Evolution of a Childbirth Educator By Kerry Tuschhoff, HCHI, CHt, CI

My childbirth journey starts when I was 16 and watching a Patty Duke movie in which she was giving birth to her baby at home, screaming in agony, and her baby was born dead. Horrified, I swore I would never have children. EVER.

Fast forward to 1988, when I watched a friend give birth to her first baby using no medication, no IV, no monitor, no episiotomy and no operative technology of any kind. She did moan and obviously had pain in labor, but she was able to do it without excruciating pain. She had taken a Bradley Method class to prepare for her birth and told me many things she had learned about the body's ability to give birth naturally and without intervention. I was fascinated and began researching childbirth methods, since all I had heard about previously was Lamaze.

I became "hooked" as I learned about nature's most perfect plan - childbirth. The more I read and studied, the more I knew from somewhere inside of me that I wanted to be a part of this plan, teaching other women the truth about their own abilities and the technological machine that childbirth had become. I contacted the group that certifies Bradley Instructors and they agreed to allow me to take the teacher training even though I had not yet given birth, which normally was a prerequisite. I excitedly took the course, got an invaluable education in natural childbirth and taught my initial class when I was pregnant with my first baby. I thought I knew a great deal about the body's' ability to give birth and women's strength and determination, and that seemed to be enough as I planned for my natural, unmedicated, birth center waterbirth. Then I went into labor.

The incredible unstoppable power and wretched pain of a posterior baby for 26 hours of unmedicated terror took its toll and it was quite a long time until I felt I had gotten over the fact that anyone would be happier to see the anesthesiologist than their own child! I ended up being transferred from my beloved birth center to a hospital across the street and I'll never forget the pain, shame and fear that swept through me as I was wheeled outside and across a major local throughway, with everyone staring at me in horror as I screamed with each contraction. An epidural was procured for me, from a sensitive anesthesiologist whose wife was a ..Bradley instructor! After quite a few other tubes, wires and procedures, I slept for awhile, and 6 hours after my hospital arrival my baby was pulled out with a vacuum extractor. The loss of my dream: my natural waterbirth, devastated me and I was overcome with disbelief.

Having received every intervention a laboring woman can get except a C-section, I was unable to enjoy my baby daughter as I relived my experience every day for months, and was extremely angry with anyone who even mentioned the Bradley Method. I felt it had failed me, affording me little comfort or relief, even though I had known all the "tricks" of the trade. Eventually I realized that everything happens for a reason, and that I myself had fully orchestrated my own miserable birth experience by making a series of choices that were not optimum for an easy natural birth. After coming to terms with that revelation I was able to teach childbirth education again, with a much different and more flexible outlook than before. I still believed inherently in the power of natural birth, and the Bradley Method's techniques for getting through it avoiding unnecessary pain. I came to realize, of course that I did not want that same experience to happen again, and that there had to be another way to give birth without such pain and what was for me, trauma.

I saw a TV show about using hypnosis for childbirth and having used some self-hypnosis in the past, I began seeking out this method. I soon found a local ad that said, "Painless Childbirth at last!", and for $34.95 I could order a program that would allow me to "knock the pain right out" of my next birth. And so I got pregnant with baby #2. My "program" turned out o be a 2 audio tape set and a sheet of instructions on how to use the tapes, with admonitions that if I faithfully listened to the tapes I would have no pain during labor. The tapes had no hypnotic inductions on them, and employed a metaphoric journey through fields, visualizing deer walking nearby, etc. and a few light suggestions that if I went "to the basement of relaxation, your contractions will not bother you at all". I wondered how well this was going to produce a pain-free birth, however I continued faithfully to listen every day and twice a day at the end.

Four years almost to the day after my daughter was born, I gave birth to a baby boy, underwater at a birth center, after only 7 hours of very intense labor. Although the physical pain was just as bad, the time it lasted was far shorter and the dynamics of the labor were different. I was shocked at how much it did hurt and was so disappointed that hypnosis had not worked. Only afterwards did I realize that the "program" itself did not contain the necessary suggestions and depth needed to produce the desired results. I wrote the program's author and told her so. You can imagine her defensive response.

I vowed to eventually find a way that women would not have to suffer in childbirth and continued to teach the Bradley Method as I researched. For ten years I had attended my students' births as a doula and although so many of them were successful unmedicated births, often the mother was extremely exhausted from moving around so much to get comfortable that she had no energy left to push. There were many mothers who were so traumatized by the pain they experienced that they couldn't even hold their babies, and it saddened me. In the spring of 1999, I went to my last "screaming birth", a couple that I had bonded with and loved so much. I knew I could no longer teach this. I had to find "it".

