00:00:01 Joe

Hello, welcome to another episode of The Caring Instinct. Our guest today is Katharine Graves, leading hypnobirthing teacher is the founder of KGH Hypnobirthing. She has personally taught KG Hypnobirthing to over 3000 couples and KGH has trained over 2000 teachers, a large number of the midwives. Catherine is the author of the International best seller The Hypnobirthing book, which has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide and has also produced a range of hypnobirthing, pregnancy and birth audios. You really liked this podcast, didn't you Olga?

00:00:34 Olga

Yeah, it it goes very personal, very quick, didn't it? Yeah. How can you talk about births without getting very personal?

00:00:44 Joe

So come and have a listen, find out more about Olga's journey and about hypnobirthing and enjoy.

00:00:51 Olga

I just wanted to say, Katharine, I'm so grateful for your book. I had with my youngest such a worrisome time, the pregnancy, for a whole number of reasons. I was very high risk and I was hearing that all the time at every fortnightly appointment. And they basically to the point that I couldn't sleep with alarm and my husband would read the visualisations from your book to me. And that was the only way I could like, relax and go to sleep. He even recorded them on my phone so if I woke up at night and couldn't go back to sleep, I would play the recording.

00:01:33 Katharine

Was that worry as a result of what happened at your first birth?

00:01:36 Olga

No, not at my first birth. At my second and third birth, when we lost two babies. And so I've got, yeah, I've got, yeah, thank you. I've got an 8 year old and. a 2 year old.

00:01:49 Katharine

We've got an audio, especially for people who lose their babies. But all our hypnobirthing teachers know about it. It works. People say it can be enormously helpful.

00:01:58 Olga

Yeah, I didn't know that at the time.

00:02:01 Katharine

Well, we don't advertise it on the website because obviously most people who look at the website are pregnant women and we don't really want to talk a lot about losing a baby. Yeah, but all our teachers know well hopefully they remember it's there and I've sent it to birth charities. They've probably just filed it and thought it's a but people who have used it so said it's useful.

00:02:24 Olga

The ones that I had in the book were very useful anyway. Baby loss affects more people than we can imagine. But because it's not talked about, it's not talked about.

00:02:36 Katharine

Absolutely. And then when you're pregnant again, people say, oh, is this your second baby? And it's not. It's your fourth. Yeah, exactly. So you sort of don't know what to say, particularly if you've lost your first baby and you say, no, this is my second baby. Well, where's your first one then, Sort of.

00:02:55 Olga

Thing Exactly, yes.

00:02:58 Katharine

Isn't it? You don't really believe you're pregnant until after you've come to the point, when you lost the baby.

00:03:04 Olga

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how it unfolded for me. This episode will have to come up with the trigger warning. OK, so, Katharine, what is hypnobirthing? I know it's often defined as pain management.

00:03:20 Katharine

No, it's not pain management

00:03:21 Olga

In my experience is so much more than that.

00:03:23 Katharine

Because it's often lumped together with methods of pain management. But if you need to manage pain, the pain is there. So you have to manage it, don't you? But what you learn in KG hypnobirthing is if mind and body work together in the way they're designed to work, the pain might not be fair in the 1st place, so there's nothing to manage. So it can't possibly be pain management if the pain isn't there. Does that make any sense?

00:03:55 Olga

Yes.

00:03:56 Katharine

People will sometimes say, oh, it's mind over matter. And it's not even that. It's mind with matter working together in the way you are designed to work and everything in our society and our maternity services mitigates against it. So it's a matter of not of teaching you more and more and more. Yes, we we have all of our techniques and that sort of thing. But it's much more a question of letting go of the worries and the fears and the misconceptions and the preconceptions. So that by the time you come to have your baby, your mind and your body together can work in the way they're designed to work which is efficiently and comfortably. And that is a very controversial thing to say to a woman who's had a traumatic birth, or to most of society who assumed that birth is going to be traumatic and painful. But it's true.

00:04:52 Olga

It's a new idea to us. That the whole mind and body is a leap of faith because we've unlearned it so effectively. Yes, that one was emotions living in our bodies. Stress lives in our bodies.

