“The baby can’t be hungry again, you’ve just fed them”

“You’ll make a rod for your own back, feeding them to sleep like that”

“You should let your partner do the night feed – so much easier on you”

“Blimey, if they’re asking for a feed that often then perhaps you aren’t making enough milk….”

They sound like harmless enough offerings, but the reality is they can do real harm. To a mother’s ability to trust her instinct, to her milk supply, to the baby’s emotional wellbeing. No one offers these things up because they mean to disrupt a mother’s breastfeeding journey, but that’s the very real risk.

Walk a few steps across to my work as an Antenatal Educator and Hypnobirthing Instructor, and it’s the same story with a different script:

“My birth was awful, let me tell you all about it….”

“Of course, they’ll have to induce you if you are still pregnant after a certain point”

“You think it’s hard being pregnant? Wait till you have a newborn to look after….”

Again, no one is trying to break the spirit of expectant mums, but what we deem to be harmless, perhaps even funny comments, can have a real lasting effect.

It hit home for me this evening as I sat down to write this blog. It’s been a couple of quite self reflective days. It started yesterday with an hour long one-to-one with my nutritionist and continued today with a few hours of Doula training, reflecting specifically on the power of just listening, and how we can miss the mark if we aren’t careful.

The final jigsaw piece of this blog came this evening on my Facebook feed, and I write this not knowing if the friend I am about to quote will be upset that I have used her absolutely well-intentioned words, which were not written directly for me, to make my point. (I've since checked, she is lovely and absolutely fine with it!).

“You need to be kinder to yourself. As you say, you aren’t overweight. Don’t deny yourself a treat. Concentrate more on feeling healthier and listening to your body. Are you still running? More running equals more cake”.

It sounds sensible enough, doesn’t it? It’s about feeling healthier, listening to your body. Yes. And yes!!! But underneath it are the myths that so many of us have heard, so many times, that they resonate as truths in our heads. Don’t deny yourself a treat. More running equals more cake. Food is a reward that you deserve and can earn.

Now, I am not a nutritionist. Far, far from it. And there is far more psychology at play here than I am wise enough to understand, far less be immune to. But I want to dust over the surface of what I do understand.

I have grown up believing food is good or bad. That ‘bad’ food is the tasty, sugary food that you reward yourself with when you deserve it. That restricting myself as punishment for eating too much yesterday is the right way to correct my relationship with food. It is imprinted on me and I am now, in my forties, having to work very hard to try to erase those myths from the blueprint of my mind.

The trouble is, that mindset has led me into a very tangled place when it comes to food.

Food is food. Some is more nutritious, or less nutritious. Some is yummier and some less so. Some will fill me up more easily, some I can eat in huge unhealthy quantities without batting an eyelid.   

I haven’t turned into a food guru and this isn’t a healthy eating blog. In fact, I don’t even understand what a healthy food relationship looks like yet so I can’t bring my last paragraph to any real conclusion. I am using the food analogy to draw a parallel to the power of our words in the perinatal world.

When I book a new hypnobirthing client, one of the first things I want to understand about them is how they feel about birth. Have they given birth before? Do they have any fears in their mind around giving birth? What worries them? 

It is important that I find these things out because that’s really what hypnobirthing is all about. Booting out the plethora of negative associations that live in someone’s subconscious brain, ready to surface when the word ‘birth’ gets a mention, and replacing them with positive images and thoughts. Our subconscious brain is our protector. It spends its time instinctively rescuing us from what it thinks poses a threat. 

We watch a T.V. programme where someone gives birth and it depicts complications, fear, discomfort…we listen to our friend retelling their own difficult birth story…the negative emotions seep into our mind whilst our guard is down and before we even realise it, our subconscious brain thinks we need to be protected from birth. It presents a danger to our wellbeing and we should be fearful of it.

Hypnobirthing focuses on flooding the subconscious brain with positive associations, so that when that person is preparing to give birth, they can do it with a calm mindset, free from the adrenaline and able to produce the floods of oxytocin that will play such a vital role in their baby’s arrival and the early bonding stages. 

The same theory flows through all my work. Be it birth preparation, birth trauma support or breastfeeding, we need to protect or heal our subconscious from unhelpful thoughts which invite adrenaline into the room. Adrenaline brings fear and self doubt, and they are the real enemies that our minds need protecting from. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This post is not meant to offend. We have all, myself included, at some point said something which we didn’t mean to be interpreted as a reason for fear or self doubt, but which will have been absorbed as just that. If you are wondering what words can helpfully support a pregnant or nursing friend, here are some suggestions:

If you are not trained in breastfeeding support, please encourage a nursing mother to access trained support if she is experiencing difficulties. Support is widely available and I would be happy to signpost. The links section of my website also lists a number of helpful resources for breastfeeding support.

If you are talking to a friend who is pregnant, please don’t share stories which have the potential to make them fearful of their own upcoming experience of giving birth. The links section on my website signpost to positive birth stories which are more helpful to share.

If you need to talk to someone about a difficult birth or feeding experience you have had, again there is support available and my website links provide some signposts for this.