By now I was on the Internet and began a campaign to learn more about hypnosis for childbirth, finding quickly that there were quite a few programs and methods out there. I watched an episode of Dateline NBC on hypnotic childbirth which showed 2 women going through their labors calm and relaxed - no pain. That was my goal, and I contacted a major hypno-birthing organization to begin my journey towards it with their Practitioner Training. I took the 2 day Introduction to Hypnosis class and then the 2 day Teacher Certification course. I arrived at that training course extremely excited and thrilled since I thought I had finally found a way that my wonderful, dedicated natural childbirth moms would not have to suffer. I saw videos of women laboring seemingly without pain, using only this organization's techniques. I was certain my own students would be just like that, and already had my business cards and letterhead done, a website and other preparations. I did consider it odd however, that so many of the certification trainees there had no prior knowledge of childbirth education, were given little in the certification course, and yet were about to embark upon a quest to teach women exactly that.

I began teaching my hypnosis-birthing class with passion, enthusiasm and the comforting belief that these women were the luckiest ones alive; they would have no drugs and no pain. There were 5 couples in my first class and I gave them the exact materials and information I was taught to teach, which included a book, one light hypnosis tape and a 15 minute birth affirmations tape. A few handouts were included and 2 hypnosis scripts. I added only a bit about nutrition to the class and excitedly waited for my "Hypno-moms" to give birth.

I attended my first hypno-birthing student's birth at a birth center as her doula and was shocked to find that she could not stay relaxed and comfortable by herself, even in early labor at home. She went to the birth center and progressed from 3cm to 10cm in 3 hours, which was amazing, but she was suffering quite a lot of pain as she entered active labor and nothing we did helped. Her transitional period was only about an hour but she was extremely miserable during it and I was at a loss to help her. She finally gave birth and was reasonably pleased with her experience as we all knew that without the hypnosis training her discomfort would have been much greater. This, however was not what I had envisioned for my students at all. I convinced myself that it was just a fluke and that the next birth would be much better.

Each birth I attended however, just seemed to get worse instead of better with the exception of only one of my students who said it worked well for her; "It was manageable." I was in contact by then with several fellow hypno-birth practitioner trainees who lamented that they were having the same results with their students and didn't know how to help them. I appealed to the organization that I had been trained by for help and advice, thoroughly confused with the results our hypno-couples were having. I was encouraged to just continue teaching the course as it was, and told that my students were "experiencing failure in hypno-birthing because you as their instructor don't believe in it enough". Wow! This had been absolutely not true of course, and all of us Practitioners were teaching exactly the way that we had been instructed to do, yet most of our students were extremely unhappy and unsatisfied with their birth experiences!

I taught 2 classes this way (10 couples total) and the births were almost all the same. The last one was the one that changed my life. I attended this woman's birth and she was clearly in agony and feeling mislead; crying out, cursing me and suffering greatly. I cried all the way home and swore that either I would stop teaching childbirth education at all, or I would find a way that my students would be able to be successful in their efforts to have a pain-free, fear free birthing.

I did not stop teaching.

It was clear to me that I needed to know much more about hypnosis itself and how to help these women with personal issues and hypnotic depth problems, as well as find some excellent birth hypnosis scripts. A local hypnotherapist allowed me to sit in on a few classes and only then did I really realized how much I still needed to learn about hypnosis and its uses for actually eliminating pain completely. Immediately I took a course in hypnosis and hypnotherapy which helped me tremendously to understand how and why real hypnosis would work for childbirth. I could now teach moms successful pain-elimination, not pain-management!

In addition, I began contacting hypnotherapists from around the world who had childbirth hypnosis methods that really worked, and asked for ideas and help. Help they did, and with such a positive spirit of sharing and giving. I began writing my own hypnosis scripts and replacing the tapes in the classes with deeper and longer ones, and soon many of my students were having wonderful births. Sometimes completely pain-free but mostly the pain would only be at the very end when the baby was crowning, or for 20 minutes during transition. Much better... but still not good enough!

The day that I found Gerald Kein's Painless Childbirth Program is one of joyful commemoration for me, as so many of the missing pieces were found. He had actually sat down with a group of pregnant women and asked them what they wanted and needed for a comfortable natural birth. Their answers gave him the food he needed to create a hypnosis program that women could easily use to eliminate pain and fear from childbirth, yet be able to move around freely during labor, eat and drink, and communicate their needs to others. Fantastic! (Hypnobabies is Born...cont. ---->)