Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:00:00:
Hi, everyone. On today’s podcast, we’re going to talk with Kerry Tuschhoff, the founder of Hypnobabies®, about hypnosis as a pain management strategy during labor and the power of the mind. Welcome to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. My name is Rebecca Dekker, and I’m a nurse with my PhD and the founder of Evidence Based Birth®. Join me each week as we work together to get evidence-based information into the hands of families and professionals around the world. As a reminder, this information is not medical advice. See ebbirth.com/disclaimer for more details. Hi everyone, and welcome to today’s episode of the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast. Where we’re going to talk about the power of the mind and using medical-grade hypnosis for pain management during childbirth. I do want to give you a quick head’s up about a traumatic birth story with severe pain and suffering is going to be shared from about 2 minutes and 30 seconds until about 11 minutes and 30 seconds. So, if you want to skip past a traumatic story, you can resume listening at around minute 12. And now, I’d like to introduce our honored guest, the Founder and Director of Hypnobabies® Hypnobirthing Childbirth Education, Kerry Tuschhoff. Kerry has loved being a childbirth educator, doula, speaker, and hypnotherapist for more than 30 years. Teaching families to trust in their minds, bodies, babies, and the process of childbirth is her passion, and hearing healing birth stories is her joy. Educating people who need change and healing about the life-altering benefits of therapeutic hypnosis for many physical, emotional, and financial issues is also paramount to Kerry. Kerry, we are so honored to have you here today. Welcome to the Evidence Based Birth® Podcast.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:01:25:
Thank you so much, Rebecca. I just love being here. I love talking about all of this and helping people to have better births. And I appreciate you having me on.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:01:35:
Yeah. And I’ve admired your work for many years now. I think the baby I had with Hypnobabies®, with the help of Hypnobabies®, is now 12 years old, which is hard to believe. But I was wondering, you know, I’d love to just kind of introduce everyone to the concept of self-hypnosis for pain management and birth. And I was wondering if you could start off by sharing with our listeners what initially inspired you to create Hypnobabies®. Give us the birth story of Hypnobabies®.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:02:08:
Okay. Well, it started a long time ago with my own births, many, many years ago. I actually was freshly married and a friend of mine gave birth without drugs. She used the Bradley method and I had never heard of such a thing. I thought everybody went in and had an epidural. And she said no, that she learned some breathing and relaxation and she was able to do it. She was so happy. And I was just fascinated. I started to look up natural childbirth, which to me now, all births are natural. So I don’t say that. I say unmedicated births, because if a baby comes out of a body, it’s a natural process one way or another. So I started doing some research and I actually decided to become a Bradley Natural Childbirth instructor. And they let me take their course, even though I’d never had a baby. And I went audited 12 classes of theirs and became an instructor and started teaching people. And I was just in love with it. And I became a doula as well, attending my students’ births. And I was so fascinated at maybe about 50% of them went without drugs. And even though they seemed like they were really struggling, I thought, this is doable. It’s going to be fine when it’s my time. And so I got pregnant. And when I went to have my baby, I was absolutely shocked because I thought I knew everything about having a baby. And it was so painful. I was screaming. My baby was turned around. She was posterior. So her little head was grinding on the nerves in my spine. And no amount of relaxation or breathing was going to help that. Anyone out there who’s had back labor knows what that is. So I was pretty upset.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:04:15:
I was like, did you feel you’d been sold a false bill of goods? Not to say that the Bradley teaching is false, but did you feel you were misled in some way?
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:04:25:
During the birthing itself, I wasn’t thinking that way. I was just thinking, I need to live through this because I had no idea people could feel this kind of pain. I had thought that as a childbirth educator, that everyone should have an unmedicated birth. And this birthing of mine, where I had an epidural and I was never so happy. In my life to see anyone as I was that anesthesiologist with a big long needle going in my back. Gave me the education that I needed on a personal level to understand why and how that would be a birthing choice for many people. And they pushed and pulled the baby out of me because I couldn’t feel anything. And I had my beautiful little prize. And afterwards, I was completely traumatized. I had PTSD and I relived her birth for four months all the time. Every Wednesday. She was born on a Wednesday. So it was very traumatizing for me to think that I didn’t get the birth day that I wanted, but that wasn’t the main thing. The main thing was the intensity of the pain that I had not understood. Was actually a thing.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:05:46:
And you weren’t frightened going into it, right?
