This is an excerpt from an interview I did with Maile on The Gift of Giving Life podcast. She is a Hypnobabies mom, so I asked if I could share her story here too. She said yes. I pulled out the parts about Affirmations and Spiritual Creation (Visualization) for this episode.
The power of affirmations in preparing for her homebirth
Maile: I felt comfortable moving forward with the home birth, but I still had those hesitations and or concerns. And so I went through the process of spiritual creation where I spent time like visualizing myself in birth, like everything going well, everything going smoothly, the labor progressing well, the baby being born in a healthy, easy way.
I wrote out these affirmations that I taped on my bathroom mirror and would see and practice every day. And there were things like
I am safe giving birth to my baby.
I will have angels surrounding me and helping his birth to go smoothly and different things like that.
And so between those two practices and then continuing to use hypnosis.
Which has helped me be like, so calm, so relaxed, listening to affirmations that like reminded me was what to do. It knows how to birth and once the birth, actually began, it was just so amazing how, like, everything I practiced through that process of spiritual creation absolutely then happened in the physical creation of the birth.
Like I was so relaxed, everything went smoothly. I think the midwife got here to my house and I think she saw how relaxed I was, which partly is because of Hypnobabies. More relaxed on the outside when I’m using Hypno babies, then what may be happening internally. But she saw me in the tub when she got here and she kind of, she was, she had a really good poker face.
So I didn’t know, she thought this, but later she told me she saw me in how relaxed and calm I was. And she just thought hmm I think we’re going to be here a while. And my oldest daughter wanted to be woken up. If I had the baby in the night, she wanted to be. And all of a sudden I told my husband, I was like, go get Kaia.
And, um, the midwife in her head was like, I don’t think they need to wake her up yet. Like, she’s going to be here for awhile. But, um, they got Kai up. She came in and literally within minutes, John was born and, It was just so beautiful. And I know not all births go that way and not all, not every time that we work to spiritually create something.
The power of spiritual creation/visualization
Maile: It doesn’t always it happen exactly like we want and that’s okay. Like that’s part of life too, but it was such an empowering experience for me to be able to say, wow, I have this vision. I have this, what I wanted, what I hoped would be accomplished. And by putting like my mental and spiritual energy towards that and visualizing and creating it.
Like it just came out so beautifully. I never did that, that intentionally for any of my other birds. So it took till my eighth to really decide, to try to create something that intentionally, and it was really beautiful. And then after my husband, We should’ve had all the babies at home.
Oh, wow. Thank you.
Sheridan: There’s so much that I love about both of those experiences that you shared. And I think especially that last one where you talk about like spiritually creating it ahead of time and like really intentionally thinking about what is it that I want and focusing on that and creating affirmations about that to help create it and the power that our mind has in doing that. So I’ve really loved that you had that experience and I also find it, you know? Yeah. I kind of chuckled when you’re like, oh, it took us till our eighth baby to, to, for me to try that, you know, but that’s very, that’s
Maile: wonderful. Yeah. And the affirmations were so helpful because then, you know, when my mind would do what minds naturally do.
And during the course of the day, when one of the fears would pop-up of what if this. Those because I’d been practicing those affirmations. It was so easy for them to just instantly come into my brain as something positive to focus on. Instead of dwelling on the fears and the negative side, I could just be like, no, I am safe giving birth my baby.
And so it was really helpful. like throughout my days too, Oh,
Affirmation tips from Maile
Sheridan: that’s great. Can you just tell me a little bit more, like some of your tips with affirmations? Like what really helped you said, I think you posted some on your wall. Just share a little bit more like any
tips you have.
Maile: I mean, I’ve
heard of affirmations in the past and sometimes like when you hear of affirmations that other people can give you, like, I really felt like I had to pick the affirmations that felt like they’ve resonated for me.
And so I just spend a little bit of time just sitting down with the paper. Start with the words I am, you know, the savior said he is the great I am. So when we copied that pattern of saying, I am so like, the spirit is ready and willing to step in and get ideas of what we need to affirm in ourselves at any given time, I just kind of sat down and wrote that and then sort of just let myself be in some quiet for a few minutes to see what would come up to the surface.
And then I just, whatever came to mind. I wrote down on this paper. , and one of my hobbies, I mean, I have a lot of kids, so I don’t have a lot of free time. So one of my favorite hobbies is just practicing hand lettering because it’s something I can do while writing it to do list. Or while, you know, just in the midst of my daily life, I can just practice some doodling and hand lettering for fun.
So I just sat down with one of my pens that I like to hand letter with and just kind of made it a little bit prettier. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but just something a little bit fun. And so every time I looked at it, like I spent this few minutes doing something that was really soul for me and then just taped it on my bathroom mirror.
So I think it was just like, I’m just saving my head. Like to me saying them out loud is great, but I found a lot of power of just saying in side my head..
I love that. Thank you. And I think it is so true when we practice our affirmations, even if it is in our head, because that’s where we’re going to reply to the negative thoughts is in our head with the affirmation.
And it does just smoothly come when it’s something that we’ve practiced saying the positive, then when those negative or the fears pop up, those positives are, you’re like, oh no, I know the right one to say for this instance. So. That’s really great.
Sheridan: Well, thank you so much. Maile for coming today. And talking to us and sharing your experiences as an experienced mother of eight children and especially your insights into the affirmations and how that helped you with this last birth and spiritually creating it first.
So thank you.
Maile: Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity. It was a pleasure to get, to reflect on these things.
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