Bradley vs. Hypnobabies

I concluded my last post by saying that it's important to choose a childbirth class that feels right to you, which may or may not be what feels right to me. I figured it might be helpful to talk a little more about the specifics of Bradley and Hypnobabies, to help other women figure out which one does feel right to them.

Bradley classes
A "classic" Bradley method course series is 12 classes. Many instructors compress it somewhat. Mine covered the material in 10 classes.

The classes include:

• Three classes on staying comfortable and healthy throughout your pregnancy (exercise, nutrition, etc.)
• Two classes focused on the coach's role (typically the husband)
• Four classes on the mechanics of first and second stage labor, as well as tips for pain management and coaching during each stage
• One class on planning (birth plans, packing the hospital bag, etc.)
• One class on unexpected situations (c-sections, etc.)
• One class on basic newborn care (breastfeeding, baby soothing, etc.)

A typical class for us lasted between 1-2 hours. We usually reviewed the material in the workbook we were given, with plenty of time to ask questions. We often watched videos related to the material we were covering. We also did relaxation practice, which typically involved me lying down, breathing deeply, while my husband rubbed/massaged me and helped identify any areas of tension. Later in the class series, we did some full-on labor rehearsals, where I tried different positions, our instructor pretended to be a nurse "interrupting" and my husband had to gently handle her so she wouldn't bother me, etc.

Homework between classes included keeping a food log, some pregnancy exercises (pelvic tilts, tailor sitting, squats, kegels), and relaxation practice.

Hypnobabies home study
The Hypnobabies home study class consists of a workbook, a quick reference/birth partner guide, and a folder full of CDs.

The workbook is divided into an introduction, five classes, and a maintenance program. Each class is designed to take one week, although I started early in my pregnancy (about 24 weeks with both Noob and Q) and often chose to take two weeks before moving on to the next class. The classes cover:

1. Positive childbirth (hypnosis and how it can help you overcome the fear/tension/pain cycle during childbirth)
2. Staying healthy and low risk (exercise, nutrition, etc.)
3. Birthing choices (risks and benefits of common interventions such as Pitocin, IVs, etc., birth plans)
4. First stage labor
5. Second stage labor and breastfeeding

So, basically the same topics as Bradley. The approach is a little different, e.g. the Hypnobabies materials remind you over and over again that birth is easy, and they replace the usual birthing-related words with more positive ones (birthing time instead of labor, pressure waves instead of contractions, etc.)

Each week, you read the appropriate section of the workbook. The section also gives you your homework for the week. It's the same as Bradley homework -- food log, pregnancy exercises, and relaxation practice.

The relaxation practice is another key difference from Bradley. The practice is guided by self-hypnosis "scripts" on the CDs. The workbook section tells you which tracks you should listen to each week -- there are two per week, which you listen to on alternate nights. It also includes the hypnotic suggestions that are on each track. This is nice for people like me who always fall asleep while listening to the tracks :) By reading the workbook, I'm able to find out just what I'm listening to while I'm sleeping!

If you want to get a sense of what the scripts are like, there's a sample track on the Hypnobabies website that you can download and listen to for free.

For the first week or two, the scripts walk you through deep breathing to relax and enter hypnosis. Later on, you learn to enter hypnosis by using your "lightswitch." You also practice self-hypnosis using your lightswitch 5 times a day, outside of your script listening. It only takes a few minutes.

On top of this, you also listen to the "Pregnancy Affirmations" track daily. This is not a self-hypnosis track, so you can listen to it while driving, working, etc. It's about 30 minutes of positive statements about childbirth, such as:

• Pregnancy is natural, normal, healthy, and safe for me and my baby.
• My changing body is radiantly beautiful.
• I will give birth in comfort and in peace.

Once you're done with the five classes, you enter the maintenance program until you give birth. No more weekly reading, but you keep up with the exercises, nutrition, and relaxation practice. For the scripts, there's a weekly rotation of tracks to listen to, plus the daily pregnancy affirmations.

If that sounds like a lot... it's really not. The workbook reading takes maybe 30-45 minutes per week. The exercises are maybe 20-30 minutes per day if you're religious about doing them, which I'm not :) As for the scripts, I always queue up the script of the day plus the pregnancy affirmations track at bedtime. I usually fall asleep within a few minutes, but that's fine: My conscious mind knows what's on the tracks from reading the workbook, and my subconscious mind is still listening even when I'm asleep.

