Frequently Asked Questions
Little bird Flies offers both in-person and online hypnobirthing classes. Online options include: live webinar and self-paced learning options with hypnobubs™ The online live webinar course is usually run over 4 evenings a month from the comfort of your own home!! The self-paced learning course is perfect if you are unable to make our in-person or live webinar courses, just make sure that you take the time out to learn and absorb and practice with your birth partner. The more you practice, the better you’ll feel as labour and birth approaches.
You can complete your hypnobubs® hypnobirthing course when you have the time, availability, and headspace and all on your own terms. The course can be completed at any stage of your pregnancy, and can be completed in conjunction with a 90minute or 3hr private online zoom call with Melissa to go through certain features in greater depth.
This unique labour birthing course aims to bring together various essential tools to alleviate pain, stress and anxiety. Hypnobirthing techniques are supposed to equip you with relaxation and mindset skills for birthing your baby calmly, regardless of what situations you are presented with on the big day. Hypnobirthing classes will enhance your understanding of pregnancy and childbirth. Being empowered with this knowledge can go a long way in impacting your experience.
As a registered nurse/midwife and certified birth and postpartum doula Melissa believes the best time to start hypnobirthing classes is anywhere between 20-32/34 weeks gestation. This gives you a good amount of time to properly practise and take in all the knowledge, tools, and techniques that you and your birth partner learn in class. This doesn’t mean that you can’t start earlier or later either. Whether you are 15 weeks pregnant or closer to 40 weeks pregnant, the Positive Birth course will provide you with the confidence to create your own birth.
Many certified hypnobirthing Australia practitioners will tell you that they believe any time is the right time for you to start. It is never too late to build your knowledge, learn how to nurture safety from within, create a toolboox for labour and birth and learn how to ask questions and advocate for you and your baby
Many people are sceptical about the techniques involved in hypnobirthing, but that scepticism only heightens when discussing online learning. Keep reading and we’ll tell you how hypnobirthing can be just as empowering when learnt through virtual and online platforms. Little Bird Flies has been offering this style of support for a while now, and we’ve found that it is equally effective when practised properly. This is because the online learning path requires that you play an active role in your own birth journey and progression. Listening to the mp3 content now and then isn’t enough to properly practise the learnings. You’ll need to do much more than that to see how online hypnobirthing classes can work for you.
Hypnobubs® remains one of Australia’s most popular hypnobirthing online courses and it’s easy to understand why. They are distinctly different from other learning options for hypnobirthing, but their biggest benefit is the feature of flexibility. There are many types of online hypnobirthing courses on offer across Australia and the world. It gets even more complicated when you consider all the varying approaches to the guided techniques included in the courses. You’ll gain some more clarity on what’s involved in online hypnobirthing classes with an experienced practitioner. Melissa utilises her wealth of knowledge and experience as a registered midwife and birth doula as well as her in-depth knowledge and experience in nurturing the nervous system through somatic work and meditation to help women create safety and trust within their own bodies….the key element to labour and birth!! Melissa ensures that safety is the key element of every class she teaches whether its online or in-person.
No matter where you are in Australia or the world, you can sign up to learn hypnobirthing tools and techniques to help you prepare for your birth from the comfort of your own home. Our online classes are still as interactive as you can imagine, and they usually run over 4 x 3hr live zoom sessions where we’ll teach the entire Hypnobirthing Australia™ Positive Birth Program. Like with our in-person classes, you will still receive over $200 worth of Hypnobirthing Australia’s resources, including a parent folio, MP3 albums, affirmations, and music to download as well as access to Hypnobirthing Australia™’s online learning and mobile App platform with extra resources, articles, and videos to download
The best hypnobirthing courses are the ones where you feel fully informed, supported and empowered during the learning journey. Hypnobirthing is a deeply personal and unique avenue for everyone, and we all have our own experiences. Some of the techniques may resonate with you more than others and that is the case for everyone who signs up for it. While the outcome is highly dependent on the registered hypnobirthing practitioner you choose to guide you, it is solely based on how you practise hypnobirthing techniques.
The most popular hypnobirthing course in Australia is the hypnobubs® course because it is a modern take that many prefer. It uses common tech platforms to give birthing people and their partners access to up-to-date information at a pace that suits them best. The registered hypnobirthing practitioner will ensure the delivery of all the required content and resources. They will also guide you in learning techniques and so much more.