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:05:49:
I wasn’t. I was calm and cool as a cucumber. But after that, I was not. It took me a while to start being an instructor again and to start going to births because now I understood what these people were going through. And then four years almost to the day that I had my daughter, I had my son at a different birth center in a big tub of water. And even though his birth was not 36 hours long, it was seven hours long start to finish. He was also posterior. And I was screaming my head off with the pain. And literally, I was screaming. My husband was pushing on my back during one contraction, and my sister was holding my hands out in front. I was squeezing the daylights out of them, and when I was done with it and I could hardly breathe from the pain, I looked up into my sister’s eyes, and she was sobbing, and she said it should never have to be this hard. And it’s like a light bulb went on over my head. And I just went, well, you’re not wrong about that. And I just decided right there in the middle of my birthing. That even if I never had another child and I didn’t, I was going to find a way that other people didn’t have to go through this just to have an unmedicated, more holistic birthing experience as many of us want. And I did. I saw a TV show after that about hypnosis for childbirth. And I started looking it up on the internet and I went and got trained at a different hypnobirthing program, started to teach it, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. I was going to the births of these students of mine and it just wasn’t what I was looking for. That was it. I was like, well, I have to create what it is that I want to teach. So I just went out and I studied hypnosis and I studied hypnotherapy. Then I became a hypnotherapist. Then I started studying techniques for pain management. And then I found a program. Called Gerald Kein’s Painless Childbirth Program. And it was this wonderful man who just has passed a few years ago now, named Gerald Kein, and he had created a program to use in the office with hypnotherapists and pregnant people. And one-on-one. And so I took that training and it filled in most of the gaps. It was all about real hypnoanesthesia, meaning the kind of hypnosis that, although rare, there are people who are allergic to medical anesthetics. So even though they need to have surgery, they can’t have it because the allergy to those medications will, you know, kill them or give them a really bad reaction. So they work with hypnotherapists ahead of time and they learn what’s called hypnoanesthesia. They practice it many, many times and they use it during the birthing itself and afterwards for recovery. And that’s what I was looking for. It was tremendous. And so when I was finished with that training, I asked Gerry, you know, could I put these techniques, even though you’ve made them for hypnotherapists, could I put them into a childbirth education program? And he said, absolutely. I can’t wait to see what you create. And that was 23 years ago now. And so I just started creating a Childbirth Education Program that had these hypnoanesthesia techniques, but also much more for the birth partners. So we put in hypnosis for the birth partners as well, because one of my students, one of my hypnobaby students came in and he was a mess. The mom was fine. But the dad, he was just a mess. So we created techniques for him to stay calm and relaxed before and during and after the birthing. And that made a huge difference. And along the way, our students, our Hypnodoulas, and our Hypnobabies® instructors have all helped us to update and update Hypnobabies® so that it is not only more evidence-based, but more techniques for everybody. And ways to include everybody in the different scenarios that they might choose to use Hypnobabies® in. So that is how it all started. It started with a lot of pain and ended up with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world using these techniques and having a much easier birthing.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:11:10:
Kerry, can you take us to what is hypnosis? Because I think most people have a misconception that it’s some kind of like woo woo, you know, swinging a coin on a necklace. And could you just explain what medical hypnosis is and also what self-hypnosis is? Because I remember from my training that that was important as well.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:11:30:
Right. Well, most people think that hypnosis is what they see on the stage. You know, there’ll be a stage hypnotist and they pick somebody out of the audience and supposedly have power over them and make them quack like a duck or sing like Elvis. And therapeutic hypnosis is nothing like that. That’s actually an entertainment. It’s a show. And everybody wants to be part of it and have fun. Therapeutic hypnosis is very, very different. So first of all, I’d like everybody to understand that we are in states of hypnosis all the time, every single day. So anytime you’re reading anything, whether it’s a book, a magazine, a tablet, a laptop.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:12:18:
Anything you’re reading?
