Fear Free Childbirth Podcast with Alexia Leachman

Lisa’s Fearless Birthing Story

11.12.2015 - By Alexia LeachmanPlay

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Today, I’m super thrilled to be able to share with you a positive birth story with a difference. It’s different because Lisa prepared for her birth using Fearless Birthing so it's the first it's the first Fearless Birthing story. I’ll be doing a podcast next week on Fearless Birthing so you can find out more about it then, but here’s a quick overview;

Fearless Birthing is a birth preparation approach that I’ve developed that is entirely focused on helping mama (and dad) to clear their fears so that they can approach birth fear free. A fearless mama will be much better able to stay present and connected to her body and her baby during labour. By developing her emotional resilience before birth, she is also much better placed to respond flexibly to the demands of labour, and so improve the chances of her having a positive birth experience.

The technique at the heart of Fearless Birthing offers a direct and focused fear-clearance action that works deeply and quickly to clear fears from the mind and body. In removing the mental distractions and helping the mama develop trust in her body’s ability to birth her baby, the power of the birthing body can be allowed to take over.

Lisa's Fearless Birthing Story

Lisa is a careers advisor and first time mum, and she describes herself as someone who was extremely fearful of giving birth and even went as far as to say she was phobic about it (a fear of childbirth is known as tokophobia). She couldn’t even bring herself to imagine how life might be beyond birth because she simply couldn’t contemplate birth or how she was actually going to get through it. It was like a big dark cloud hanging over her pregnancy.

When she first found out she was pregnant, Lisa heard about the work I was doing around pregnancy and birth and got in touch to see if I could help. I was in the early days of developing Fearless Birthing so I asked her to let me know what her fears were so that I could create something that could help. I’d already been collecting pregnancy fears from women that I’d been helping and it didn’t surprise me to see that Lisa’s fears were very common and ones that I had come across already. So I shared with her one of my early Fearless Birthing Meditations.

I didn’t realise how much she had listened to it or indeed how much it had helped her, so speaking to her was a real treat for me. During our chat Lisa shares…

how she managed to turn her fears around and embrace birth. Truly wonderful!

hypnobirthing; why she didn’t like it and why it didn’t work for her

how meditating helped her during her super-stressful pregnancy (she moved twice!)

why her husband banned her from watching One Born Every Minute during her pregnancy

how her attitude shift around pain and making friends with it helped her to embrace birth

Since our chat, Lisa has also blogged about her experience of breastfeeding by writing a lovely letter to her son, Dylan. It's a bit of a tearjerker as it's so beautiful... have a read here > Feeling upset over not breastfeeding turned out to be a huge waste of time.

Some of the resources mentioned during our chat include

Tell me a good birth story

Neutrality - clearing the excess negative emotional energy around something

Petition for the media to portray childbirth in a more balanced way

If you're interested in finding out how to clear your fears Fearless Birthing style, then sign up for my FREE 3 part video training series below.

I hope that listening to Lisa's story was helpful and inspiring. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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