HypnoBirthing UK
The Mongan Method

It was June of 1954; I was 21 years old and was sure that the world was mine for the taking. On the 5th of June, I was graduated from a small teachers college in Plymouth, New Hampshire. I had already signed a contract to teach in the fall; and now, with degree in hand, I was realizing the fruition of a childhood dream. I was going to be a teacher.

One week later, on the 12th, I was married. It was a fairytale wedding between high school sweethearts. Because my husband was in the service and his unit was put on alert just three days before our marriage, we had only a brief weekend together after the wedding. He was assigned to overseas duty for four months.

I began teaching in September and knew that I had found the niche that would be mine for the rest of my life. My husband was discharged from the service late that fall, and we began our lives together in a small lumber town in the foothills of New Hampshire's White Mountains.

In January I missed a period. I knew it was the result of the bronchitis that attacked me in December and was lingering in full force. A local doctor confirmed my diagnosis. During February and March, the bronchitis was still doing its thing. Unhappy with the treatment that I was receiving and anxious to get my system back on schedule, I decided to make an appointment with my family doctor in my hometown. When we sat in his office after my examination, his diagnosis sent me into a state of shock. I was pregnant.

It had never occurred to us that we were going to have a baby. Neither of us had even considered having a child at that point in our lives. My husband had enrolled in college under the G.I. Bill; I was very involved in lesson plans and adjusting to all of the experiences that come with being a first-year teacher; our marriage was so new; we hadn't even finished furnishing the small, one-bedroom apartment that we were renting; I wasn't sick in the morning; I didn't show any signs of bloating; and my appetite hadn't taken on any bizarre twists. We just couldn't be having a baby now.

For several days I was tempted to go back to the other doctor so he could tell me that it was simply my bronchitis that was raising havoc with my body and I really wasn't going to have a baby.

Then one morning I awakened feeling a strange, exciting glow about myself. There was a voice from deep inside me that kept repeating, "I'm going to have a baby." I felt an exhilaration that was different from anything I have ever felt before, and I liked it. I don't know where it came from; but I do know that from that moment on, I became enthralled with the wonderment of what was happening inside me. I became all consumed with my pregnancy and with thoughts of our new baby. This was not going to be a "usual pregnancy" with aching back, swollen feet, or any of the other complaints that are common to pregnancy; and my birthing was not going to be one of drugged compliance with no recollection of the experience.

The premise that birthing, by nature, had to be a painful ordeal was totally unacceptable to me. I could not believe that a God who had created the body with such perfection could have designed a system of procreation that was flawed. Even more importantly, I could not believe that a loving God would commit so cruel a hoax as to make us sexual beings so that we could conceive and then make the means through which we would birth our children so excruciatingly painful.

I read everything I could get my hands on, and that's when I discovered Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, the father of Natural Childbirth. I knew immediately that his method was the answer to the drug-free, painless birthing that I was seeking. I discarded most of the other negative literature devoted to descriptions of laboring mothers trying to cope with and survive the "excruciating pain of childbirth" and began to focus on Dick-Read's techniques for eliminating the "Fear-Tension-Pain Syndrome." I was excited at having found the Dick-Read method and looked forward to my Natural Childbirth, awake, alert, and free of pain.

I was prepared for natural birthing but was not prepared for the reaction of other people from both within and outside of the medical field. No one thought I was serious about having a baby without having anesthesia. Friends laughed at me for even suggesting that it was possible. Luckily, my husband and my family, accustomed to my propensity for doing the unusual, provided skeptical support.

When it came time for my birthing, I was ridiculed and insulted by anesthesiologists, who were at that time introducing the "caudal," a spinal block. While I was in labor, the nurses kindly reassured me, "When the pains get unbearable, you can have a shot of Demerol to ease them." I was mocked when I refused. Left alone in a dark labor room, listening to the insufferable ticking of a "Baby Ben" clock that was placed by my side so that I could "time" my "labor pains," I found myself ignored by nurses, who wouldn't accept my word for what was happening in my labor. When I insisted that I was ready to push, they told me that when I was ready, I would be, "...yelling and screaming like the rest of them." Once in the delivery room, my wrists were strapped to the sides of the delivery table with leather straps; and my legs were tied into the stirrups that held my knees and legs four feet into the air. My head was held as the ether cone was forced onto my face. That was the last I remembered. I awakened sometime later, violently ill from the ether, and was informed that I had "delivered" a beautiful baby boy, whom I would be able to see in the morning. The nurse cautioned me not to be alarmed at the red bruises on his face from the forceps. My husband was allowed to visit me for ten minutes. Neither of us held our son Wayne that evening.

When I saw my baby for the first time, I was horrified to think of what he must have experienced as he was being "yanked" into the world. This certainly was not the natural birthing I had planned. My husband saw our son only through the window of the nursery for the next six days, as no one was allowed to visit when, "The babies are on the floor."

Two years later when I was in labor with our second son Brian, the course of the first stage of labor was as peaceful and comfortable as it had been with my first child; but, again, his birthing was a total blank. When I was finally allowed to see him at the allotted time, I found that again, there were the red blotches on my baby's face from the pressure of forceps. Six days later when Brian and I were discharged from the hospital, my husband was able to hold him for the first time.