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:12:19:
Anything, you know, and your eyes are going back and forth like this a little bit. You enter a state of hypnosis. It’s an alpha state, so a lighter state. But we’re also in a state of hypnosis when we’re watching a screen of any kind. We’re watching images and movies and videos on everything from our phone to our tablet to our laptop to our TV to the big screen. We get into a state of hypnosis. And of course, anybody who has ever tried to interrupt a gamer knows that they are so focused on what they’re doing that you could call and call and call their name and they don’t literally don’t hear you because they’re in such a deep state of hypnosis focused on that. So what hypnosis is, is a very focused form of concentration. And we see that when we’re driving. We’re in states of hypnosis when we’re driving. And maybe when we get to a stop sign or stop light. And we realize that the last five minutes are not very clear to us. Sometimes we don’t have a conscious memory of it at all. And it’s because we were thinking about what was going to go on once we get to wherever we’re going and stuff we need to do later that day. And so we were in hypnosis and our subconscious was driving. So we’re in a state of hypnosis all the time.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:13:44:
And is that like a state of our brain, essentially? Like our brainwaves are acting differently?
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:13:50:
Your brainwaves slow down and there are different levels of that. An alpha state would be where the brainwaves slow down a little bit and we get into a very relaxed, focused state. The state that our students get into in Hypnobabies® is theta and it’s very slow brainwaves, very slow. It’s not delta. Delta is sleep, but our brainwaves are very slow. And if you could imagine that you have different parts of the mind, so the conscious mind would be a level at the top, and the subconscious would be a level down at the bottom. And in between, we have what’s called the critical faculty. And it’s kind of a filter. It lets, you know, many things into the subconscious, whatever it deems would be helpful or reinforces what we already believe, because our subconscious is a vault of everything that we have ever seen or done or heard or experienced, thought, believed. It’s all in a vault. So if whatever’s coming in kind of matches with that, it lets it in. And what we need to do is give the subconscious new information. So we need to make that critical faculty take a nap. So that we can go directly from the conscious level, which is up here, to the subconscious level, which is lower. And then when we get there, we introduce these new ideas, which is, it’s all very, very positive. We’re not taking anything out. We’re just basically updating its software. So the software is currently in many people. That childbirth is scary, you know, their mom had a tough time, their aunt, maybe they had a tough time last time, or all the videos that they watch on the internet or birth stories that they read. And so the belief system is that this is a scary thing to be faced with trepidation. So first we’re going to go in and the first part of Hypnobabies® is allowing us to understand and believe that childbirth is absolutely normal and natural and can be much more joyful, much more easy, much more calm, much more relaxed, much more comfortable than we ever knew before. So that’s the first part of it. And we update that software and update it and update it and move on to another part of the program, which literally goes in and retrains our subconscious mind that the feelings, the sensations we’re going to feel during birthing are there. Pushing, pulling, stretching, tightening sensations, baby movements, all those things are still there. But they’re associated with a much higher level of comfort, then we believed in the past. And so all of that combined, moving forward, technique by technique, cue by cue, all the way to the end of Hypnobabies® reinforces and updates that software and reinforces and updates that software over and over and over again until it’s in there. It’s very much in there. So that when we get into our birthing time, if we have learned and practiced in and are using Hypnobabies®, the way that, you know, to our best benefit, then we can have an easier birthing. So it’s not about having a pain free birthing, although there are people that do. It’s about having the easiest and most comfortable birthing that you can have based on how you’ve prepared, but also based on the circumstances of your birthing. Because as we know, many things happen during childbirth that can change the dynamics. And it’s one of the reasons why Hypnobabies® is a complete childbirth education program so that we can help people to learn what their choices are. We call them choices. Other people call them interventions. So we teach the benefits, the risks, the alternatives to all of the choices that you could make, you know, epidural or no, IV or no, episiotomy or no, having your bag of waters breaking or no, all of the benefits, the risks and the alternatives to these things to make the best choices for themselves. And also the fact that all choices belong to them, to you, to if you are pregnant, all choices belong to you. And a lot of people do not understand that or didn’t know that before they got to Hypnobabies® class.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:18:44:
Right. It’s a very empowering form of education because it’s retraining your mind to have more positive associations and then also giving you information you can use as you face different scenarios. But, I want to ask you a little bit more about the hypnosis because you mentioned the preparation, how this is an ongoing process. So you can’t just like read a book, do self-hypnosis one time and then have it be effective. And what I’ve seen in my family, my sister attempted doing that with one of her children. And it took several births for her to realize she had to actually engage and practice and train in it. So can you talk a little bit about how the research on self-hypnosis and childbirth tends to be with programs that don’t, are not very intense, and then the kind of intensity that’s required to get more anesthesia from the hypnosis?
