I’m sure you know that your world is a reflection of the beliefs that you hold. Affirmations are an excellent method for changing, or for reinforcing, the beliefs that you want to have influencing your life.

If you have fears about birth, affirmations can be a helpful tool for dispelling those fears.

The great thing about affirmations is that – even if you are already feeling positive and confident about your upcoming birth – affirmations will strengthen your already positive and confident mindset.

Here are some affirmations that I have created for myself as well as my clients. Pick the affirmations that sound best for you, or use them as a guide to make your own personal affirmations:

Here’s my favourite way to use affirmations:

1. Choose and/or create the affirmations that you want to have influence how you feel about birth.
2. Write the affirmations on cards and place them around the house.
3. Tape them on the bathroom mirror, place them on your dashboard, put them on the fridge door, or write them in a journal and have them on your nightstand for you to read before bed.
4. Repeat the affirmations in your mind or out loud every time you see one of your cards.

Remember, the subconscious part of your mind learns by repetition, so the more often you say your affirmations, the stronger they will get and the more likely your mind is to absorb them. Once your subconscious mind has absorbed them, then it will start to take action on those beliefs and make them your reality.

Gemma Stone is a mom, psychologist, speaker, and writer who is passionate about birth. She focuses on empowering pregnant women to have peaceful and positive birth experiences (no matter how the birth process unfolds).

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One of the best ways to prepare for birth is to get stuff done before your little one arrives in order to be organized for after your little one arrives.

Here are 15 practical tips that other mamas have shared with me.

1. Before your birth, anticipate any needs that you might have after the baby comes. For example, book medical appointments (dentist, doctor, optometrist, etc.) for the family, and if possible, get them done before your baby arrives. Order the baby announcements, prepare them, address and stamp the envelopes, show someone how to add a photo, and organize them so that you don’t have to worry about it later.
2. If you have other children who are starting to outgrow their clothes, stock up on the next size they will need.
3. Stock up on things you know you need on a daily basis: school supplies, laundry soap, toilet paper, art supplies, and canned goods.
4. If your due date falls around birthdays, holidays, or anniversaries, get everything you need prepared before your little one arrives (purchase gifts, wrap presents, write cards, etc.).
5. Prepare your mind for birth and beyond. Learn about how to increase your sense of peace, trust, and confidence about the birth process and motherhood.
6. Freeze healthy meals that others can easily warm up (so you don’t end up with frozen pizza and fast food for every meal).
7. Spray 20-30 sanitary pads with water and calendula to help soothe and heal your birthing bits after the fact.
8. Prepare a few different types of baby carriers. Different babies like different carriers. It’s easier to return a few items later than it is to go shopping with your newborn.
9. Educate yourself about postpartum depression/anxiety, how you can avoid it, how to recognize it, and what to do about it if it happens.
10. Make a nursing box. Include snacks for you, bottles of water, nursing pads, a blanket, lip balm, and if you have other children, include some different toys and books that they don’t usually get to play with. That way they can be entertained while you are focused on your newest addition.
11. Prepare a box with diaper supplies and keep it in the living room so that you don’t have to run upstairs (or to another part of the house).
12. Make lists so that you don’t have to think too much after your little one arrives. Here are a few examples: 5 Things to Get Done Weekly, 10 Places My Children Will Enjoy, 10 Activities That Can Be Done At Home. After you make your lists, get all of the supplies you need to make these chores quick and easy.
13. If you homeschool, plan three or four months of schooling and activities before your new little one arrives. If you have kids who are enrolled in school, get 3-4 months of preparation done for them (bake and freeze cookies for the surprise bake sales, get the Halloween costume made, buy the teacher a Christmas present, etc.).
14. Find a driver. Ask someone to be there to drive you and/or your children (if you need to) for the first few weeks after birth. If your other children have activities scheduled, it’s helpful to keep them in their routine, and it also gives you some much-needed quiet time.
15. Gather all the names and phone numbers of the people you want to call to announce the arrival of your little angel. If you’re not feeling up to calling, someone else can call for you.

Finally, before and after your little one arrives, always remember to be kind to yourself. Trust yourself. This is likely to be one of the most challenging and rewarding times in your life. Your trust in yourself will be your greatest asset.

Gemma Stone is a mom, psychologist, speaker, and writer who is passionate about birth. She focuses on empowering women to have peaceful and positive birth experiences (no matter how the birth process unfolds).

The BFL Digital Program is ready to be born!

 
It’s due date is June 15th & this is the kind of due date you can rely on!

AND…

We’re celebrating! With presents for you!

Yay! Gifts! And they are the best kind :: inspiration & wisdom to empower you to have a peaceful, positive, and powerful birth experience.

I’m talking audios & videos to inspire your mind & beautiful graphic designs to delight your eyes.

