When you announce you’re pregnant, everyone wants to tell you about their birth, or their friend’s sister’s neighbour’s birth – whichever is worse!

We have a weird obsession with traumatic, scary birth stories in our culture and almost an intolerance for positive ones! Women who share their traumatic stories are met with sympathy, compassion and are asked to keep sharing (which is only right, I hope these women get the support they need). Women who tell their positive birth stores are called liars, show offs, or kindly reminded that it’s not like that for everyone so you’re making others feel bad/setting them up to fail if you keep taking. Essentially, they’re told to shut up.

This means that you are hearing a disproportionate number of negative birth stories, because the women with the positive ones are often less likely to share them.

I know because I have had a bad birth and a good birth and I’ve seen the difference in the reactions! And did you see when the celebrity Ferne McCann dared to talk positively about her birth on This Morning? The comments were awful – branding her a liar, a show off, and also, ‘boring’ (I don’t know about you but I’d take a ‘boring’ birth if it was offered, thank you!)  

But what can you do if people start telling you their negative birth story?

Here are my top tips for avoiding and (if it’s too late for that) dealing with these negative birth stories so they don’t stuff up your mental prep for birth!

Avoid negative birth stories – this is how…

When I did hypnobirthing I learned that you should ‘politely stop people’ from telling you their stories, but I was always nervous about how! I don’t like confrontation and so even if I know what I am asking is perfectly reasonable, I still felt totally cringy doing it. And some of my clients have shared examples of when the person telling the story is their boss – this is tricky as there is a hierarchy going on here even if it’s not a work matter – few of us would feel ok laying down the law to someone senior to us and telling them why they shouldn’t be saying whatever it is that they’re saying!

If you have the confidence to assertively ask them to stop, clearly explaining your reasons, then great! Good for you!

If you’re a bit of a wimp like me, here’s my zero-confrontation, kinder-than-you-need-to-be approach to getting them to shut up:

Before they get going, say something like:

“Oh, it sounds like you had a really hard time, I’m so sorry to hear that. I am feeling a bit apprehensive about my own birth and this conversation is making me feel a lot worse, would you mind if we spoke about something else?”  

Focusing on how it’s making you feel (‘this is making me feel a lot worse’) is hard to argue with because you’re just stating a fact – nobody can say ‘no it’s not making you feel worried’ because they don’t know how you feel.

If you’re pregnant, I would definitely practice saying this in the mirror and maybe tweaking it until it sounds like ‘you’ so you’re really comfortable saying it. Because you will 100% need to say this to at least one person during your pregnancy, maybe way more!

If they say something like:

‘I’m just trying to help – you need to be prepared for what it’s really like’

then say:

‘Thank you, I really appreciate you helping me. If I have any questions can I come to you for advice another time?

Thanking them for helping you (even though they haven’t really!) stops them feeling like they’re being told off. Asking if you can come to them for support in the future shows that there’s no hard feelings, you value them as a person whose ‘been there and done it’. And the emphasis on ‘another time’ allows you to change the subject, pronto!

How do I deal with the negative birth stories I’ve heard?

If it’s already been said, then there are some things you can do to minimise the negative impact on you.

It may be tempting to try and ignore what you heard and only allow yourself to read and listen to positive messages about birth. But if you leave the idea to fester, the fear could grow and make you feel worse.

Instead, ask yourself: what was in the story that has scared me? Pinpoint the element that is making you feel scared or uneasy. Whatever it is, don’t bury your head in the sand and pretend it can’t happen. Instead:

1. Find the facts – how likely is it to happen? Start with your midwife (rather than Google!) Or if you have a hypnobirthing teacher (like me!) or a doula, ask them to point you in the right direction in terms of blogs, podcasts or books that can give you reliable info. As birth is generally safe, whatever this thing is, I am almost certain you’ll be reassured when you discover the facts about how likely it is to happen.  

2. Find out what prevents it. Whatever was in that scary birth story, I bet there are ways to make it less likely to happen. Whether it’s getting informed and making decisions differently, or stuff like birth positions, things to do in early labour, breathing techniques etc… there will be info out there about what makes this thing more likely to happen and less likely to happen.  Taking a hypnobirthing course is likely to be highly valuable because all the tools and techniques I teach help you to follow your instincts and do whatever you body needs you to do during birth. And if you’re following your instincts and giving your body what it needs, complications like tears, assisted delivery, caesareans, and birth trauma are all less likely.

3. Use mindset work to help you move on. Once you’ve satisfied your conscious mind with the facts about how rare the scary thing is, how unlikely it is to happen to you, and how to prevent it from happening, it’s time to focus on your subconscious mind and try to undo some of the damage caused by hearing the story. Take your fear, and flip it on it’s head, creating a positive affirmation. For example, if you’re scared of tearing, the affirmation “my body is perfectly designed to stretch and birth my baby” will help you to reduce your fear about it. On my hypnobirthing course I teach a range of different mindset tools to help you ditch the fear and feel more and more confident about giving birth. As women who have grown up in a world that inaccurately paints a picture of birth being dangerous and dramatic, most of us really do have a lot of work to do in this area to get ourselves ready for a positive birth. Hypnobirthing will help you to mentally prepare for birth so that your body performs at its best on the big day.

Enjoyed this post? You may also like these blogs:

How do I mentally Prepare for Birth?

How do I prevent a tear during labour?

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