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:19:44:
Well, it’s interesting because people do ask me about research on hypnosis for childbirth. And the only research that I know of that has been done has been done in a completely different way.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:19:55:
Right.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:19:55:
So what they do is they’ll give a control group nothing or relaxation, exercises and breathing. Another group gets techniques from somebody else, some other program, you know, and then they will give the hypnosis group one recording. And it will be that they listen to that every single day and whatever’s on there, that is their hypnosis for childbirth.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:20:30:
Okay.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:20:31:
And then the results are that, yes, it helps. That’s all we got. So what I learned being a pregnant person and a birthing person and a childbirth educator and a doula was that there has to be a lot more to having a more comfortable birthing than anything like that. I know many of my Bradley students and Bradley is, oh my gosh, I learned so much from that course. It was just everything you need to know about having an unmedicated birthing. It really empowered you. And my students would get into a very relaxed state. Which was wonderful. It did help them to have what we called in the Bradley Method unnecessary pain. The rest of it, the pain that is caused by fear or belief systems, basically, about how awful this is going to be. That really needed to change. And so that’s where real hypnosis comes in. The very deep somnambulistic state of hypnosis, way down deep, where we can have those theta waves, where we can then retrain and update the software over and over again with specific things. For instance, when your waters release, you will go even deeper into a state of relaxation, all the muscles around your baby, you will have even more hypnoanesthesia. It’s those sorts of things that need to be put in and then reinforced and updated and reinforced and updated. You know, when you get to transformation, which we call transition transformation, and there’s nothing wrong with the word transition. It’s just the association. It’s all about association. So whenever you say to a pregnant woman, the word transition or she reads it. It’s usually followed by something awful. When I hit transition, I just lost it. Or a birth professional will say to a pregnant person, well, transition is the shortest part of labor, but it’s the hardest. Well, you’re using actually waking suggestions to implant that belief system in there. And so then it very much will be that. So we took the word transition out and used transformation because we’re transforming from the dilating part of birthing to the pushing part. During that time, the cues in Hypnobabies®, the techniques, all of the messages and directives say, when you get to transition, it’s actually the best part of your birthing because you are soon going to be pushing your baby out. And so your birthing waves may be longer and stronger and closer together. We never say painful. We never even use the word discomfort. We say there might be more intensity. And that is because of waking suggestions. Because as soon as you say to somebody the way it will be, and you’re a birth professional or you are a program that they are depending on, that goes into the subconscious and becomes a belief system that gets reinforced and reinforced and reinforced. So we’re doing the opposite. And if they use the techniques and cues in Hypnobabies®, then transformation oftentimes is… A much easier process for them, and all of a sudden they’re pushing. And they didn’t even realize they were in it.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:24:25:
Yeah, I think that’s one of the very few side effects or adverse effects I’ve ever heard of self-hypnosis is that some people can be so calm during transition/transformation if they’re using Hypnobabies® or that the staff may not believe them that they’re ready to push.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:24:46:
That’s true. And oftentimes our students will get to the hospital and they don’t want to admit them.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:24:55:
Yeah, they don’t believe they’re in labor.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:24:56:
Because they’re really calm and relaxed. They’re not, and they could be seven, eight, nine centimeters, but they’re not going to be yelling. And, you know, most people, and I don’t care about yelling. They can be as loud as they want to. It’s not about that. It’s just that they are much more comfortable. So as you say, they are not believed. We had one mom who… holy cow, she was… she said she had these feelings, but they didn’t come and go. She called me up and she said, there’s just this one strong, long feeling. It’s pressure. And I said, I want you to pay attention to it because that may be your pattern, your birthing pattern. And it just got more and more and more intense until. And it was pressure. Until she got to the hospital and they said, how far apart are your contractions? And she said. Well, that’s not it. It’s this. It’s one long pressure wave, basically, one long feeling. And they said, well, go back home. And she said, you need to get me a room and you need to do it now. And 14 minutes later, that baby was out. Now, is that everyone’s experience? Certainly not. But we do teach people to pay attention to their bodily sensations, and they very much are in tune with their bodies and their babies because of the mind-body connection.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:26:32:
Yeah, the power of language is something that really struck me from Hypnobabies®. Can you talk about some of the other words you mentioned. Transformation and pressure waves? Are there any other terms… ?