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A spiritual pregnancy is a deeply unique experience that is lived by each woman who accepts pregnancy and prepares for motherhood.  Many thoughts may come to mind when putting together spirituality and pregnancy.  Does a spiritual pregnancy mean its time to begin meditating, praying for guidance, or chanting mantras?  Yes and no.  It can’t hurt to meditate nor could it hurt to have a belief system that can offer inner guidance and a positive outlook about pregnancy. 

The foundation of a heart centered approach during pregnancy starts with self awareness.  Self awareness of: thoughts, feelings, sensations, and intuition.  All those amazing parts of the human’s capacity to reflect and move inward all create a harmonious system of understanding the natural spiritual aspects of motherhood.  Awareness can help make the experience of pregnancy more peaceful as the body grows, emotions change, priorities shift, intuition strengthens, and receiving each day as it arrives.

Creating a pregnancy in awareness begins with inviting explored and unexplored experiences.  It is having the ability to investigate beliefs, experience true feelings, dissect mental patterns, release old systems, and continue to move within the cycles of personal transformation.  A spiritual pregnancy is not limited to blissful states of constant positive energy, but this includes feelings of uncertainty and fear.  It is about accepting all experiences and knowing that each has purpose.

How does one stay connected to a spiritual pregnancy when cultures of society can easily impact how pregnancy looks and happens?  Society can easily influence birthing and pregnancy with extensive books and experts all sharing information about the biological and emotional needs of a mother.  Many of these so-called “experts” like to offer hard data with limiting forms of study or hard to understand data, but with great persuasive skills to fool the smartest and activate the energy of fear.  The gift of negative images and media selling scare tactics around pregnancy is that the fear can bring about a lesson of personal discernment.  It does not have to damage the mind and build fear, but it can challenge the mind into moving more deeply to tune into the internal intuitive system of information.  Intuitive information lives within each person and always available for needed advice and wise knowledge.

Pregnancy must be about going with the flow and letting go into the unknown.  The idea of letting go in pregnancy can feel scary.  Actually, letting go in general can bring up feelings of personal loss and identity, but in the energy of birthing a new identity of mother is born.  Letting go and letting birth is one way to welcome a new thought process.  A spiritual pregnancy into spiritual birth requires the woman to pay attention to the wisdom of the body, while tuning into the wise callings of the ancient energies of labor that birthed before.

A heart centered approach to a spiritual pregnancy can be many things with many influential parts. It starts with the individual entering a state of self awareness, creating a system of prayer, meditation or mantras, making choices based on intuition, exploration of the psyche, embracing fears with acceptance, forgiveness, and letting go.  It’s good to remember that having a spiritual pregnancy is not about following ridged rules, orders, religious doctrines or archaic advice.  It is about following the brilliantly divine information that comes from inside the energy of choices that lives within personal wisdom.

About This Author

Kelly Ann Meehan is an energy therapist and holistic birth worker.  She holds a Masters in Clinical Psychology with an emphasize in Somatic Psychology with additional training in Cranio Sacral Therapy, Infant Massage Instruction, and Advanced level Integrative Energy Therapy.  She focuses her work on healing sessions, ceremonies, birth art, and workshops.  Please visit www.birthhealing.com for more information on healing services

The BFL Digital Program is ready to be born!

 
It’s due date is June 15th & this is the kind of due date you can rely on!

AND…

We’re celebrating! With presents for you!

Yay! Gifts! And they are the best kind :: inspiration & wisdom to empower you to have a peaceful, positive, and powerful birth experience.

I’m talking audios & videos to inspire your mind & beautiful graphic designs to delight your eyes.

Sign up to get in on the celebration.

Preparing for a positive birth experience is a beautiful thing. The most important thing that you can to is to focus on the things that you can control instead of the things that you can’t control.

Here’s a collection of tips that the women who I have worked with have said are most helpful:

Plan for a beautiful event. Spend some time honoring the process of birth by deciding what you’d like your birth environment to include. I picked a lavender scented heat pack, natural vanilla room spray, a beautiful playlist of music I wanted to give birth to, a box of my favorite chocolates, a soft sheer robe, a special candle, and a neck warmer. It’s not important to actually do everything you plan. What’s important is that you spend time honoring the momentous occasion that birth is. Out of everything on my list, I only did one (nibbled a piece of chocolate after my birth). However, it was the process of honoring the event and creating a sense of excited anticipation that contributed to it being a positive experience. Pick things that will bring you a sense of pleasure and a feeling of being pampered.

Surround yourself with positive birth stories, beautiful birth videos, and peaceful birth images. In our world, we have a plethora of fear-based messages and images about birth. In order to bring some balance to this process, spend time consciously reprogramming your concept of birth.

Increase your knowledge and trust your intuition. There is a tremendous amount of information available about birth. Believe it or not, your intuition knows which information you most need to know. Allow it to guide you. By trusting your intuition, you will dissipate any overwhelming feelings that may come from perusing the abundance of birth information floating around in the world. Your intuition will steer you away from the negative, fear-inducing resources, so let it.