00:05:08 Katharine

Absolutely. It always things they have said our gut is the second brain, haven't they? There's possibly more and more realisation of how you might save at every cell has a brain. It's not just this thing up here. It's again, it's pretty revolutionary to say, but a woman's body is perfectly designed to give birth if her mind doesn't get in the way. I mean, I've met this little girl not so long ago and she said mum is going to have a baby and it's going to hurt. So what is that child going to be like by the time she's 20 or 30 and has her own babies? That is going to be so deeply ingrained into her and fear is the most powerful emotion of all. The only thing that the government did really well during the COVID scare was to work on the nation's fears. Easily done. And the maternity services work on a woman's fears. You told me you were high risk. Um, when you say that, I don't. I think I wonder what it what it really was. You may have been. I'm not meaning to belittle you in any way, but I do wonder. I mean, that is a terrible label and a heavy burden to bear, isn't it?

00:06:21 Olga

It is. It really was, yes. So hypnobirthing is something that you and other founders have invented. Or is it something we are remembering how to do?

00:06:35 Katharine

There are loads of people who who claim to be the first hypnobirthing teacher. I don't think we know who was. We were certainly the first in the UK. And it has evolved all the time, because I learn. More new evidence comes out. New research comes out. The mums I teach feedback to me. The other teachers I train feed back to me. I think this is the very best course. Well, I would do, wouldn't I? Yeah. But I don't think it's as good as it could be because it's it is and should be evolving all the time and becoming better and it's hugely important. And the difference it makes, I mean you just read the book, but you if you've done the course it would have been even considerably more significant and it makes a massive difference. It's all. One can say it's not just we do all the things that you would expect. You know, we do breathing and relaxations and visualisations, which you mentioned, and they're all really good and they work well as long as you go into labour before 40 weeks, because 85% of pregnancies are longer than 40 weeks,

00:07:50 Olga

85%?

00:07:51 Katharine

Yes, it's crazy, but we consider pregnancy to be 40 weeks. Well, women who come to our course, we always say put your due date, which is a fallacy anyway, and a harmful fallacy, 2 weeks later. Somebody said, "Do you mean we should lie to our nearest and dearest?" No, what you're telling at the moment is a lie. What we tell you is far more likely to be the truth because we think that the average length of pregnancy is about 41 1/2 weeks, we can't say for sure because so many births are induced now, either by sweep or by medicalized induction. But we really don't know how many births, well, how long a spontaneous pregnancy would be. Probably about 41 1/2 weeks and yet every woman has massive stress and pressure applied to them. Huge amount of fear mongering from at least 40 weeks and possibly before. And what that does, it triggers the hormone adrenaline. That's the fear hormone. When we produce adrenaline it inhibits the hormone oxytocin, which is the hormone of calm and the hormone of love and the hormone you need for the body to work apparently giving birth. So as long as you're frightened, you're very much less likely to go into labour because you're not producing the hormones of birth. But trouble is the pressure that women are put under because their pregnancy is a bit longer then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So then people say, Oh well we need to induce you cause you haven't gone into labour. Why did that become necessary? Because of a fear that was applied in the first place. Awful, isn't it?

00:09:47 Olga

And then you've got that horrible word "overdue."

00:09:52 Katharine

Terrible word.

00:09:53 Joe

I remember, I already remember that as well because our first daughter was two weeks late, I think, and it it's exactly how you said it. We were really hung up on that date.

00:10:04 Katharine

It's crazy and it's interesting. I mean, inevitably, use the word. She was two weeks late. She wasn't.

00:10:10 Joe

Yeah, exactly.

00:10:11 Katharine

She came at exactly the right time. When people tell me that their baby's late, which you often see on the Internet, I always reply and say late for what? You know. Not only is it a crazy concept, but it's a harmful concept. We at KG Hypnobirthing have a completely different concept because I know women will start calling me and messaging me. What can I do? And I always said, well, what do you feel like doing? You know try this. Try that. Ohh for heaven's sake, stop trying and we have a brilliant concept for women whose for the last part of their pregnancy beyond 42 weeks, which of course is most women. We call this bonus time. You have been given a bonus, a few extra special days when you can do whatever you like. If I'm teaching a group and I have a couple of maybe a second time couple in the group of mostly first time couples, yeah. And I say, well you can read the books that are piling up on your bedside table. You can have a lie in, you can go out to a movie or a meal in a restaurant with your partner or things you will not be able to do without a great deal of organisation and expense for many years to come. This is a bonus and the idea is to change their hormones. Remember more likely to go into labour and we suggest that they book themselves a treat every single day. Don't just think about it, book it and it doesn't have to be a lot of money, it can be just be meeting up with a friend for a cup of coffee as long as she promises not to ask if there are any signs of baby coming. It might be something that costs a little bit more, like some reflexology, not trying to make the baby come just because it helps you chill. It could, as I said, be going out to a meal in a restaurant. Or it could be having a home date, getting in a takeaway and watching a movie on Netflix. Anything but. As long as she has not just thought about but booked a little treat for herself every single day from 40 weeks to 43 weeks. And then she'll be terribly disappointed when the baby arrives and she has to cancel her treats.

