Journey into Parenthood Part 2

Continued from Part 1

Part 1 talks about the 18 steps we typically have regimented into us for birthing. So, is that all that there is to child birthing?

You might say mostly, and some might say don’t forget breathing. Actually, there is much more to know, understand and experience in child birthing. This is where the term Gentle Birthing comes in. Some refer to it as Hypno Birthing (I’ll explain later why). The bottom line is our right and responsibility in educating ourselves on the child-birthing process, all the terminologies, understanding our options and making well informed decisions.

I’m an engineer by study and spent many years of my life as an engineer, so science works best for me. Follow the medicine book and go back to step 1-18 of my previous post. Leave it to the sciences, doctors and hospitals. They know best and do this on a daily basis.

My journey into understanding birthing started from a 1-day seminar (Boot Camp) organized by Baby with Bee. I went - obviously because my wife had signed us up. My wife came to know of this Boot Camp from my son’s parkour buddy’s mum, Ruz; who happens to be a Hypnobirthing instructor. You can reach Ruz at 017-8806061 or What'sApp her to get more info. She invited us to join the upcoming Boot Camp as we were looking for Antenatal classes that met our requirements. And the event was free. One more thing – for our first kid we didn’t get an opportunity to sign up for an ante-natal class, as work required traveling and we couldn’t find a suitable timing of classes to work around it. We did read a lot though. So, I wanted to do it better this time around. And why not start of with a free Boot Camp.

The term gentle birthing or Hypnobirthing was rather confusing for me. After the boot camp, one thing came to mind for me to consider – it made sense that child birth is generally not a medical emergency or complication. It is just natural. It is not easy nor a breeze, but in most cases, it is not necessary something you’d deem as a medical emergency.  Among others HypnoBirthing is about mummy getting herself into a deep relaxed, relaxed, limp state. Read the CNN article here.

What hit me hardest in the boot camp is that there are many successful birthings (deliveries) in hospitals that were very pro natural, mummy and baby friendly, with minimal intervention. It was really an eye opener, as seldom does gentle birthing get much attention. Gentle birthing is one of those things that you have to read about or hear about from a friend, and not something you'd come across in your hospital's delivery options. Birthing doesn’t necessarily have to be like in TV series or movies – yes you know what I mean.

Two things also resonated with me so much:

1. Mummies managed to give birth with minimum or no screaming (and without any pain killer or anaesthetic). They were calmer, had a better birthing environment, a birth partner and had good breathing techniques among others.

2. Babies have a natural instinct to crawl up from mummies tummies to mummies breast and look and suckle for milk.

So, what was our next step? We signed up for the HypnoBirthing classes, the package was for 10 sessions. To be clear – this were really birthing classes, i.e. how to prepare for the immediate pre-birth, birth and immediate post birth, yeah not your normal antenatal class how to feed and bath baby.

Part 3 will cover how we found the classes, and some key takeaways from the classes.