Be honest with yourself about your fears about birth, and discover ways that you can support yourself (talking with your partner, journaling, talking with your birth team, counseling, etc.).

Engage in activities that help you feel beautiful, healthy, strong, and relaxed. This could include dancing, eating healthy, exercising, taking walks, getting massages, snapping photos, etc.

Increase confidence and trust in yourself, your baby, and your birth process.

Connect with your body. Spend some time rubbing oil on your curves, enjoying a luxurious bubble bath, stretching, and breathing. Tune into your aches and pains, and ask them what they need to get relief.

Connect with your spirit. Spend some time each day connecting with your spirit, your intuition, and to the little soul growing within you. Meditate. Sit. Listen. Connect.

Create a support network.  Surround yourself with people who are positive and supportive, people who will support you during birth (in whatever way you want support), and people who will support you after your little one makes his or her way into the world. Postpartum is a precious time for you to rest and connect with your little angel. Gather as much support as you can so that you can enjoy these moments.

Discover, process, and release birth fears. Releasing fears can shorten labour, decrease pain, decrease complications, and decrease risk of unwanted interventions. When it comes to giving birth, there are many things that are out of our control. Releasing fears is one way that we can regain a sense of power and control.

Gemma Stone is a mom, psychologist, speaker, and writer who is passionate about birth. She focuses on empowering women to have peaceful and positive birth experiences (no matter how the birth process unfolds).

The BFL Digital Program is ready to be born!

 
It’s due date is June 15th & this is the kind of due date you can rely on!

AND…

We’re celebrating! With presents for you!

Yay! Gifts! And they are the best kind :: inspiration & wisdom to empower you to have a peaceful, positive, and powerful birth experience.

I’m talking audios & videos to inspire your mind & beautiful graphic designs to delight your eyes.

Sign up to get in on the celebration.

For many women, “fear” is a word that is readily associated with childbirth. You may have heard this one before, but just in case you haven’t, here is a fun way to think about fear. Yes, that’s right –thinking about fear can be fun. Fear is:

• False
• Expectations
• Appearing
• Real

There’s something I want you to know about these false expectations that appear real; they mess up the uber-powerful birthing hormones. The false expectations bring out the catecholamines (I like to call them the “cats”), which are your fight-or-flight hormones.

When we’re not supposed to be fighting or flighting, like when we are in labour, the “cats” cause complications and mess up the uber-powerful birthing hormones called oxytocin and endorphins. I can’t think of a fun name for these, but trust me, you really want to have these around when you’re giving birth. Let’s talk a little more about oxytocin and endorphins.

Oxytocin is also known as the hormone of love. It does a number of things: helping us feel good, triggering the nurturing mommy feelings, and telling the body to do what it needs to do to give birth. Oxytocin is responsible for important things like contractions, which dilate the cervix and move your little munchkin down the birth canal and into your loving arms. This hormone helps with the delivery of the placenta, and it reduces bleeding. Without enough oxytocin, contractions can slow down, labour can lengthen, bleeding can increase, and medical interventions can increase. Not so fun, right?

Endorphins are the magical calming and pain-relieving hormones. They’re a little bit like morphine…but about 100 times stronger. This is the fabulous substance that’s associated with the altered state of consciousness that women experience during birth. I’ve heard it referred to as “labour heaven,” “the zone,” “euphoria,” “the flow,” and many other delightful descriptions. Without endorphins, labour can seem excessively painful and even intolerable.

Hopefully by now you want to know how you can deal with the fear – false expectations appearing real – so that you can create an environment for the oxytocin and endorphins to flourish.

Here are a few tips:

1. Identify the fear. Which specific false expectation is appearing real to you?
2. Challenge it. Is it real? Is it happening right now? Can you know for sure that it will happen? Is it helping you? How would you feel without it?
3. Replace it. Chances are good that the false expectation appearing real won’t measure up when you challenge it. Whatever the fear is, it only exists in the future, and since the future isn’t real yet, the fear can’t be real. Replace the false expectation appearing real with something that is true, helpful, and supportive. This can be something as simple as reminding yourself, “My body is a finely tuned work of art that is designed to give birth.”

By dealing with the false expectations appearing real, you can keep the “cats” at bay so that you can welcome the uber-powerful birthing hormones into your birth experience and find your own “labour heaven.”

Gemma Stone is a mom, psychologist, speaker, and writer who is passionate about birth. She focuses on empowering women to have peaceful and positive birth experiences (no matter how the birth process unfolds).

The BFL Digital Program is ready to be born!

 
It’s due date is June 15th & this is the kind of due date you can rely on!

AND…

We’re celebrating! With presents for you!

Yay! Gifts! And they are the best kind :: inspiration & wisdom to empower you to have a peaceful, positive, and powerful birth experience.

I’m talking audios & videos to inspire your mind & beautiful graphic designs to delight your eyes.

Sign up to get in on the celebration.