00:12:31 Olga

Ohh, I love that. And I remember you advised to watch happy movies.

00:12:37 Katharine

Yes, happy movies.

00:12:39 Olga

That was my favourite part. So my youngest was born the morning after we watched You've Got Mail. I think one thing I steered clear of was anything with the depiction of birth. Because.

00:12:53 Katharine

Oh, damn. Definitely not.

00:12:55 Olga

It's so... I can't. Can you? I can't name a movie or a show where it's a happy and peaceful occasion.

00:13:06 Katharine

Well it'd be boring, wouldn't it Wouldn't be good drama. It would be very boring, and even a benign series like, for example, Call the Midwife and the midwives are peddling around the East End of London on their bicycles, waving to the dockers or whatever. But if there are three births, at least two of them will be with something. Having to call a doctor or it's a breach birth or something. Because it otherwise if you showed physiological birth, it would be boring. It's not good drama, so you're not going to show it.

00:13:40 Olga

So I'm not surprised that little girl thought it was going to hurt. Yes, if the television was on it at any point, there's bound to have been a birth on it. That's bound to have scared her.

00:13:53 Katharine

Oh yes, because most people you know were not having sisters and cousins who have babies every week. Most people's knowledge of birth comes from the movies. It's it's funny because they have no other point of reference. Now, if you went to the Midwest of America, you wouldn't expect to see cowboys and Indians having a shootout just because you see it on the movies. But when it comes to birth, you do expect it to be there because you have no other point of reference and it's simply not true. And it's harmful. Women need good information and they don't get it. Umm, but even I mean, they even get scaremongering from their caregivers. And it's not necessarily the fault of the caregivers because they're frightened. They're all afraid of litigation, and they want to be seen to do absolutely everything they could. And then they're safe. And there's no time to explain anything to women. For example, when you had your baby, did anybody explain to you the risks and benefits of a scan?

00:15:07 Olga

No.

00:15:10 Katharine

Nobody does. They probably didn't even know it themselves. I have never seen a hospital thatexplains to women the risks and benefits of a scan. Now I am not saying that scans are terrible things because they're all these things have their place, but they were started without any evidence or research at all and you can't do the research now because people expect scans and more and. more evidence is coming out about the harm of scans. Which is not to say they're not... don't have their benefits. But how can a woman give informed consent if she hasn't been given the information? Possibly even because her caregiver doesn't know the information. So every scan for a pregnant woman is illegal. Because she hasn't given informed consent. And that's that's just an example of many, many other things. I don't believe there was research before they started giving vitamin K There wasn't research before they started clamping and cutting the cord immediately. And there are loads of other things.

00:16:22 Olga

They do ask now. They do ask these questions. Now about the cord.

00:16:30 Katharine

They ask if you want it, but they did. They give you a proper explanation.

00:16:33 Olga

Exactly. They they rely on you having done your research here.

00:16:37 Katharine

Were you in labour at the time that they asked?

00:16:39 Olga

No, actually, that was the community midwife who asked that as part of the birth plan.

00:16:45 Katharine

Hmm. Yeah, I'm not entirely convinced that she would have given you good information. She may have done, some do. I'm not saying that nobody does. More likely in a community midwife than in a hospital where they are not busier, but they're under different pressures. Did you have your baby at home?

00:17:05 Olga

No in the hospital.

00:17:07 Katharine

Ohh what you said, but community midwife. I thought maybe that you were planning a home birth.

00:17:11 Olga

Now with with all the risks that I was hearing about all the time, I was feeling much safer in the hospital. And actually there was a wonderful team in the hospital there I was very attached to and I felt really safe with them. I'm very grateful to them. In fact, my youngest is named after my doctor.

00:17:34 Katharine

I think if you've lost the baby they are give you more time and are more supportive. I think that can be it can be very good under those circumstances.

00:17:45 Olga

In fact, that doctor, that particular doctor, had been with us through the two baby losses and she was partially the one who gave me the courage to try again and who said I will be here for you and who gave me the number of her secretary and who said just contact me directly.

00:18:06 Katharine

Fantastic.