Hopefully that gives you a better idea of what you're in for if you choose either Bradley or Hypnobabies. They are both great courses, so choose what fits your personality and mindset the best! You can't go wrong with either one :)

Childbirth preparation classes

With Littles
My hospital offered childbirth preparation classes, but in my early research, I came across references to classes focused specifically on medication-free birth. I asked Dr. S about them at a prenatal appointment at around 16 weeks. He brushed them off, saying it wasn't necessary, that all classes were pretty much the same.

In retrospect, this was the first of many red flags regarding Dr. S. (This was the same appointment where he told me, "That's fine if you don't want an epidural. I mean, 85% of my patients go into labor knowing they want an epidural, and most of the rest of them end up getting one anyway... but if you don't want one, that's fine.") But I just ignored the comment, and continued researching my class options.

I eventually settled on Bradley method classes. A couple of things appealed to me about Bradley, as compared to other childbirth methods. One is that it teaches the husband (or other birth partner) to play a key role in the birth. From the first time I brought up med-free birth, my husband was super supportive and involved, so we both really liked the idea of a class that would honor that. Also, Bradley seemed a little more "scientific." None of this woo-woo about hypnotizing yourself into a pain-free childbirth or creating a birth space to help you open, or other craziness like that.

We found a nearby instructor and started classes when I was about 23 weeks. We both found them incredibly helpful. My husband isn't the type to sit down and read a bunch of books about childbirth, but he was an enthusiastic participant in the classes. They gave him the knowledge and confidence he needed to be a great birth partner. I think that's so important. I might be the one giving birth, but it's my husband's baby, too. I want him to enjoy the childbirth experience, just as much as I do. Bradley classes helped him do that.

As for me, I am the type to sit down and read a bunch of books about childbirth :) But I still found the classes to be helpful. Probably the best part was being able to sit down with a real live woman who had been through a med-free birth experience. (Actually, two of them, plus a third birth that occurred midway through our class series.) She brought such a sense of normalcy to childbirth. This was so powerful, especially when combined with the positive way that my mother had always described my own birth. So many pregnant women get bombarded with horror stories about labor and delivery. I wasn't. In fact, I got the opposite: I was surrounded by positive stories and experiences.

I think that made a tremendous difference in my mindset going into labor.

With Noob
As much as I had enjoyed Bradley classes, I opted to make a change with Noob. One reason for this was that I felt the relaxation techniques I'd practiced in class were less than useful during labor. I'd always practiced relaxation lying on my left side, but when I got into labor, I found that lying on my left side was intensely painful. And then I felt a little lost -- like, what do I do now? It worked out OK anyway. I ended up finding other comfortable positions to labor in. And as one of my friends pointed out to me later, it's likely that all the practice did pay off in helping me stay relaxed throughout labor, even if I didn't do it in the same position I'd practiced. Still, with Noob, I wanted to find a method that gave me more flexibility in how I labored.

For this reason, I started looking at Hypnobabies -- one of those methods that I had dismissed as too "woo-woo" with Littles. The basic premise of Hypnobabies is that you can experience labor as being pain-free through self-hypnosis. I know... woo-woo :) But one of the things I really liked about it, compared to Bradley, was that it gives you a variety of self-hypnosis scripts to listen to in preparation for labor, as well as during labor itself. It also teaches "eyes open hypnosis," where you're able to move around and labor in different positions, while remaining under hypnosis. This appealed to me more than Bradley's left-side relaxation.

In addition, actually going through birth had changed my entire mindset on it. With Littles, I expected labor to be most painful experience of my life, because everyone told me it would be. It wasn't. As I've mentioned previously, I found labor to be more like my Ironman triathlon experience: It was intense, and challenging (both physically and mentally) -- but not "painful" in the same way that, say, getting whacked in the head with a lacrosse stick is painful. (Yep, I've had that happen, too, on more than one occasion...)

This put me somewhat at odds with Bradley, which teaches pain management techniques: Why would I need pain management for something that's not painful? Interestingly, this is right in line with Hypnobabies' philosophy. Really, Hypnobabies and Bradley are more alike than they are different, but there is one subtle distinction between the two: Instead of teaching pain management, Hypnobabies teaches that childbirth is pain-free. That sounds crazy to a lot of people, but it made perfect sense to me.

