A Birth Plan can be a really great tool to help expectant couples communicate their desires surrounding their birth to their care providers and nurses. An effective birth plan helps the couple to identify their own needs and communicate them, while aiding the birth team in remembering those desires and helping them create a positive birth experience.

Problems can arise when a birth plan comes across to the birth team as an “order” or “demand” and sometimes couples give the wrong impression by outlining in detail an event that just cannot be predicted!

Hypnosis for birth? Hypnosis is a very real and powerful mental tool that you can use to create a comfortable birth experience. Many women believe that they have to choose to either have a comfortable experience by getting an epidural or a power-your-way-through-it experience by choosing natural childbirth. Ahhh…but there is a third option…Hypnobabies. What if you could be totally present and comfortable during your birth experience while also keeping unnecessary drugs out of your (and your baby’s) system?

The big news is: You CAN with Hypnobabies.

Hypnosis is just a very deep state of relaxation. It is a natural state of mind, and everyone goes into hypnosis several times a day. It’s a very misunderstood tool, but its use in the medical community and childbirth is becoming more and more well known. Dentists use medical-grade hypnosis and a tool called “hypno-anesthesia” on patients that that have allergies and cannot have medicinal anesthesia. It is a very valuable tool that allows for dental surgeries with NO anesthesia. This technique has been modified and applied to childbirth, so that expectant moms can use it too!

Sciatic pain is one of the common discomforts that can affect a woman during her pregnancy. Often women are led to believe that it’s just a side effect of pregnancy and there is nothing they can do about it. In the worst case scenario, moms may not even be able to walk without pain, which sometimes results in prescription drugs to deal with this discomfort. There is a better way to treat this pain that can get rid of the sciatica without prescription drugs!

What is Sciatic Pain?

Sciatic pain is often experienced as a tingling or numbness in the low back, back of the pelvis/buttocks, into the glutes and often down the affected leg, sometimes even into the foot. For some women, it is a mild discomfort, and for others, it can be so excruciating that it becomes difficult to walk, get in and out of the car and function in general. The pain is caused by compression on the sciatic nerve, a bundle of nerves that run from the low back through the hip-rotator and gluteal muscles. When those hip rotators become tight during pregnancy, they can clamp down onto the sciatic nerve, causing compression.

Your posture can change dramatically when your body goes through the adjustments of carrying a baby for nine months. There are so many physical changes that, although they happen gradually, can take a toll on your body and your posture. Why is this important? It’s possible to feel good throughout the entire pregnancy. Knowing what to do to aid in that comfort by being aware of your physical changes can make all the difference!

What do you need to do to ensure that your body feels good throughout the pregnancy and that you don’t have any lasting effects from the postural changes? First we need to understand the changes that take place during pregnancy.

As you reach the 5th month and beyond, most women start to “show”. Everyone loves a cute baby bump, but you need to be careful to not allow your cute bump to pull your back out of alignment. With the increasing weight out front, the abdominal muscles become stretched out. The abs and back muscles work together to keep you upright, normally. But when the abs are stretched during pregnancy – it becomes the job of your back muscles to hold you up! On top of that, the weight of your belly falling forward causes a rotation in your hips. The front and top of your pelvis dips forward in accommodation of the increasing weight out front. This causes a “sway back”, meaning that the back concaves because of the pulling weight out front. The abs and back plus pelvic rotation aren’t the end of the story though! Your breasts are also increasing in size, often significantly. This causes the shoulders to rotate forward, which in turn tightens down the pectoral muscles.