I heard a critique of Hypnosis for Childbirth that it takes women away from their birth experience; does this teach women to distance themselves from the labor and birth?
Great question! I know there are those who believe that the pain of childbirth is empowering and that we should never seek to diminish it, but I firmly believe that a woman experiencing agony in labor during natural childbirth without hypnosis, or a woman groggy from narcotics during a medicated birth, (I’ve done both) do not make her any “closer” to the birth experience itself, much less empower her in any way. The trauma that can be caused by birthing pain during labor is seriously negative, and all most women want to do is get away from it, make it stop, go home. A woman can’t even feel her labor with an epidural and so cannot connect with it.