00:18:07 Olga

She was absolutely fantastic and I loved her. I really did. They tried, but then they, as you know the NHS is under such horrible pressure that to get continuity of care, which is so important. Yes. Why is it important? Because because it's a relationship. Because we, we like, we get attached. That's who we are as human beings. We want to be cared for. And the midwives, the doctors, that's why they became midwives and doctors, to care. And then they juggle everything around and you can't see the same person. And in fact, I was seeing a consultant that was that. That just left me in tears within 3 minutes of talking to him and I had requested from now on to only see the doctor that I loved. No matter it may it it might have meant that I would come in um, at odd times. Or I was very happy to adjust my schedule because it was so hard to get hold of her. And they were saying to me, but he's more senior than her, he's got this and that I don't know, extra qualification. And I was saying I don't care because she cares about me, you know, and I want her, you know, this was so important. And I wonder actually one thing, one risk I find and it's both in if you believe in a natural birth and you follow hypnobirthing course, same as if you believe like we do in parenting, that is built with the awareness of  the attachment forces at play with how children develop naturally, how they're meant to develop. If you believe these things, and if you want to practise these things, then you are going against the grain. The risk of that is that you might start to isolate yourself because as you've mentioned, your parents, in-laws, cousins, friends will be asking so when are you due? So when is the baby coming? So when? Well, she will. It's best to have an induction because then at least you know and you're in safe hands. Hands, they mean well. But because there's so little awareness in the society, there will be putting pressure on you and you will try to possibly isolate yourself from it at the time when all you need is a team and as much support as you can get. How can we bridge this? We need our people.

00:20:59 Katharine

Well, it's well known, isn't it? There's evidence that you get the best outcomes from 1 to 1 care from a known midwife or obstetrician, there's no doubt about it. There have been very various initiatives trying to achieve that. None of them have worked because it's quite difficult on the NHS. Curiously enough, the health services in New Zealand do achieve this. You contact your midwife at the beginning of your pregnancy and she supports you all the way through your pregnancy, which is interesting. So it can be done. How do we achieve it? What that that caring relationship as I say, the thing that mitigates against it is fear. Lots of people who have done my course, either with me or the other teachers I've trained, if they have a question, they'll contact their hypnobirthing teacher because we have a personal relationship. Uh, the midwife, as you say. They see a different one every visit, but also we give them the information they need. We go through exactly how our bodies work. Have our muscles work, have our hormones work, but practise they they need to do how they should plan their birth. Birth plan that most people do is just a wish list. You plan any significant event to get what you want. You may use advisors who can give you some extra information, but you plan. People don't plan their birth. What they call a birth plan is generally just a wish list. I rather hope it will be like this. Well, you don't go like that on holiday. You think I'd quite like to go to a warm country, but I'll go to the airport and get on the plane and I rather hope it'll go to somewhere that I would like to go. But I know  the pilots will be well qualified. It would be crazy, wouldn't it? So we need to plan, we need to talk about exactly how we do that, and then we go through the whole of the birth. Oh, and the other how do we deal with with this? We tell everybody to tell everybody the due date if they must say a fortnight later, or about the end of a month or or whatever. Never ever ever tell anybody a due date. Never ever ever ask a pregnant woman her due date. I always say, I might ask how many weeks she is. I might say, when might your baby put in an appearance or something like that. But all the people we trained tell their friends and relations a fortnight later, because most of them are covered by that anyway. Um, so it's more realistic. And most people don't remember the first time they said when the due date was. And if they did, you just say, oh, I had another scan. Wonderful what you can find out from these machines these days, isn't it? Yeah, and put it a fortnight later because after all the first due date came from a scan and if you look at the date from that, the 12 week scan, against the date that you may have worked out for yourself. The date from a scan is almost always, not always, but very frequently, earlier than the date you worked out for yourself. Therefore the hospital will take the scan date. Therefore they will be pressurising you for an intervention when you might only be 39 weeks according to your own calculation. And that happens for majority of women.

00:24:48 Joe

To kind of take us back to the beginning, when did you start to realise that we've gone away from that things weren't as they should be?