I'll give a quick example to better explain this distinction. In labor, there is a period called "transition," which is when your body switches from dilating your cervix to pushing your baby out. Most childbirth classes, Bradley included, talk about this being the most painful part of labor. So when I was laboring with Littles, I kept waiting for it to get really painful and difficult. I was hoping to feel that, because it would be an indication that I was almost done. As it turns out, transition didn't feel much different from the rest of labor for me -- but in my head, I was trying to make it feel worse than it actually did. Pretty counterintuitive.

Hypnobabies is different. For starters, it shies away from using childbirth-related words with negative connotations, so "transition" is called "transformation." And it teaches that transformation is pain-free, just like the rest of your "birthing time" (aka labor).

With Noob, I remember very clearly when I entered transformation. The house was full of people by that point, but somehow, I ended up alone in my bedroom. My husband came up behind me just as a contraction (or "birthing wave," in Hypnobabies terminology) hit, so I leaned back into him and swayed a bit while he supported me. The contraction ended and I opened my eyes and noted the time. As I did, the contraction started right back up again, so I leaned back into my husband and we swayed again. When it ended and I opened my eyes again, I saw that the second contraction had been a full 2 minutes. Long, back-to-back contractions like that are a hallmark of transformation, and I knew it. But they weren't "painful" in the normal sense of the word. This is hard to explain. I felt many things. I felt the power of my body, I felt my baby moving into position to come out, I felt the love of my husband supporting me -- but I didn't feel pain.

I can't say for sure why the two experiences were so different. Certainly, it could have been because I was expecting transition to be painful with Littles, and I was expecting transformation to be pain-free with Noob. But it also could have been that I was more relaxed in the comfortable surroundings of my own home, as compared to the hospital. It could have been that I was experiencing spontaneous birthing waves, rather than Pitocin-induced contractions. It could have been that Noob's labor was just easier.

But after that experience, I knew I'd use Hypnobabies for any future births.

With Q
I'm 25 weeks right now, and I've been doing my Hypnobabies scripts for the past two weeks now. With Noob and with Q, I've chosen to do the Hypnobabies home study course. This was another thing that appealed to me about Hypnobabies: We can study it on our own, rather than having to go somewhere to take classes. This is really convenient, especially since now we'd have to find child care if we wanted to take live classes!

Of course, by doing the home study course, I lose the benefit of having access to a live instructor, which I found so valuable during my Bradley classes. I'm OK with this now that I have my own childbirth experiences to draw on, but I think it would have been less than ideal for my first pregnancy. (There are live Hypnobabies classes available as well.)

Also, with Noob, I found that my husband was less involved in childbirth preparation than he had been with Littles. Hypnobabies does have a lot of information for the birth partner, but as I said before, my husband is not the type to sit down and read a bunch of stuff on childbirth. He did read a bit of the home study material, and he remembered a lot of the basics from our Bradley classes anyway, so it worked out fine and he was still a wonderful support to me during labor. But I'd love to get him a little more involved this time around.

So, is Hypnobabies better than Bradley?
No, I don't think it's necessarily "better." Just different.

When it comes to childbirth classes, whether a mom is planning to forego the epidural or not, I think it's incredibly important that she and her birth partner take childbirth preparation classes that are not affiliated with a hospital. The reason for taking non-hospital-affiliated classes is that they'll help you explore all your options, not just the ones that are available at your hospital. For example, childbirth preparation classes at a hospital without birthing tubs are unlikely to spend a lot of time talking about all the benefits of waterbirth. A non-hospital-affiliated class will likely discuss waterbirth, allow you to figure out whether or not that's something you're interested in doing, and possibly help you make the decision to change hospitals if having that option is important enough to you.

In fact, taking non-hospital-affiliated childbirth prep classes is the single biggest recommendation I make to expectant parents. There are tons of other things to consider, such as choosing a supportive OB or midwife, learning about all the options available to you during birth (eating and drinking in labor, different positions for laboring, relaxation techniques, waterbirth, episiotomies vs. tearing naturall, etc.), ensuring the birth partner knows as much about childbirth as the mom herself, considering whether a doula might be beneficial (I'll do another post on doulas in the future), etc... but a good childbirth prep class will cover all of that. Hence why it's the single biggest recommendation I make :)

As for Hypnobabies vs. Bradley and other "methods," I don't think the particular method is very important. Obviously, I've chosen Hypnobabies for myself, but I know it's not for everyone. Heck, it wasn't even the right method for me, during my first pregnancy! I always encourage women to choose a childbirth prep class that feels comfortable to them. Which may or may not be what feels comfortable to me.