This style of hypnobirthing course is considered the best because the generated content is easily accessible to participants 24/7 (via your phone, tablet or computer). Little Bird Flies will ensure to continually update and improve our content and resources regularly. Other than this, you can rely on Melissa to give you highly personalised levels of support in a number of ways. Whether it is a hypnobirthing refresher course or otherwise, she’s got you covered. Sometimes the things that define the best hypnobirthing learning experiences from others, are the levels of customisation and specialised support. And that is exactly what you will get with us.
It’s NEVER too late to prepare for birth. Ideally, you want to be taking a hypnobirthing class somewhere between 20 and 34 weeks gestation so that you have time to practice and prepare however, if you realise at 36 weeks gestation, even 39 weeks that you really want to fill yourself with all the knowledge and tools for birth, don’t be afraid to book in!! It is NEVER too late!! Join a class with Little Bird Flies and learn all the tools and techniques that will help you have the most wonderful and empowering birth experience. Learn your rights as a childbearing person and woman, learn how to ask questions and advocate for yourself. Come unleash your Badass Birthing Goddess!!! Give us a call and we can discuss an option or plan that works best for you. We offer hypnobirthing classes in Melbourne. And you can take online classes from anywhere in Australia.
Melissa offers a number of classes throughout each month. Her in-person Positive Birth Course usually runs over two weeks on two consecutive Saturdays and Sundays or as a Workshop Weekend. Her online live webinar classes run across 4 evenings of a month and whilst her online option popped up in response to the pandemic, this option is sticking around due to its popularity! You also have the option of completing the hypnobubs online class which allows you to learn the tools and techniques of Hypnobirthing at your own pace, whilst this is a much shorter course it is still jam-packed with all the benefits of the in-person and live webinar Hypnobirthing Australia Positive Birth Course.
It’s really common for people giving birth to feel that it is somehow a process that needs help. Fortunately, for us all, your body is already designed to do this. Your perineum is already designed to stretch, it has a huge amount of stretch, and it does so beautifully. All you have to do is trust your body and feel confident in it. It already did the most magical and miraculous thing spending 9 months to grow your baby. So, of course, it already knows how to birth your baby too. Firstly, you need to really understand how your body works to birth your baby, and what’s going on in your body throughout the whole process of labour. How the hormones work, how your muscles work and how the mind can influence this hugely. You will learn all these things and much more in your Brisbane hypnobirthing classes.
When you are in the ‘down’ stage, you may feel the need to push and to bear down. You should listen to your body and go with it if it feels right but you don’t need to actively force and push your baby out. This can tense your body and we don’t want to do this. The aim is to work with your body and not against it. That’s why you’ll learn the down breathing in hypnobirthing labour, so you are working WITH your body to move the baby down and allowing your breath to help this.
If you don’t understand your body and how it’s working in labour to birth your baby then this can make you worried and fearful, and tight and tense – including in the pelvic floor. And you really need to relax and release your pelvic floor in this important stage of labour, in hypnobirthing we call this the ‘down’ stage also known as the ‘pushing stage of labour’. So, you need to have really good learning and support systems to provide you with ample information about pregnancy. The more – the better – because it all helps you to understand your own body. This will help you to learn how your body and mind can work together in the best possible way.
Believe it or not – an Australian local is one of the world’s fastest birthers. She gave birth to her fifth child in two minutes flat in 2015. Reports say she’s never been in labour for longer than two hours and that has been the case with the delivery of all of her children. Her name is Mary Gorgens and she sped through her labours!!!
Hypnobirthing doesn’t guarantee that you will labour quicker but, it is one of the most well-rounded antenatal classes around. Hypnobirthing will teach you how to listen and understand your labouring body whilst your birth partner learns how they can support you as well as advocate for you and your baby.
Proper practice and hands-on learning with Hypnobirthing Australia’s course material has proven successful at helping mums to manage pain, fear and stress; and in many instances, reduce the number of medical interventions needed during labour and birth. The one thing that research cannot deny is that most women who attended a hypnobirthing class (online or in-person) are happy they did and are quick to refer their friends and family members who are expecting. They felt less afraid and anxious during delivery and many later reported having had positive experiences, saying that hypnobirthing helped them feel calm, confident and empowered before, during and after their births.
If you still have some questions, feel free to give us a call at Little Bird Flies, and we can discuss our range of courses that cater to any schedule and any learning pace. We offer hypnobirthing classes in Melbourne. And you can take online classes from anywhere in Australia – Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Cairns, Townsville, Darwin, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Central Coast, Geelong, Newcastle, Canberra, and Wollongong.