00:24:55 Katharine

I I came to this, I'm not a midwife, I'm a hypnotherapist. And like in many professions, you have to do a bit of extra training each year to maintain your registration. So one year I couldn't think what to do. And a colleague said, well, I did this hypnobirthing training, you might be interested. So I basically I went along, I thought it would be quite nice, but with no special interest. I was absolutely blown away by it and I offered it as part of my hypnotherapy practise and over time, relatively quickly, it took over. And that was 20 years ago, and the whole of my life has been governed by it since then. You see, I didn't find hypnobirthing, it found me. Uh, which is just happened that I think it's quite funny. Sometimes I will train a whole room of midwives to be KG hypnobirthing teachers, and they're all medically qualified and I'm not, but I am qualified in what I'm teaching them, which is quite amusing and also something that came to mind. If you use the word hypnobirthing, it's meaningless. It means nothing. It's like saying I drive a car. Well, is it a Lamborghini or a Mini? What sort of car? But they don't say that about it hypnobirthing, and it is not the same. You read the book, and I'm glad you did, and I'm very glad it made a difference to you. Had you done the course, I would be almost prepared to swear it would have made a greater difference to you. Some people will offer a short course, you know, just an afternoon or something and you can do some lovely relaxations, but you cannot find out about birth in that short time. Ours is 12 hours. It is evidence based, it is logical, and it takes you through the whole process. If you've just done a few relaxations, it's great if your baby arrives sort of 40 weeks or earlier. But as soon as the pressure mounts, if you haven't got the tools to understand what's going on and how to deal with it when it may not be quite so good. So if I'm talking about hypnobirthing, I always say KG hypnobirthing because all courses are different. And I honestly do believe this is the most thorough, not just because I would do, because I advised it, but because other people who've done other courses have told me that. But you need for help course to have a really effective successful birth. You really, really do. Because it works. And it's so important not just for you, but how your baby enters the world, your birth. It affects you as a mum. My goodness, that's going to affect your baby, isn't it The most important event in its life and therefore there needs to be a positive experience for your baby as well As for you.

00:27:52 Olga

And the partner too. And partners have a lovely role in hypnobirthing, haven't they?

00:27:59 Katharine

Brilliant. Yes, partner is very important. The problem is sometimes with dads is they tend to meddle. The number of women who have come to me and said, well, I'd love to have my baby at home, but he doesn't want me to, is quite large. And I've had conversations with dads about this and it's fear. Again, probably fear of the unknown. But by the end of the course, the woman might come to me and say you know what he said when we went home last night? He said, have you ever thought about a home birth? I said, oh, that's a really good idea because a dad's role is not to tell her what to do. She knows instinctively and perfectly what to do, most certainly to be used as a sounding board and that sort of thing, but not to tell her what to do. But his role is to protect her, the keeper of this positive bubble, keep out all the negative birth stories, any negative input. His role is to protect her, to help her have conversations which can be negative with an obstetrician, to make sure that during the birth there are no interventions which she had said she didn't want, or make sure it is as she wanted. And that is a massively important role. He is her protector and it's what men traditionally are and they're really, really good at protecting and in a way they come into their own when it comes to that role in birth and certainly doing the course together brings a couple closer together. I see it all the time and it's very, very lovely to see and I'm sure it deepens the bond for father with his child because he knows he's been a useful part in how that baby entered the world. Massively important, quite simple, but very profound.

00:29:52 Olga

Beautiful. That is a beautiful design.

00:29:55 Katharine

It is beautiful to watch. It is very beautiful. I remember one couple. She called me up before the class and said he won't come and I said well that's fine, you know, single mums come on their own. It is absolutely no problem. In fact, next weekend I'm going to teach a class and she's a surrogate mum and the biological couple are coming as well as the surrogate couple, which will be rather lovely, so everybody can be on the same wavelength. Anyway, this particular mum called me and said he won't come. Fine, no problem. But she showed up with her husband looking morose and during the the course he sort of softened and we had a little chat. And after the course she called me again and she said I don't know what the magic you worked was. Well, it is magic, or it seems like magic, the outcome of this course. She said, but before we went on the course, he was saying, "It's a load of middle class nonsense. Hippie, no..., you know, you expect me to do that sort of thing." And she said I've tried to persuade him to come. I tried logic, I tried pleading, I tried tears and then I shouted at him. And no wonder he looked a bit fed up when he arrived. Anyway, when they got home that night, he said. You know, there's a lot of sense in that too, which there is. Everything we say is logical and easy to remember. The most beautiful thing of all that she said was, and that night we made love and that was the first time for four months. So talk about bringing a couple closer together. It was just so beautiful and you can see it as they practised for relaxations in class. I mean, you feel a bit silly doing one of these relaxations for the first time and the husband or partner is reading it for the mum and then they do another one and it sort of begins to get more natural and he's got his arm round her and by the third one they're snuggling up together on a heap of cushions on the floor and you can just see how the work we do brings a couple closer together. Brilliant. Wonderful. That. Certainly both are part of it, because in the world we live in, we were talking about continuity of care. The only person who gives continuity of care is for dad or for partner. It may not be medical care, but that's the person who is there for her throughout pregnancy, throughout birth and beyond. And that's the person she knows and loves. And that's massively important. Hugely important. That's beautiful. It is. I am such a fortunate person. There can be nothing better to do with your life than work in this way. I'm I'm just privileged. It's just how I view it. It's wonderful.