Finally in 1959, in my third attempt, I announced to my doctor that I would have the natural birth that I wanted, even if it meant that I would have to travel elsewhere to find a doctor who would listen to my needs as a birthing mother. This included having my husband present in the labor room and in the "delivery" room as our baby was born. To understand how outlandish this request was, you have to realize that in the late 50s husbands were not allowed beyond the lobby of the hospital. There were no lounge areas located near the maternity ward for fathers to pace.

I was successful in obtaining my doctor's support and his promise to give official orders that I was to be accommodated in fulfilling what I believe was the original birth plan. My husband was by my side throughout my 2 1/2 hour labor, and he accompanied me to the "delivery room" and stood by my side while our daughter was born--a first for that hospital and for the entire region. My arms and legs were free; I was wide awake. As before, I had taken no drugs or anesthetics; and my joy was unparalleled. I finally had my fully natural birth. I stood at the nursery window watching them bathe my daughter within minutes of my return to my room--this at a time when women were hardly allowed out of bed for at least a day or more after birthing. "Confinement" at that time was at least five days--six days if a male child had to be circumcised.

Everyone who was with me that evening was on a natural high. My doctor was excited to the extent that he stayed up until three in the morning reading everything he had available on Dr. Grantly Dick-Read's Natural Childbirth. I was told that my birthing was the talk of the entire hospital for three shifts. Unfortunately, this fascination and curiosity on the part of the medical staff was short lived. My birthing was dismissed as a "fluke". I was told that some women have an incredible tolerance to pain, and my baby girl "...was only 6lbs. 3ozs." The trail I thought I had blazed was quickly swept over. Nothing changed.

My fourth birthing followed the same smooth path, even though our son Shawn was two pounds heavier than Maura. My doctor, still fascinated, but not at all convinced, told me that he was unbelievably impressed that someone could endure that much pain so calmly and without anesthesia. In spite of my frequent boasts of feeling nothing but tightening sensations, I was not successful in opening his mind to what natural birthing could be for the mothers who were to come after me.

So there we were. Leather straps, ether cones, spinals, and stirrups were to prevail for a long time to come.

Through the years, I shuddered each time I heard a woman speak of having experienced horrific agony in having her baby. It saddened me because I knew that the pain that she felt could have been eased, and in many instances, even eliminated. I felt so helpless. Whenever I spoke of easier childbirth, my listeners looked at me with shock or polite disbelief.

In 1988 I added hypnotherapy to a counseling practice that I had maintained throughout the years when I was dean at a women's college and later in my role as the director of a school of business. Being involved in hypnotherapy caused me to think back to my birthings. I realized for the first time that I had, indeed, used self-hypnosis to achieve the degree of relaxation that made it possible for me to experience painless childbirth. (Grantly Dick-Read emphatically denied that his method is at all connected with hypnosis. He felt that hypnosis brings women to a totally disassociated state that robs them of the beauty of experiencing birthing. We now know that a person who is in a hypnotic state is fully awake and in an even heightened state of awareness.) I was, indeed, in self-hypnosis when I labored with my children.

Not long after I became a hypnotherapist, my daughter Maura told me of her desire to have a child. I was determined that she experience only the very best and most satisfying birthing possible. The thought of developing a birthing program utilizing these techniques was never far from the surface of my mind, and I felt that my being a hypnotherapist would give the program the legitimacy that was lacking before. From this newly awakened interest in birthing came HypnoBirthing. I started making notes in 1989. I delighted in the prospect of developing the program that would allow Maura, who was the first baby in the area to be born with a method of self-hypnosis, to bring her own child into the world with HypnoBirthing. There were two other women preparing for their birthings at the same time, and I prayed that she be the first to birth. She was.

On January 3, 1990, the first HypnoBirthing baby, our grandson Kyle, was born. We had gone full circle--from Maura, the first natural birth baby in the region, to Kyle, the first HypnoBirthing baby. I can't even begin to express how spiritually exciting this was for me.

Maura did not have the benefit of videos or success stories of other women who had birthed their babies through HypnoBirthing. I believe that, on a deeper level, her own birth left an imprint in her subconscious of what birth should be. She fully trusted her body, and it worked for her.

Since then, hundreds more babies have joined the ranks of HypnoBirthing. Because of HypnoBirthing, couples today can look forward to a beautiful, calm and serene birthing experience, where mother, baby and birthing companion combine in joyful bonding.

HypnoBirthing has returned to women their right to call upon their natural birthing instincts, creating one of the most memorable experiences of their lives.

Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, expresses it well in her book when she forwards a challenge to all birthing mothers:

"Imagine what might happen if the majority of women emerged from their labor beds with a renewed sense of the strength and power of their bodies, and of their capacity for ecstasy through giving birth. When enough women realize that birth is a time of great opportunity to get in touch with their true power, and when they are willing to assume responsibility for this, we will reclaim the power of birth and help move technology where it belongs--in the service of birthing women, not as their master."

"If we are to heal the planet, we must begin by healing birthing."

Agnes Sallet von Tannenberg

Rivertree Publishing - Copyright 1992, 1998 Concord, NH
ISBN 0-9663517-1-1