Benefits of hypnobirthing
- Birth partners feel more confident and connected to the birthing process
- Reduced rates of medical intervention and pharmacological pain relief
- Calmer births are likely to welcome calmer babies and a reduced rate of maternal trauma
- Faster recovery post-birth for both birth giver and baby, with reduced rates of postnatal depression
- Highly beneficial for relaxing and empowering mums and birth partners during a caesarean birth
- New-borns typically feed better and are calmer
- Increased birth satisfaction and empowerment
We need to stop looking at pain as something bad or something we need to get rid of. As 21st-century humans, we are conditioned to find resolutions for absolutely everything that gets in our way, including when we feel pain. And look, yes, pain is how our body tells us that there is something wrong- we are meant to feel pain when we break a bone, have gallstones, or cut open our leg so that we can seek help.
But not all pain is the same. The pain we feel in labour is the by-product of the intense work our uterine muscles are doing to labour and birth your baby. A woman labouring, is a powerful woman! We’ve been doing it for centuries. It is raw, it is NATURAL, and it is INSTINCTUAL. Your body is never trying to hurt you, in fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s trying to work with you. So…what if we looked at pain from a different angle, what if instead of trying to find a way to fix it with an external force we surrender to its cries?
We know that if we can surrender to our body’s sensations, we are sending a message to our brain and our nervous system that we are still safe, there is no reason for our fight/flight system to kick in and create a reason for more pain and more tension.
Breathwork helps us to surrender to the sensations of labour, and if practised properly can reduce anxiety and tension throughout our entire body. Deep breathing techniques (such as the relaxation and surge breathing techniques) that you’ll learn with Little Bird Flies teaches will help you to stay present, be mindful of the incredible process that is birth and give you the courage and strength to continue to move through the amazing sensations within your body. Surge breathing is used to help centre our mind and body during sensations of discomfort i.e., our contractions.
Surge breathing is similar to our relaxation breathing- it assists us to surrender to the sensations of our body whilst reminding us to “flop” and let go- releasing all tension. Surge breathing helps us to “open up,” relax through our pelvis and welcome baby earthside. Midwives and hypnobirthing practitioners encourage surge breathing to healthily manage uterine waves from the very beginning of your labour, right up until the moment you start feeling downward pressure and an urge to start utilising your breathing baby down breath work (also known as the “pushing” stage of labour).
Similarly, to your relaxation breathing, you can practice your surge breathing at any time but make sure you have the ability to completely surrender your body- ensuring you practice your “flop” by releasing all the tension in your body before you start drawing up your first breath through your nose. You might also like to place your hands on top of your uterus to feel the rise and fall of your belly as you inhale and exhale. Remember it’s all nasal breathing so that we trigger our parasympathetic nervous system receptors. You will use your surge breathing throughout the entirety of a surge and slowly revert to your relaxation breathing in between surges.
Holding our breath to “push” is an old school method that is not conducive to allowing our pelvic floor muscles to relax. Despite being an outdated method it is unfortunately still taught to doctors and midwives today as a way to help guide women in the “pushing” stage of labour. At Little Bird Flies, we teach you to bear-down and utilise your breath in away that will allow your pelvic floor muscles to relax. Not only is htis the most effective way of pushing but it also readuces the likelibhood of tearing.
This breathing technique is the healthier alternative to the forceful “pushing” that can take place during labour. Don’t get me wrong, some women and child-bearers need to use all the techniques… breathing, bearing down and pushing to move the baby down through the birth path but utilising just the pushing technique can actually lead us to inhibit the baby’s progress. When we hear “push” we are generally going to think “forwards”, but in actual fact, we need to be bearing down behind the baby towards our anus, like we need to do a REALLY, BIG Poo!
We use the breathing/bearing-down technique when our body is signalling to us that the baby is ready to start moving further down the pelvis and into the birth canal. There is a point in labour where you will no longer be able to breathe through your surges and you will have this innate urge to “push.” Your breathing/bearing down technique is quite different to relaxation and surge breathing. Unlike the first two techniques, it requires a quick inhale and a long exhale to help breathe/move the baby down through the pelvis and around the coccyx (the hardest part of the bearing down stage). In our Positive Birth Class, you will learn how to practice this breathing technique, it might also require a little visualisation to help your practice so that you bear down in the right area. You want to picture moving your breath down the back of your throat, down your spine and all the way down behind the baby into the birth canal.