00:32:47 Olga

Can we talk a bit, please about this bubble in which many cultures believe?

00:32:54 Katharine

The positive bubble.

00:32:55 Olga

Positive bubble in which the pregnant woman needs to be held. Now I remember, I'm from Ukraine. I remember when my mum was pregnant with my sister, my grandmother was always saying don't say anything that will upset her. She was telling everyone to not upset the pregnant woman. Now that's completely lost right now, but there's wisdom in it, isn't there?

00:33:20 Katharine

he number one people who upset her most are the maternity services who are supposed to care for her. It's appalling. Um, the tools that we give to a woman to help her remain positive in the first place, as we may have found in the book, there's an audio which you can download, which is relaxation as positive statements, all that stuff to listen to each night as you go to sleep, and that has a cumulative effect. The effect becomes more powerful every time you listen to it, and the purpose is then to listen to it, have it just playing in the background when you're actually giving birth. So there's that. We also have four or five relaxations that the partner can read for mum, one each night before she goes to sleep. We have the breathing and we have a notice that you can stick up on the wall, which says... I'm just trying to remember the exact words, but it's something like "Only positive birth stories: My baby's listening." But that's not quite the right word. But it's true, because people delight in telling negative birth stories to a pregnant woman. It is appalling. I sort of ponder on why they do it. I think there may be two reasons. One is they've had a traumatic birth themselves and it's therapeutic to them to tell other people about it. Now it is undoubtedly true, but somebody needs to listen to them, but not another pregnant woman. That is harmful. And I think the other reason is when she says she's planning a natural birth because of their own experience, they think she's being awfully unrealistic. She needs to know what it's really like. But since they don't know what a KG hypnobirthing birth is really like, they don't know what they're talking about. So that's one of the roles of a partner is to stop them and the mum to learn to say no. Learning saying yes is so much easier, it feels more friendly than saying no. But people who do that is harming the pregnant woman and they need to be stopped. You mentioned the words overdue. Words are so powerful and we need to start to notice them more. And it's often the little words that we don't know. It's things like "try". I'm going to try to make my baby turn. I'm going to try to make my baby come. Well, if you ever use the word try, it implies stress. And if you're stressful, that baby is never going to come like that. Whatever you want is not going to happen. That's an awful word. We've talked about late being a terrible word. As I say, late for what? Just is a a dangerous word too. If somebody says just hop on my couch and I'll do your sweep, it usually means that they want to do something to you which is more significant than they want you to realise. It's the little words that sneak in without being noticed, which are most harmful of all. And the words we say to ourselves in our heads  until we wake up in the morning, look out in the window and it's raining, which is a fact, and say isn't it an awful day? Well, if you live in England and it rains a lot, if every time it rains you say it's going to be, it's an awful day, you're going to have a lot of awful days in your life. It's your choice, but it's not the happiest way of going about living. I'm not saying that we don't face up to reality. Of course we do. You know, you take an umbrella or a raincoat. And I I have this picture sometimes. Well, at the moment they're threatening us with snow in the north of England. The worst snow I remember once hearing is in Cumbria and I just in my mind had a picture of a little boy of about 8 in Cumbria jumping up and down saying this is the best snow ever. So it's very largely a matter of the words we use and the interpretation we put on it. Facts, yes, even if they aren't easy facts. We need good facts, but we don't need to put a, a a negative interpretation. "Allowed." We're not allowed to do that. Ohh. Terrible word. A woman is allowed to do whatever she likes. She will properly if she's sensible, which she is. Listen to the advice and experience of her caregivers. But it's her choice. "I'll just make an appointment for you." No, you won't. You'll ask me if I would like an appointment. Every single intervention, the guidelines say, is offered. You can accept or decline. There is nothing that a woman has to do. One particularly bad one. I mean, it's so easily done. A midwife told this mum, among other things, that she had a back-to-back baby. Not the end of the world, but she said, "Your baby is in the wrong position."  Now, if you tell a woman there's something wrong with her baby, it's about the worst thing you could tell a pregnant woman. It will be going round and round in her subconscious. Wrong. My baby. Her baby. What's wrong? If you say, "It's a back-to-back baby. Labour might be a little bit longer and this is what happens. And this is why." Fine. You deal with it. Something wrong with your baby? That's nasty. That's putting a negative interpretation on a fact. Even if may, it may not be a fact which you particularly want. You still need a straight fact and straight information, not a negative viewpoint on it. Uh, for wonderful Mary Cronk, who was a fantastic midwife who died a few years ago. Now positions like being back-to-back or breach, a presentation like that she would always describe as "unusual but normal," which is a much healthier way of looking at it. Unusual, but normal.

