Hypnobirthing: conclusion

I finished reading the Marie Mongan Hypnobirthing book. In the end, I have to say, I was turned off by a lot of things in the book. Mainly, the proprietary angle of the hypnosis techniques. To me it's rather icky to say you have a wonderful, all natural birthing approach that could help millions of women have a pain free birth... but the catch is you have to take a class that costs over $150. I know that a competitor, Hypnobabies, offers a "home study program" (set of CDs and you have to buy all of them) but it costs just as much as taking a class. I do not buy the idea that this information can only be made available at such a high fee - it smacks of corporate profiteering in a way that is a huge turnoff for me. I am sure that classes have more to offer than home self-taught hypnosis, but that shouldn't mean she couldn't sell each of the scripts individually for reasonable prices, just enough to keep the her in business.

Along those lines, what squicked me out even more is the way, the further I got into the book, she seemed to try to intimidate or scare you into wanting to pay for the classes, because (she made it seem) if you don't, all kinds of horrible things are going to happen to you during your birthing experience. She used a lot of fear tactics about hospital procedures, which I think is pretty unfair considering she is probably marketing mostly to first time moms who have never given birth and don't know what to expect. Except that I now know from my doula that my hospital does not employ all these horrible, scary, dangerous procedures that Mongan warns me about. And of course no other kind of birth class or even other kind of hypnosis training will protect you the way Hypnobirthing will. I felt like I was being emotionally manipulated into taking her classes and lining her pockets, and that is not cool with me.

And stemming from that, I wasn't into the level of detail of her "birthing preferences" (her terminology for a birth plan) either. Again I felt scare tactics were employed here, some of it was overdone, and some plain unrealistic. For instance, she recommends you ask all nursing staff to avoid using the words "pain" and "labor" around you. Really, I am going to dictate to the staff what language they can use? In another example, she says you should make sure that the baby is placed naked on your chest and NOT wrapped in a blanket when he's born. Seriously, is my baby going to be scarred for life if he's wrapped in a blanket? That is a level of obsessive detail that I do not want to even think about... and I don't see how it's conducive to having a relaxed birth, if I'm worried about every word coming out of the nurses' mouths and every minute detail of the birthing room - how dim the lights are, how quickly people are walking around. That is a recipe for control freak hell in my opinion.

So. I will continue to do the relaxation track because I do enjoy that. I will probably even keep searching for reasonably priced hypnobirthing meditations online if I can find any more. But I definitely do not want to take a Hypnobirthing (TM) class now.