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:26:45:
Well, we say birthing or birthing time instead of labor because of the association with the word labor meaning work. And also the word labor being associated with hard labor, somebody else’s labor, something that’s on TV labor, the labor that was intense and ended up in a whatever scenario that they don’t want. And so the emotional, there’s two different meanings of words. Literal meaning is a denotation and the emotional meaning is a connotation. So the connotation with labor for pregnant people is not that positive.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:27:26:
It’s pretty negative.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:27:27:
We always want the association between the words that we use, think and hear to be positive. So we don’t say labor, we say birthing or birthing time. We don’t say contractions because again, that is associated emotionally with what happened to somebody else or last time and so forth. So we’ll say birthing wave, pressure wave, and the waking suggestion of wave, something that rolls in and rolls back out is also extremely helpful throughout the entire process of preparing for the birth and the birthing itself. So that’s why those words. Instead of saying due date, we say guess date because we want everybody to understand that you’re just guessing. It could be four weeks of time that’s perfectly normal. So two weeks before the due date and two weeks after the due date is all perfectly normal. So let’s just call it a guess date. And what that does is it takes away the expectation. It allows them to let their body birth their baby when their baby is ready. And that’s the most important thing, is not a date on the calendar. Babies don’t read calendars, and they don’t know anything about that. So babies start the process of birthing themselves with their own hormones, and we need to let them get born on their birth dates, whatever that might be, instead of looking at a calendar and having everybody around us get really nervous too. Well, aren’t you nervous? Your due date’s coming up, or you’re past your due date. Isn’t that baby born yet? So no due dates, just guess dates or guess months.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:29:14:
Yeah, I think I learned it from my Hypnobabies® instructor that there’s a website called haveyouhadthatbabyyet.com. And that she would tell us to send to anybody who texted us saying, have you had that baby yet? You can send them to haveyouhadthatbabyyet.com. And it just says no in black and white. Because there is a lot of societal pressure to give birth by a certain time that makes you tense up and feel more anxiety. So I like that you talk about the guest state. Another thing that I think is unique to Hypnobabies®, having used it myself, is kind of you have the light switch method. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that’s really unique and helpful. Explain what it is.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:29:56:
Sure. Well, first of all, the body is completely 100% a servant to the mind. The mind is in control of everything that we do, even the automatic processes in our body many times. For instance, we could stop breathing if we wanted to. Okay, so, but the subconscious mind really, really rules the roost. So we can actually cause a lot of different things to happen in the body. And that is one of the reasons why we have so many different cues and techniques in Hypnobabies®. The light switch is the main cue. And what that does is, you have a mental light switch that actually you mentally create right back here in the back of your neck. And you mentally turn it off. And when you turn it off, the sensations by way of repetition, which is called compounding in the world of hypnosis, cause everything in your body to basically turn off the sensations, the movements, everything. And that proves to you that your mind is ruling the roost. Your mind is creating effects in the body. And then we go on to basically modify that so that we’re modifying the middle part of the body from the top of the breast to the middle of the thighs. That’s our whole birthing body. And we create, establish, and build upon and reinforce the hypnoanesthesia in that whole area. So that the sensations in the birthing time throughout the whole middle part of the body, even down into the thighs, which some people have issues with that or their hips or their back or anything, can be helped with their hypnoanesthesia. And they know how to direct the hypnoanesthesia to those specific parts whenever they need it. So these are all mental techniques that are used in, as I said, hypnoanesthesia for surgery. So that people can get through that, whether it’s dental or medical surgery, in the same way, directing their anesthesia to those parts of the body that really need to be without feeling or with less feeling. And not all feeling, because you can always feel touch. And as I said before, you can feel the pushing, the pulling, the stretching, the baby movements, the tightening, all of that. But without the association of the intense amount of pain that we have all come to think is childbirth.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:32:42:
It’s my understanding then if your pressure wave is done and you’re ready to get up and walk around, you can turn the switch back off and just go back to normal, right? And then turn it back on when you need it.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:32:56:
Right. Well, you’re never out of hypnosis when you’re in your birthing time. There are just different levels of it. So for instance, if you turn your light switch completely off while you’re lying down, obviously, your body’s going to be in the deepest state of relaxation and hypnosis that it can be. And that’s helpful when you want to lie down.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:33:18:
Like if you want to take a nap during labor.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:33:20:
Like if you’re lying on your side with a peanut ball or something like that. Or even when you’re sitting on the side of the bed on a birthing ball and leaning over the bed with your light switch off. Then when you want to get up and move around, go to the bathroom, talk, walk, eat, whatever, we have what’s called eyes-open childbirth hypnosis. That’s used in between birthing waves. And you can do all that. You can move and still maintain your hypnosis, the relaxation in the entire middle part of your body, your hypnoanesthesia, and you can be much more comfortable. When I was teaching the other hypnobirthing thing, I was not happy, one of the things that didn’t make me happy about it was that my students and then my doula clients. If they moved at all, their hypnosis was gone. And so Gerald Kein wrote into his program that birthing people could get up, walk, talk, move around, eat, go to the bathroom and change positions and do whatever they want and still stay in this state of hypnosis. So that’s what we have in Hypnobabies® that’s called eyes-open childbirth hypnosis. And it really, really helps because as you know, you want to help with the descent and positioning of the baby and your own physical comfort by being able to move and be as mobile as you would like or not. If you would just like to be still, whatever, you can use these techniques any way you want.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:34:53:
Yeah. And I think taking the class or a refresher, if you’ve had it before, is helpful for bringing back all of these cues and making them effective again. Can you talk a little bit about, for people who do have choices or need interventions. How can self-hypnosis be helpful? For example, during an induction or during a Cesarean.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:35:22:
So let’s talk about induction because there are so many right now. A lot of people are choosing induction. And in Hypnobabies®, we have quite a few, you know, students who do that. And they can still use their hypnosis. If they start using the hypnosis as soon as they start having birthing waves, which is what we suggest for everybody. Then they will have a really good steady base of it by the time that pitocin kicks in or whatever is coming on board. And they will have a much better chance of getting through it in a more comfortable way. That is not universally true. And it’s one of the reasons why we do teach people about real reasons for inductions versus reasons for inductions that are questionable. But we’ve had people also, we have what’s called the change of plans script or track. And that is a way to use hypnosis, to keep using hypnosis, even when the plan changes. And it could be anything from that your own birth preferences, which is what we call the birth plan, did not include having an IV. But here you are in your birthing time and it’s been determined by your medical care professionals along with you in partnership, that an IV will be placed. And that is a change. Some people might be upset about it, so they can listen to this change of plan’s script, which is a hypnosis track. And it allows you to just be calm and relaxed and roll with whatever that new treatment plan is, whatever the new thing is. The veins don’t go flat. The blood pressure stays normal. The temperature stays normal. And we’re just rolling with it. So we can still use hypnosis. And that could be all the way through to having a Cesarean that was unplanned. And so now here we are listening to that track all the way to the OR because it says, you know, this is the new plan. You’ve got the best care all around you and your body is working with your mind. Your mind is working with your body and everything is going to be great. And then they calm down. They relax. Their body and their mind are both in sync. So that’s how hypnosis can continue to be used.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:38:00:
Yeah. And what about after birth? So how can self-hypnosis, if you learn these skills during pregnancy, how can you go on to use them for the rest of your life?
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:38:11:
Well, we do have people using their hypnoanesthesia during dental procedures. That’s one thing. But as far as right after birthing, obviously you can use it when your placenta is being born. Sometimes the placenta is not allowed to just come down by itself and people pull on it. And in that case, it could be a little ouchy. So we can direct our hypnoanesthesia to that area in the uterus. We can also use that to stop blood flow if we have to. We have done that many times. And it can be used for after birth discomfort. So the waves that we have after the baby comes, we can still direct our hypnoanesthesia down to that area. And also for maybe some breastfeeding discomfort that may happen when some people have let down. Or hopefully they’re learning a way of breastfeeding that does not cause sore nipples. But if they did have them, they could use it for that as well.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:39:22:
Yeah. Thank you, Kerry, so much for sharing all this information with us. How can families who are interested in self-hypnosis, like… Learn more or incorporate this into their birth planning and preparation.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:39:39:
Well, we do have a website at Hypnobabies®.com that has a menu at the top that you can click on the different pages and learn anything you want about hypnosis for childbirth. And our Hypnobabies®, hypnobirthing, live instructor-led classes, our hypnodoulas who are trained doulas, they’re trained to birth assist hypnobaby students much better. So they knew all the language and all the techniques and everything to help you. There’s also a lot more on there about general information about hypnosis and how it’s all self-hypnosis. There’s no one ever does anything to you. You enter hypnosis, you stay in hypnosis, you accept the suggestions and you emerge from hypnosis at your own will 100% of the time. So there’s a lot of information on there. We also have a Hypnobabies® web store at Hypnobabies-store.com. And on there is all of our hypnobirthing courses. We have a hard copy hypnobirthing course. We have two online hypnobirthing courses. One is a bundle that comes with our Nancy Mohrbacher breastfeeding course and our preparation for your hospital stay and recovery course as well in a bundle discounted. We have tons of other tracks like fear of eliminating fear of childbirth, eliminating nausea, you know, eliminating insomnia.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:41:14:
And say, don’t you have one to help you sleep in pregnancy? And that’s….
