Sabrina expressed her fears around pregnancy and giving birth shortly after we discovered Esteban had joined us, so I sat down and researched for an entire month. This felt important to me. And what I discovered shocked me. The process of baby making appears to be completely misunderstood and the fear many women feel is the very thing creating the problems they are focused on not having during their birth experience.
It takes TWO to tango 💃
The first common misconception is from the men. Most of us don't seem to fully understand our role in this creation process which began between our legs. We should not stand idly by but instead take an active role in facilitating optimum conditions. I will expand on this later.
Life begins at conception 🌱
The foetus is receiving signals from both mother and father from the moment it is created. Having a baby is not just about giving birth, it is in fact more about the 9 month period prior to this.
Fear spreads like a wild fire ⚡️
Beware the horror stories of other women. They are not relevant to your own experience. Pregnancy & birth CAN be a wonderful enlightening experience and the stories which describe this are the ones you want to be listening to.
That's our specially designed Christmas photo for the family & friends that year ;)
It quickly became evident to me during my research that FEAR is the root of the problem during the birth experience:
fear creates stress - stress creates tension - tension creates pain
Relaxation is the key to an effective birth.
But how to achieve this during such an intense experience?
Hynobirthing
The term felt misleading to me because it made me think of hypnotism! This is what it means:
Hypnobirthing is a tried and proven method that guides and prepares a woman in giving birth in a peaceful and extraordinarily beautiful manner. It is a program that considers the psychological, as well as the physical, well-being of the mother, her birth partner, and the newborn, independent of context, whether that be in the quiet of a home, a hospital, or a birth center. hypnobirthing.com
Sounds great right? I resonated with this immediately and watched endless films of women given birth using this technique (which they had been practicing for 9 months) and was stunned to have my (television induced) perception of the birth experience completely turned on its head.
The sweet sound of birth
Instead of the expected screams there was silence. It was always a totally calm atmosphere (usually with music) and at times the women giving birth even appeared to be asleep.
For me hypnobirthing was about getting rid of any fears and training the mind to relax at a given set of triggers.
After reviewing a number of different hypnobirthing techniques including the much hyped Mongan Method I decided that I knew enough to do what had to be done and went about creating a system with Sabrina which felt right for us.
Daily focus on fun creativity
The first thing I did was to start a project which would creatively document (one photo a day) the entire pregnancy period. The time-lapse film was something Sabrina & I worked on as a team, coming up with the storyboard together. It was a project which held much positive energy and the excitement of being able to finish it grew as the date of the birth drew closer.
I know I post this film a lot on Steemit, but it happens to be one of my favourite time-lapses and for those of you who haven't seen it, I am sure you will enjoy. It's just one min long. Go on... you know you want to :)
Daily body movement
For me this meant adventure! We lived in the South of France in this period and it was easy to find a new place to go exploring every day.
When we didn't go out we did stretching and exercises together instead.
Preparing the mind
Some days we simply chose to rest, but without fail we ALWAYS sat together in the same place every day for a minimum of 30mins to do our routine.
After 10 mins of mediation (always to the same music) we would gently speak out a list of positive affirmations we had prepared together. Me in English and then her in French. I felt it to be important that we both spoke in our native languages as one body with two voices.
The affirmations
We searched for a long time to make our list. Looking online we were able to find so many examples and whenever we came across one we both loved it went on the list.
Here are some examples taken from Every Day Affirmations:
After speaking each of the affirmations in english & french we would sit in silence and bask in the great feeling left by the words. We would do this for as long as we felt we needed to. Our list grew to be around 30 affirmations in the end.
Neural pathways
Can you see what is being done by repeating these kind of words on a daily basis? New neural pathways are being built in the brain making it easier to slip into this higher frequency of thought. The music was our trigger and just as Pavlov's dog began to salivate at the sound of a bell, we began to automatically sense this bliss upon hearing the music. It still works today, almost three years later.
Reiki & Sungazing
I felt as if my role was also to gain as strong a connection as possible in this period. Like always I didn't wear shoes and like always I got up before sunrise to greet the new day in my preferred way. The difference now was that I did it with the intention of being guided by Source so that I may be of assistance in bringing this magical child into the world.
Here you can see me with my fire staff in the light of the morning sun. My routine was an hour. First I would meditate, then I would sun-gaze and then, full of energy, I would spin the staff till I was ready to go home and shower.
I gave Reiki to both Sabrina and Esteban regularly. He may have been unborn but he was still able to sense my hands close to him and would kick when I focused on his energy.
Crystals & Energetic Image
In addition to this I focused positive intention into a selected group of my crystals and an image which was painted by a Reiki Master friend. They were with us during the birth and they were with us during all our mediation and affirmations, collecting up our intentions.
The Birth Experience
We wanted a home birth but in the South of France there are no midwives who will support this. So the next best option was a birthing clinic. The pre-natal classes provided by the clinic were a joke and after two we stopped going. Nothing more than fear mongering to increase the sale of various pain killing drugs & procedures. They did at least have one 'nature suite' which was less like a hospital room. They had to dust it down for us in as apparently no one had used it in years.
We were laughed at when we insisted that despite it being the first baby, we were going to have a natural birth. Three women actually said the following words: ...'just you wait till you feel the pain'.
Thanks. So helpful.
This is what our nature suite looked like after spending 30mins in there to enjoy a simple and natural birth. As expected.
The contractions started an hour before but we stayed in our private room as long as possible to keep that calm feeling going. We knew when it was time to leave our room and let someone know we were ready to have the baby now.
Sabrina's recovery was fast and Esteban was perfect.
He is just a few hours old here. Notice the V shape on his forehead.
The V shape is still very prominent today and I am wondering now if it perhaps means there is a heightened energy around his third eye chakra. He seems to be very good at communicating with his baby sister without the use of words!
Or perhaps like every dad in the world I simply like to believe that my son is special.
In Conclusion
It seems to me that generally speaking something has gone terribly wrong in the field of pregnancy & birth. And what I learned was completely reinforced when we had Luna a year ago in a clinic which practiced very similar techniques in Bali. Giving birth is a nothing to be afraid of no matter what you might have heard.
Luna was born in 15 mins and Esteban watched the whole thing in my arms. This way he can be in no doubt about where she came from ;)
Who is 
?
?He was a London based filmmaker until he sold everything and set out on a barefoot journey around the world, currently based in the south of France.
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