How One Hypnotherapy Session Helped Me Overcome Birth Anxiety
The thought of giving birth to my fourth child sent me into full panic mode.
I knew the pain too well. The kind of pain that stops the moment your baby is born—but while it lasts, it’s like nothing else. Beautiful in a way, but also raw and barbaric.
This was going to be my third home birth. No drugs. I wanted to feel it. I didn’t want to be fogged by medication. I needed to stay present, to feel life in its most primal, painful glory—like a tribal woman giving birth mid-journey.
The anxiety was real though. And it was building. I was scared.
Then, I tried hypnotherapy. Just one session—and something shifted. That deep-rooted fear of giving birth again started to ease. I could breathe. I could focus.
In the days leading up to labour, I found myself wandering barefoot around the garden just after sunrise. Breathing in the heavy scents of summer. Breathing out the tension and pain.
I had taken a year out of studying a Masters degree in Contemporary Art to have my baby and I constantly had my SLR camera with me.
Walking around my garden barefoot feeling contractions and doubling over every ten steps I took photos and documented the morning and how I felt.
That’s who I am. I wasn’t trying to capture the birth. I wanted to remember the feeling of that day: the love, the fear, the anticipation. The pain, the beauty. All of it.
Heavy with my unborn child and the weight of what was to come, I kept shooting until my body told me it was time to lie down and let the waves of labour take over.
I won't pretend the birth was all flowers and rainbows, it was far from it. As a 42 year old woman I felt the strain that my body was not as young as it once was but, I felt strong. Delivering this baby was the longest of all my births and still only five hours. I count myself lucky that I was not in labour for days as some women are.
This is one of the photos I took that morning. It captures everything I felt—everything that was about to happen.
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| Macro Strawberry with water droplet ©lynnedjones |
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