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helping parents relax and follow their own path
from pregnancy to grandparenting
Birth Dreaming
Daydream your way to an easier birth
Would you like your pregnancy to feel more relaxed?
Would you like an easy way to prepare your body and mind for giving birth?
Would you like to have tools to reduce the discomfort of labour and help you cope?
Would you like some tools you and your partner can use when birth isn't straightforward?
This course is for you. It is just what you need. It got me through my five births and I have been teaching these techniques for almost 20 years. Based on relaxation techniques and visualisations specifically designed, it is a pregnancy relaxation course and birth preparation course in one.
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Enjoy time to deeply relax.
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Learn simple tips and tricks to de-stress and let go of tension quickly and easily.
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Feel in control during labour.
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Have tools you and your partner can use during labour, even if things don't go to plan.
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Prepare your body and mind for childbirth while you daydream.
There is an online course in May 2021, with me, via Zoom, and an e-course which you can access anytime. More details of both further down the page.
"I would just like to say how wonderful Cathy is and if you are wondering whether to use her or not please do. My birth was nearly in a car on the way to hospital and yet I stayed calm the whole time due to the excellent skills she had taught me. It was an amazing labour and birth, that I felt in control of the whole time. Thank you so much."
"I just wanted to say thank you. I attended your pregnancy relaxation classes with my first baby and I have just had my third, a wonderful home birth. I have used the techniques with each birth and they have really helped. I have told my friends and some of them have done your course too."
"I had a planned caesarean in the end and your course was really useful. I used the relaxation and visualisation techniques while we were waiting to go to theatre. We were waiting for hours and I lost it in the end, but without your relaxations I wouldn't have coped for as long."
What if you could daydream your way to an easier birth?
Wouldn’t it be good to have a way to prepare for labour without really doing anything?
This course is a mixture of relaxation exercises and visualisations. Practising relaxation helps your body respond and relax in labour. Visualisations train your subconscious to respond and react in the way you want to help you cope and enjoy your labour. Visualisations are like guided daydreams, using memories of images, colours, sounds, smells to build a story, often a metaphor.
Visualisations lay down paths in the brain similar to real life experiences. Just like with overcoming fear of flying or stopping smoking, by listening to the words and music, you can change your subconscious, even if you fall asleep. You give birth with your subconscious mind.
Being relaxed and feeling positive helps to the labour hormones flow and birth to go as well as possible. Labour is muscle action so being relaxed reduces the discomfort of labour, and research has shown that skills based preparation is the best for helping you cope with childbirth.
If all this sounds good, ‘Birth Dreaming’ is for you. It includes tried and tested relaxation techniques, including some simple tips to quickly and easily de-stress and release tension, plus specifically created visualisations for pregnancy and birth.
Using the tools in this course will help you relax, unwind and focus on your baby. At the same time, without any extra effort from you, you will be preparing your body and mind for your baby's birth.
Listening to the MP3s will be a little oasis in your busy days, a perfect pregnant pause to totally chill out.
With my second baby I designed a visualisation for myself in which I imagined I was in a rain forest and my legs became like tree trunks as I connected with the nature around me. I actually ended up giving birth in exactly that position.
"A useful, practical course that has left me feeling more confident. I can do this!"
"A useful box of tools for birth and preparation."
"A down to earth approach."
"Has really built my confidence to believe I can to this!"
Can you really prepare for birth while day dreaming?
Benefits for pregnancy:
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Helps you to relax quicker
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Reduces your stress
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Helps you to feel confident about birth with a tool you can use in labour
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Practising relaxation also helps you sleep!
"After the session I had the best night's sleep I'd had in a long time."
Benefits for labour:
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Reduces the pain (gas and air and pethidine are muscle relaxants).
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Lets the birth hormones flow, giving you a shorter labour.
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Gives you tools to help you cope with the waves of power (aka contractions/surges)
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Helps you cope with whatever happens.
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Gives you distraction tools if you have an epidural or caesarean.
Why visualisations?
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Visualisation is a tool used by athletes and top business people, and people wanting to change their lives (i.e. stop smoking, get over fear of flying.)
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Visualisation aids relaxation, helping you to go into a deeper relaxed state.
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Creates neural pathways in the brain so you can train your body to do stuff by day dreaming.
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Works on the subconscious, so it has an effect even if you fall asleep.
Plus - I will teach you the best and easiest 'breathing through contractions' technique. I used it with all of mine to great effect.
With my first labour, I surprised myself by not even needing gas and air!
You will have a Mp3 of the relaxation exercises, and each visualisation plus a caesarean preparation visualisation.
You can tap into my knowledge and experience of supporting women and couples prepare for meeting their baby as an antenatal teacher and doula, over almost 20 years.
Course includes:
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Specially recorded visualisations
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Simple relaxation exercises and deeper full body relaxations.
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Birth Dreaming guide
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Chilled Mama's guide to writing a birth plan.
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Chilled Mama's guide to writing a late pregnancy plan
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Chilled Mama's guide to writing a postnatal plan for the first days and weeks of life with your new baby.
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Information sheets on induction, epidurals, home birth, water birth, negotiating your care, etc.
This is an E-course:
A portal with all the MP3s, explanatory videos, Birth Dreaming guide, and all the other information, plus weekly emails for five weeks, giving you tips and a gentle nudge. You can watch the videos and listen to the relaxations and visualisations whenever you want.
How many weeks pregnant should I be?
The course is suitable from early pregnancy.
What's the difference between your relaxation techniques and self-hypnosis?
Visualisations and relaxation are two of the central components in self-hypnosis for pregnancy and birth, so in that they are very similar. Hypnobirthing includes other techniques. Hypnobirthing courses are usually £200 or more.
Birth Dreaming e-course
Self guided 4 week course, with weekly emails and ongoing access to portal with MP3s.
Access all the Birth Dreaming relaxations and visualisations in your own time. Ongoing access to a portal with all the MP3s, plus explanatory videos. Weekly emails for four weeks giving you tips, ideas, and a gentle nudge.
January sale: £10 (instead of £47)
Free affirmation MP3
Free MP3 download
Start yourself off with a free MP3 of affirmations to listen to as you relax.
Coming soon
Here's a taster for you. A relaxing visualisation to help you sleep.