is a definite difference in the nature of my two
children and I put this down to their birth imprint. My first birth resolved
in a baby with sleep problems,colic and learning diffi culties.Ten years on I
can say that my child can be extremely anxious, lacks confi dence and shows
obsessive behavour. My daughter on the otherhand is balanced, calm, relaxed and
happy and has always been that way since her gentle natural, drug-free
HypnoBirth. The way we birth our babies matters! I run coffee mornings with my
HypnoBirthing couples and sometimes there are fifteen babies in the room at a
time. They are calm, chilled and relaxed and I am sure this is because they
have been bought into the world in the best possible way using HypnoBirthing.
There really is no better gift to give your baby than a traumafree birth and do
everything in our power as parents to prevent any physical and psychological
damage right from the very start.
Birtheasy
teaches Hypnobirthing in Herts, Essex and London.
Please contact
www.birtheasy.co.uk or phone 07951102213 for details of your nearest
HypnoBirthing course.
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