00:39:23 Olga

Yeah, it's about the frequency.

00:39:25 Katharine

Absolutely. Breech babies are only about 4%. It is unusual, but it's another variation of normal.

00:39:31 Olga

What is it about the agency though? You're both therapists. Please tell me that's I had a high risk of pregnancy and I had gestational diabetes and there was so there was so many things they were telling me.

00:39:46 Katharine

You bet.

00:39:47 Olga

Telling me to do and what I was allowed and all I wanted was agency. I remember seeing this consultant who said it was quite late in the pregnancy and we were goodness it was scary. But we were fighting this 38 week induction and we did. And my baby arrived naturally on his due date 3 hours before his scheduled induction.

00:40:10 Katharine

Clever. Such a clever baby.

00:40:12 Olga

Indeed, yes, I did talk to him, yes.

00:40:17 Katharine

Quite.

00:40:18 Olga

This one consultant in a carousel of medical professionals you see in our crumbling healthcare system and he actually, maybe he was just tired, but he sat there and said, "So what do you want to do?" And I remember looking at my husband, he asked me what I want to do! Yay, here it is. All I needed was agency in this really stressful, this really threatening situation. So.

00:40:50 Katharine

You said that you were told you had gestational diabetes and then got the label high risk as a result. But wonderful obstetrician Michael Odent, who started birth pools, describes gestational diabetes as a diagnosis looking for a disease. Was it late in pregnancy you were told you had diagnosis of gestational diabetes or earlier on?

00:41:14 Olga

Late, 28 weeks is when the test is done.

00:41:19 Katharine

When you see these late tests have been introduced relatively recently and what naturally happens is that your blood sugar level rises towards the end of pregnancy because your baby needs the extra energy ready for birth and then you go above the gestational diabetes cut off point, it's perfectly natural, perfectly beneficial and then you're told oh you might have a huge baby. So we've got to induce you early, we've got to, you'll have to be hearing words like that. I don't know how far you were over the point that they say this is gestational diabetes, but you are probably something like that. I mean obviously if you have uncontrolled type one diabetes that is going through the roof, yes, that's dangerous. But a woman who tests a couple of points over what is generally considered to be the cut off point towards the end of her pregnancy, actually her body's working perfectly. Normally there's no risk at all, but my goodness, the pressure you get put under on account of it. I don't know how many times. Um, you told me you had a high risk pregnancy. You didn't. That was a label you got. And I know it's very, very difficult once you get that label and unless you have somebody to explain to you what it means, which you probably won't unless you've done our course. Then you're frightened.

00:42:43 Olga

That that is so curious. Katharine, you will love this. My eldest was born in China, in Shanghai, and I also had elevated blood sugar and the doctor who looked after me took a completely different approach. All he ever said was "You've got a slightly raised blood sugar. You might have something called gestational diabetes. Walk for at least an hour a day or do your yoga, whatever you like. And don't eat much chocolate or mangoes or bananas." I was quite angry about that. That was all he said.

00:43:19 Katharine

Did you like chocolate and mangoes and bananas?

00:43:21 Olga

He monitored me. He looked at the results and and he was very reserved and said, hmm, OK, just keep doing what you're doing. I never knew the numbers he saw. I never understood the numbers he saw. And he held it all to himself. Now, here in England we have a completely different approach because of, as you mentioned, being afraid of litigation. You know everything. Even if the risk is .01%, you will hear scary words, your placenta will give up, you will hear it all without the mention of how infinitesimal the risk is. So my Chinese doctor really was creating that positive bubble around me. He was probably worried as I think in hindsight. I was not.

00:44:17 Katharine

Not very much.

00:44:18 Olga

Hmm.

