I came across HypnoBirthing when I was pregnant with my first baby boy in 2009. My husband introduced the idea, which I love! He heard about it from a work colleague who had sold the course to us. We looked forward to our weekly sessions in our HypnoBirthing Teachers lounge. Doing the classes brought us closer together as a couple, it changed our perception of birth and made us start to connect with our baby in a way that we hadn’t done before. We were going through a tough time, due to illness in the family and the course gave us the focus and distraction that we needed.

Matrescence - ever heard this word? It is likely that you haven’t, as ‘matrscence’ has not made it into our common vocabulary. The dictionary definition is ‘the process of becoming a mother’, coined by Dana Raphael, American Medical Anthropologist.

It is a time of my life that I can recall clearly, yet so much is a blur! I was tired, exhausted, out of my depth and to be honest, clueless about how to look after a newborn baby. I had no idea that you should never fall asleep on the sofa with your baby; I thought that sharing a bed with a newborn was a criminal offence; and controlled crying was the only way to teach a sleepless, boob monster to self soothe! We were in survival mode and doing the best that we knew how.

If you are anything like me, under normal circumstances you wouldn’t moan about the British weather resembling the feeling of being on a holiday in the Mediterranean but when you are pregnant, a particularly hot spell may not be so welcome.

Many people will even go as far as saying that “giving birth is the most painful thing you will experience in your whole life”, others will use it as a common comparison to describe the severity of pain, saying things like “It was worse than childbirth!” Or “You’ve had a baby, you can cope with having your ingrowing toenail operated on!”.

As with all three of my boys, I had used the tried and tested techniques of HypnoBirthing. We learned the original, Mongan Method of HypnoBirthing for the first time in 2009 and the tools and techniques have never failed us. We loved it so much, that after the birth of our second baby, I decided to retrain as an NCT Antenatal Teacher and HypnoBirthing practitioner, to help others and share my knowledge and passion.

Self-care is a recent buzzword!! 'Take care of yourself’, ‘look after yourself,’ ‘give time to yourself, ‘take time out for yourself’!!

Mind, the mental health charity, state that “Self-care techniques and general lifestyle changes can help manage the symptoms of many mental health problems”