Mummy Zen

Guest post by Allison Evans, Hypnotherapist specialising in HypnoBirthing and HypnoBirthing Fertility Therapy

I took my children to the beach yesterday. We are visiting the southern coast of Virginia, in the US, for a few weeks, and thought we’d make the most of the deserted beaches and last days of warm, summery weather.

We had an effortlessly wonderful day. We dressed in our bathing costumes, and then I packed a simple picnic of sandwiches and watermelon slices, along with the basic supplies of water, towels, and suncream. Mother Nature did the rest! The children, who at home are prone to complaining of boredom with their old toys and bickering with each other, amused themselves easily and cheerfully at the beach. They dug in the sand, hunted for shells, made sand angels, and splashed knee-deep in the gentle surf. Best of all, they were happy! There was a calmness of spirit in the kids and in me that is, I’m afraid, all too rare in our daily, scheduled-up, inside life. I think it was the influence of the sea.

The sea is my favorite metaphor for labour. I teach HypnoBirthing, which is a preparation for natural childbirth using self-hypnosis, visualization, and special breathing. We teach that pain is not a natural accompaniment to labour, but rather a cultural one that is rooted in fear: when you release your fear of birth, you short-circuit the tension that causes pain in labour. Thus natural childbirth, in which “pain relief” isn’t denied but honestly not-needed, is not only possible but a wonderful and empowering experience! Like the sea, labour is primal and powerful. But if you honor and respect it and if you learn to swim with it, its power is yours.

When I was in labour with my first child, my surges — that’s our gentler and more descriptive word for “contractions” — were becoming intense, and I braced myself as I felt one coming on: body rigid, breath held, face in a grimace. It hit me like a wave that knocked me over! I thought, “I can’t do this! This is just the beginning!” Then I remembered HypnoBirthing, which I had been practicing for months, but hadn’t needed until that surge. I thought, “Well, let’s try it.” I sat on the sofa, comfortably supported with pillows, put on the music, and relaxed. When I felt the next surge coming, I breathed, I visualized, and I relaxed. Instead of feeling like the surge was a wave that knocked me over, I had the sensation of swimming up to the crest of the wave, and then sliding down easily the other side. It was actually wonderful — I was full of wonder! Wonder at nature’s beautiful design for birth, at my body’s instinctual knowledge of how to birth, and at the power of Mother Nature: power that was mine because I was not fearing it or fighting it, but working with it.

Childbirth changed my life, and not just because it made me a mother! It connected me with my instinctual nature and gave me trust in it. This has been an invaluable gift as a mother, because I trust myself. It connected me with Nature and enhanced my appreciation for all life. This has made me feel powerful and not over-awed by my responsibilities as a mother. Finally, it gave me a special affinity for the sea. Clearly my children, with their serenity and joy at the beach yesterday, feel it too.

Allison is currently traveling in America with her family, en route to a new home at Yokota Air Base, near Tokyo, Japan.  She can be reached at allison@wisdomchildbirth.com.

Click here for more information about HypnoBirthing.

Welcome to Mummy Zen, which has launched today! I wanted to create a blog for mums with useful practical information and suggestions, as well as more contemplative content focusing on enjoying a healthy balance in our busy lives. Being a mum takes up a lot of our time and energy and it’s a constant learning and enriching experience. However, there’s another side to us and it’s just as important to put time and energy into that part of our life. By feeling happy, healthy and having dreams and goals to pursue, I think we all feel better equipped to be a good mum, friend, wife, partner and can achieve a cohesive balance all round.

Mummy Zen will be a sharing of thoughts, experiences and ideas ranging from the day-to-day basics to more specialised insight from some of our contributors. We can all learn from each other and benefit from different perspectives so you’ll find regular guest posts on the site and links to other sites and articles that I come across and think are worth sharing. Please feel free to add comments to any of the posts and to offer your own ideas to fellow readers.

Thanks for coming to check out the site and I hope you come back for more…. There’ll be 2-3 posts per week. Bookmark the site or subscribe to the RSS feed to keep updated!

Leo Babauta, very successful blogger and father of six (!) recently wrote a post with some great parenting tips – I’ve provided the link at the end of this. The first half of the title to his post is almost off-putting, ‘How to let go of Hyperparenting‘, but his suggestions are good ones to try. I’ve chosen three to list here that I particularly like:

• 1) When you get angry, pick them up and hug them. This makes me think of counting to ten before saying something in a stressful, tense or frustrating situation, which really helps you to think before you speak. Forcing yourself to take a moment, to have a little patience, to breathe and to delay your response works wonders for calming you down and enabling you to react more positively. Giving your child a hug when you automatically would snap or speak sternly to them is a challenge and an exercise in self-restraint. You know you’ll feel a lot better after that hug though.
• 4) Let her play, let her explore. Definitely important to allow self-discovery and adventure, as long as you have the area child-proofed or any dangerous items well out of reach! If you live in a small flat and it’s impossible to clear all dangers away, then set up a dedicated play area and take time outside to explore too.
• 9) If the kid is “acting up”, try to figure out why, and meet that need. Whilst this might sound obvious, I think parents can get caught up in the heat of the moment and it’s easy to forget that naughty behaviour is usually just a child’s form of expression to let out frustration, jealousy, desire for affection etc. Once that’s identified and dealt with, the challenging behaviour disappears.

See what you think about the rest of Leo’s suggestions and read the full post here on Zen Habits.

We had our first majorly wet day of the autumn a couple of weeks ago. I was going to take my son to a play group but it was too wet to make the journey. So what to do?  I decided to ‘play’ something different. We had a cardboard box in the hall from a package that arrived the day before so I grabbed that. We put the soft play blocks in the box and had fun taking them out, putting them back in and closing up the top of the box and re-opening. It lasted a few minutes at least. Then I decided we’d try some ‘drawing’. Not a success – what was I thinking? At this stage coloured pencils are only good for putting in the mouth and paper is only good for screwing up.

We managed to pass the time shaking the maracas to Elvis and then I spotted a lull in the rain so put on the anorak and out we went. We took a stroll around the park which was deserted. I enjoyed the dark damp isolation and feeling like we had the whole park to ourselves but it was short-lived, as the rain started coming down heavy again and we headed home.

There are going to be a lot of days like this to come, so I decided to make a list of things to do with a baby when it rains:

• Put on your wellies and mac and go out for a walk anyway (if you are dressed appropriately and baby is cosy and safe under the protection of the buggy’s raincover it’s actually kind of nice to take a wander. Older children will have fun in their wellies, splashing in puddles)
• Invite someone over or make a dash for a nearby fellow mum’s house for a playdate
• Go out to a shopping mall to pass a few hours browsing the shops, stopping for coffee/lunch, all without having to step outside
• If your baby is still fairly young, check your local cinemas for daytime baby-friendly screenings which are a great wet-weather activity
• Visit an art exhibition or museum. Your little one will be happy enough being pushed around whilst you enjoy the art (many museums have fun art activities for older children). Cafe and toilet facilities are usually good in these places, which is always helpful!
• If you can’t face going out, make yourself a nice hot cuppa and have a sing-a-long and story session with baby or get out the paints and get their hand/foot prints onto paper (something I’ve been meaning to do and still haven’t….)

How do you pass the time on a really wet rainy day?