What makes Hypnobabies special

Hypnobabies has a lot to offer. I have decided to compile a list of unique advantages of the Hypnobabies program.

• Hypnobabies is comprehensive childbirth education. The founder of Hypnobabies comes from a childbirth education background and brought together her knowledge of childbirth with hypnosis in Hypnobabies. Hypnobabies includes information on the physiology of birth, nutrition and exercise, evidence-based pros and cons of interventions, making sure you have the right caregiver, and more! It is the only hypnosis for childbirth method that meets the requirements of DONA International for DONA doulas to observe for their certification.
• Hypnobabies not only teaches women how to relax, it also teaches them to enter a relaxed state at will, using a self-hypnosis technique called the "finger drop." This relaxation response is embedded in her subconscious through practice and post-hypnotic suggestion.
• The same relaxation response can also be activated by the mother's birth partner, doula, or maternity provider, with the "release" and "relax" cues, empowering them to help her better make use of her training.
• Hypnobabies helps women look forward to birth by releasing fear and learning to expect the birth to be an experience that can be enjoyed, undoing all of the negative ideas about birth they may have absorbed through the media and stories told by others.
• Hypnobabies teaches women that birth is a powerful and intense thing happening in their bodies, and helps them embrace that power instead of trying to run away from it.
  
• Hypnobabies teaches women how to have more comfortable childbirths, both by interpreting the sensations of birth as "pressure" or "tightening" AND by learning to increase and direct their bodies' endorphins with Hypno-anesthesia, using the "peace" cue.
  
• Hypnobabies encourages mobility during labor, which helps with positioning and descent (and may be a comfort measure if other techniques aren't working as the mother would like) and teaches a technique that allows them to use their relaxation and Hypno-anesthesia while upright or moving, called "eyes open childbirth hypnosis"
• Hypnobabies offers a large assortment of materials for women to practice with during pregnancy, allowing them to practice daily without getting tired of listening to the same few CD tracks over and over.
• Hypnobabies teaches about optimal fetal positioning and techniques to relieve back labor.
  
• Hypnobabies gives women a wide variety of tools to pick from to use during their births--moving while using eyes-open childbirth hypnosis, going "off" and relaxing completely, listening to their CDs, having a birth partner read mini-scripts, using cues (relax, release, and peace), vocalizing, visualizing their "special place," chanting mantras from the scripts ("open, open, open"), or counting down from 5-1 (which also activates automatic relaxation). Women have the freedom to use as many or as few of these tools that feel right to them at different points during their births, and may integrate them with their own unique strategies.
• Hypnobabies teaches instinctive mother-directed pushing (referred to as "gentle ahhh pushing") and encourages women to use upright pushing positions and listen for their bodies to tell them when and how to push.
• For those for whom the wonderful Hypnobabies live course is not an option, Hypnobabies offers a homestudy course, the content of which is based on their live course and significantly more in-depth than any other hypnosis for childbirth self-study option available.
  

For more information,

• Read Hypnobabies instructor and Hypno-doula Sheridan's post How is Hypnobabies different?, as well as her personal experience with taking HypnoBirthing with her second baby and Hypnobabies with her third.
  
• Check out this comparison from Laura, who has used and taught both HypnoBirthing and Hypnobabies.
  
• Stephanie, a homebirth midwife in Arizona, wrote about how impressed she was with Hypnobabies clients after some previous negative experiences with women who had done other hypnosis for childbirth preparation methods.
  
• The Hypnobabies website has a great list of unique advantages of Hypnobabies, with testimonials from five women who have used both Hypnobabies and other hypnosis methods.
• From the Hypnobabies blog: UNIQUE Benefits of Hypnobabies: "What makes Hypnobabies different from other Childbirth Hypnosis programs?"