00:44:19 Katharine

Yes, if you told you have gestational diabetes. I don't use the word diagnosis because I don't think it is a diagnosis. You've just told you have it because of because of a reading. But when you get sent to the gestational diabetes nurse for advice on on your diet will provide. She gives you is pretty basic diet that you were probably eating anyway because you're an intelligent person. And if anybody wasn't eating that diet, you know if they're eating nothing but burgers and chips and chocolate and drinking coke, then yes, it's a good idea. They've been to that, to that nurse. But for most people she just talks about the diet that's you should be eating anyway, and probably a lot of people like you are. She doesn't tell you anything, which is extraordinary. I think the Chinese doctor was much better.  mean we all know we shouldn't be eating chocolate in pregnancy. I'm not sure we're quite so well informed about mangoes or bananas. Actually, bananas are brilliant in labour because you get ohh. What is it you get from bananas?

00:45:26 Joe

Potassium.

00:45:27 Katharine

That's it. I'm so sorry. Yes, really good in labour. But that's not to say it's that's not the same as in pregnancy.

00:45:34 Olga

For parents who are listening to this episode and thinking, I've had my babies now, but I wish things had gone differently. I wish I had done the KG hypnobirthing course. Maybe the birth of my child would have been happier. What can you say to this person?

00:45:56 Katharine

We have an audio that they can buy off the shop which helps relieve birth trauma if they had a traumatic birth. It does work extremely well. It's one of the ones I like best. Lovely one to use. If your birth didn't go as you hoped, that's very good. If they are a new mum and have recently had a baby, we have another audio which is called For a New Mother, which has one track to help a new mother on her very much changed journey in life because now she has her baby. There's another one about breastfeeding and there's another one which a lady with seven children asked me to to record about how to calm down when you're all sort of in a hurley burley of life. It's a lovely audio. People I think when they have their baby they sort of forget what they've been told, but it can be incredibly useful. Those are the things that we offer. The only other thing you can say, well, have another baby with KG hypnobirthing and it'll be so different.

00:47:03 Olga

I see.

00:47:04 Katharine

But actually, some of the skills we teach are life skills. Yes, they're designed towards birth, of course they are. But they're skills that you can use for the whole of your life like the calm breathing that we use during birth and use it every day. If you can remember. I don't remember as much as I would like to, but I do tend to remember  when I'm lying in bed at night. And also because I live in the country, I need my car to go anywhere. And when I sit in my car, put my key in the ignition, and somehow that triggers her memory and I sit there and I do three or four breaths and all the sort of hustle and bustle of getting out of a house or what I was doing before just goes. Ah. And I can start afresh as I go out. So everything that we do is of course geared towards birth and they are also useful life skills.

00:47:58 Olga

I'll look out for those audios. And the final question, Katharine, what do you do for play?

00:48:03 Katharine

What I do for play? KG hypnobirthing. It's a wonderful thing to do. It makes me so happy.

00:48:11 Olga

It's your work and your play.

00:48:13 Katharine

Yes, it's wonderful. It is just simply a privilege. It is fantastic making that difference to people's lives. I do play tennis once a week. I play the piano, but I haven't had much time to do that recently because I've been totally rewriting part of the course. But I've got my piano there and it's lovely. It's my friend. There is a freezing cold lake in the village where I live, and I'm one of a small group of mad people who plunge into it every Sunday morning and then I go home and have a hot bath or shower. It's wonderful experience, but my goodness, it's cold.

00:48:46 Olga

Do you stop in the summer?

00:48:47 Joe

The Wim Hof method.

00:48:49 Katharine

No, no, no, no, no. But it's just not quite so cold. It is pretty cold at any time of year because it's fed from springs. I love skiing but I haven't been able to go skiing this year and I have a wonderful family. I have four children who are now grown up and six grandchildren who I really don't see as much of as I would like, partly because one of them lives in Australia. I regard myself as an extremely fortunate person.

00:49:12 Olga

You are busy and happy.

00:49:13 Katharine

Yes. Are you busy and happy?

00:49:15 Olga

Yes, I do The Caring Instinct for play, so I get it, yes, work and play together.

00:49:21 Katharine

Quite. And I'm always learning more in the world I work in. There's always more to learn and that's great.

00:49:27 Olga

Umm, yeah. Thank you so much, Katharine. This was so special.

00:49:31 Joe

Thanks Katharine

00:49:31 Katharine

It is a great pleasure to come and talk to you. Thank you Olga and thank you Joe. Thank you for inviting me.

00:49:37 Olga

Thank you so much.