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:41:18:
That’s a popular one is peaceful sleep now for pregnancy, which helps you to get to sleep and stay asleep and uses your baby’s movements as deepening techniques, that sort of thing. We’ve got one for fear of needles and we’ve got stress and anxiety and stop smoking and weight release and so many other things. At Hypnobabies-store.com.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:41:43:
Yeah, so there’s plenty of options, you know, even if you’re not taking a comprehensive class, there’s other ways you can incorporate it into your pregnancy and birth experience. Any last tips for, I was thinking, you know, we were talking about self-advocacy. If somebody doesn’t believe that you’re having your baby because you’re so calm, are there any other tips you have for preparing your healthcare team to work with you if you are choosing self-hypnosis?
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:42:10:
We do have a handout. That they can choose to take with them. We also suggest that our students take goodies to the nurses or midwives who are going to attend their births, a tray of Brownies or store-bought cookies or whatever your midwife likes and give this handout at the same time, which explains what you’re doing and what kind of help you would like from them, which is basically to be left alone.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:42:43:
Well, and to use the terminology that you prefer as well, right?
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:42:47:
We do say that. We do say these are the words that we use, and we would love it if you would use them too. They’re usually pretty fascinated by that because they don’t get this all the time. What they get is people coming in and having an epidural or a Cesarean. And all of that is fine. Those are perfectly valid choices, but we’re just doing something different. So when they read about something different on this page, it’s like, oh, well, that’s fascinating. And then they have a much more kind of wait and see attitude. Like, let’s see how this is going to go.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:43:23:
And have any providers ever talked with you or told you about their reaction to watching their first birth that there was hypnosis being used?
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:43:33:
The first time that happened was early on in my Hypnobabies® career. And I was their doula, this young couple having their first baby. And she was in her birthing all day long. And then when it was time to go to the hospital, they called and said, we’re going to the hospital. I said, do you want me to come? And they said, no, we’ll call you from the hospital. Well, they called me. She was nine centimeters dilated and just completely relaxed. And I said, do you want me to come? The plan was for me to come and be with you. And she said, yeah, you can come. So when I walked in, what I saw was her in a chair. By the door, just looking like she was asleep with her mouth open, having a birthing wave. And then I look over and I see her doctor, who I know from our community, her OB, sitting on the bed with his jaw hanging open. And when she was done with this contraction, she looked up at me and smiled. I said, are you okay? She goes, I’m great. And then he turned to the nurse and said, How far dilated did you say she was? And she said, nine centimeters. And then, so then he had me come in and do in-services for everybody to help them understand what a powerful tool this could be for people. We want our first-time parents to come in and have that much better experience the first time. And we want our subsequent birth parents to come in and have a healing birth from that last time. And that’s what Hypnobabies® provides for so many people. And I’m so proud of them. I’m so proud of people who make that choice to step out of the box and do something very different for themselves and their babies.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:45:25:
Yeah, and overcome all the negative societal connotations with using hypnosis for pain management and trying it and practicing it and seeing if it’s helpful. So thank you, Kerry, so much for reminding all of us the power of like words, language, and the power of the mind and how something like this that’s simple and low cost can help anyone in any birth experience.
Kerry Tuschhoff – 00:45:56:
Yes, absolutely. It’s what I live for. What I do.
Dr. Rebecca Dekker – 00:46:02:
Thank you everyone for listening and we’ll put links to all of the resources Kerry mentioned in the show notes and we’ll see you next week. Thanks everyone. Bye. This podcast episode was brought to you by the book, Babies Are Not Pizzas: They’re Born Not Delivered!. Babies Are Not Pizzas is a memoir that tells the story of how I navigated a broken healthcare system and uncovered how I could still receive evidence-based care. In this book, you’ll learn about the history of childbirth and midwifery, the evidence on a variety of birth topics, and how we can prevent preventable trauma in childbirth. Babies Are Not Pizzas is available on Amazon as a Kindle, paperback, hardcover, and Audible book. Get your copy today and make sure to email me after you read it to let me know your thoughts.
