I love numbers. So I keep statistics of my students births and my doula clients births.
Of course they are so much more than numbers to me (especially my doula clients, when I am at their births and see how amazing they do).
Here is a run down of 3 years of teaching Hypnobabies. So these are all of my students.
I have taught 43 couples.
Cesarean rate 11.5% (if I take out my 2 VBAC moms who were undermined by their OBs it is 7.5%) WAY better than the national of 30%. The power of education!
The rest of the statistics don’t include the cesarean moms.
So of the moms who had vaginal births looking at epidural/un-medicated:
| 75% | un-medicated | |
| 25% | epidural | (all but one had pitocin) |
So of the moms who had vaginal births with NO Pitocin (30 moms) looking at epidural/un-medicated:
| 97% | un-medicated | |
| 3% | epidural | 1 mom baby born 20 min later. |
Stats of vaginal birth moms regarding comfort:
| 44% | comfortable |
| 24% | comfortable with manageable discomfort during transformation |
| 32% | discomfort during active birthing time |
Just because I was curious I did comfort stats of vaginal birth moms who had NO pitocin:
| 52% | comfortable |
| 28% | comfortable with manageable discomfort during transformation |
| 20% | discomfort during active birthing time |
What can you learn from this?
Hypnobabies works! 68% comfortable births and 80% of moms with no pitocin were comfortable.
The moms who had discomfort had a reason; posterior baby, malpositioned baby, SPD or pitocin.
The education moms get about normal birth and the pros and cons of intervention helps them to make positive choices. The relaxation and hypnosis tools helps them to stay comfortable and reprogam their minds about birth. These things together help moms avoid cesareans, unless they are truly medically needed! These things also help moms stay comfortable during their birth and give them tools to manage any discomfort they do have.
Also, when possible let your birthing time begin on its own. If you choose to be induced, know you can still do it un-medicated! I have seen it done! 🙂
4 moms who had comfortable births did have pitocin. They really were active in monitoring how quickly the nurse turned the pitocin up. Slower is better. The nurses like to turn it up every 20 minutes. This isn’t a race to see how quickly we can force the baby out.
How do you find that hypnobabies compares to hypnobirthing? Hypnobirthing did not work at all for me, and I don’t know if it was because of the method or because I’m just not susceptible to hypnosis.
Thank you for sharing your statistics, Sheridan. I had my sweet hypnobaby last fall. I ended up having an induction, but thanks to hypnobabies, my husband, and my doula it was otherwise unmedicated. Hypnobabies does work (really well!), but it’s always nice to see the “proof.” Thank you for all that you do to promote healthy pregnancies and births!
I used HypnoBirthing with my 2nd baby and found it helpful in overcoming my concerns about birth, but not very helpful during the birth. I wished there were more tools and CDs to listen to. More concrete things to DO. When I got pregnant with my 3rd, I looked around for a different hypnosis for childbirth program, becuase I knew hypnosis COULD work. I found Hypnobabies. It is very different. There are many more scripts, deeper hypnosis (medical grade hypnosis), 3 CD scripts just for your birhthing day, consumer information (pros and cons of intervention, finding a supportive care provider and birth location) Just SO much more.
I moderate the Hypnobabies Yahoo group, where we have moms using all kinds of hypnosis for childbirth programs. I find some moms like the simplicity of HypnoBirthing, but many want more tools and scripts and information, they tend to then use Hypnobabies with great success.
I don’t have any statistics comparing the two. But from what I see on the Yahoo group, there are many moms that come after using HypnoBirthing for one birth and use Hypnobabies for the next birth and feel it helps more.
Here is a link to my comparison of the classes. http://www.pregnancybirthandbabies.com/comparison_between_hypnoclasses.htm
Thank you for posting your stats, Sheridan. This is inspiring for many reasons, one of which is because I have plans to develop a database/spreadsheet to track my Hypnobabies student and doula client stats as well. Thanks again for doing this :)!
Thank you so much for all the information on Hypnobabies! I really appreciate it! If I can manage it, I’m going to check it out. I’m glad to hear that there is a better hypnosis method out there and that it is being so successful.
Thanks again!
Diana
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Just for clarification–all of your students/clients either had an epidural or were entirely unmedicated? So no one opted for IV pain relievers, etc.?
I am not sure about my students – none reported that they had.
As of the dates of these stats none of my doula clients had. Since I did these stats 1 of my doula clients did have IV pain relievers.