My Birth Affirmations
I recently read an unexpectedly heated debate about birth affirmations on Instagram. As always I’m not here to say they are right or wrong, but for me they were such a powerful part of my birth preparation and labour. And I think anyone who wants to try using them should absolutely give them a go.
The debate was particularly heated with regards to affirmations about your body being designed for birth, when many people had ended up needing medical intervention because their babies were stuck, or they had other unforeseen complications that ‘no amount of lavender oil or positive thinking was going to fix’. I think that is a fair point, but I also feel like they are missing the point of affirmations.
Affirmations won’t eliminate physical pain. Affirmations won’t make a baby turn into the right position. Affirmations won’t stop some complications occurring. And affirmations won’t guarantee you a positive birth experience.
However, I found that affirmations helped me trust my body and baby. Affirmations helped me prepare for birth. Affirmations helped me feel supported during labour. And affirmations helped me focus during contractions and feel in control.
Affirmations are a really personal thing. Firstly you really have to be the kind of person who is going to commit and believe in their power. This doesn’t need to be as woo-woo as it sounds, but if you think reading them a couple of times, or saying them in the throes of labour is going to make everything better then you are sadly mistaken. In my experience, affirmations are a long term commitment. For them to be effective when you need them you have to do a lot of work reading them over and over again, seeing them visually, and hearing them on a regular basis beforehand.
Secondly you have to write your own, or at the very least adapt the good ones so they really resonate for you personally. There are great books, cards, blogs and printables with birth affirmations there for the taking, and a lot of the ones I used were ones I’d taken from existing sources. But the ones that were most effective were the ones I’d spent time writing just for me, this particular baby, and this particular moment in time.
For example, I was giving birth in a pandemic - the media was exploding with news that the world wasn’t a safe place. I knew that in labour I needed to feel safe in order to keep my oxytocin flowing, so I created an affirmation that would remind me I am safe.
How I used affirmations
I researched birth affirmations and used some great ones and made up a few of my own that resonated for me personally
I found images and photos that matched the visualisations I was doing through my hypnobirthing techniques - sun rises, water, bubbles… and I designed my affirmation cards on Canva and printed them on LaLaLab using a voucher so they only cost me £1.50! You absolutely don’t need them to be fancy and printed, post-its work just as well.
I stuck them around the house. The bathroom was where I seemed to read them the most, so I had a few on the mirror and down the side of the cabinet. I had them at the top of the stairs, inside kitchen cupboards, near the front door. Everywhere I knew I’d easily and frequently spot them.
I recorded myself reading them slowly and calmly, over the top of some yoga type music that I’d been using to get myself off to sleep recently.
Then I ‘revised’. I read the affirmations over and over again. Every time I stood brushing my teeth I’d read the affirmations in front of me, saying them in my head day in day out. I listened to the recording of me reading them every single night without fail. I’d put my headphones on, I’d listen to the voice note and drift off to sleep.
Before I fell pregnant with Oscar I’d suffered two miscarriages. It had made me really question and doubt my body and its abilities. If my body couldn’t successfully sustain a pregnancy and grow a baby full term then how could I truly believe it was going to be able to birth successfully?
My affirmations went a huge way to repairing the mistrust I had in my body. They helped me gain the confidence I needed to believe that this really was the baby I was going to get to meet and keep. They helped me reduce the doubt I had in myself and its ability to bring life into the world. In fact they truly transformed my thoughts in a full 180 degree turn. I’m not saying the fear was totally gone, I don’t think anyone who has suffered a miscarriage ever truly believes everything is going to be fine the next time, but my mind set shifted from being negative first, to positive.
I’m not going to lie, labour was still painful (I used gas and air and a birthing pool), but what the affirmations and hypnobirthing techniques taught me was how to cope with the pain (especially in early labour) and the value of having a phrase and image to focus on through the surges. For me, the pain became so much more manageable because I’d practiced.
MY AFFIRMATIONS
I am safe, I am loved, I am supported
I am capable, I am confident, I am calm
My body and my mind guide me through pregnancy, labour and the birth of my baby
I trust that my body and my baby are healthy, relaxed and calm
I trust the instinctive process of birth with confidence that a natural birth is safe for me and my baby
I can progress through labour and birth feeling calm and relaxed
With each surge I breathe deeply, focus upwards and work with my body
I trust my body’s ability to birth my baby
I feel confident and excited for the birth of my baby
With each breath in, I breathe in relaxation and comfort, peace and trust
With each breath out, I release tension, stress and fear
My body and my baby have been created to birth naturally
It took time, that’s why I said affirmations are a long term commitment, but for me they were incredibly powerful. Regardless of how my birth went they put me in the perfect mind set for pregnancy and for labour to start, and then during it all they kept me calm and focussed. I believe that if I had to make any decisions in an emergency they would have kept me composed and grounded too. In my positive birth experience, the best part was when the midwives or my husband said any of the affirmations to me they resonated deeply because I’d heard them a million times before - they were a real home comfort.
So no, affirmations don’t make labour pain-free, and affirmations don’t stop some complications from happening and changing your birth plan. But, they can be an incredibly powerful tool, not just for birth, but for adjusting your mind set and building the trust and confidence you might need in your life.
I will 100% be using them if I’m lucky enough to have another baby, I will start using them earlier, in fact I’ll possibly use some during the period we try to conceive, and I’m also going to work on some motherhood affirmations to keep me going through the dark days and struggles this postpartum life is bringing up.
I’d love to know how you’ve used affirmations before, were they helpful?
