3 Powerful Ways to Mentally Prepare for a Smoother Birth

I often remind expecting mums and partners: your body already knows how to birth. Pregnancy teaches us that without our conscious effort. What we truly need is for the mind to come along. When your thoughts, tools, and emotional support are aligned, birth can become a more positive, empowered experience.

Here are three practices I teach in the Positive Birth Program that help cultivate that mental alignment — and can make a difference when your baby’s arrival day comes.

1. Affirmations: Speak life into your birth mindset

Words are more powerful than many of us realise. During pregnancy and labour, they can shift how we think, feel, respond, and even how our nervous system behaves.

When we consistently repeat a thought, it becomes more likely to take up residence in our subconscious belief system — whether it’s fearful or empowering. That’s why I encourage using positive birth affirmations. These are short, meaningful statements (e.g. “My body is wise and strong,” “I am calm, connected, and capable”) that remind your mind of your trust in the process.

In my courses, I guide you to choose affirmations that feel deeply resonant for you — not generic ones. I also offer an MP3 track, “Affirmations for Beautiful Birthing,” so you can listen regularly and let these empowering phrases embed themselves gently and naturally in your mind.

2. Visualisation: Rehearse birth in your mind

“Visualisation” can sound a little abstract — even a bit “woo-woo” — but science backs it up. Brain‐imaging studies tell us that when we imagine doing something, the same neural circuits fire as if we’re actually doing it. In other words, visualising a calm, confident birthing scenario primes your system for it.

When you visualise the birth you’d like — how you breathe, how your partner supports you, how you meet your baby — you’re setting up neural pathways toward possibility. It helps you show up more relaxed, more connected, and with more inner trust when surges begin.

In my Hobart classes and in the online program, we spend time crafting birth rehearsals — step by step — so that by the time your labour begins, you already know how you’d like to move through it.

3. Self-Hypnosis: Accessing calm at the deepest level

Hypnobirthing in the Positive Birth Program uses hypnotherapy techniques tailored to childbirth. These methods help bypass the conscious mind’s anticipation of pain or fear and gently reprogramme your subconscious toward calm, trust, and ease.

Your subconscious is where your deep beliefs, emotional memories, habitual reactions, and inner filters live. Hypnosis gives us a “doorway” to that level — enabling you to overwrite fear with confidence, tension with relaxation, and doubt with trust.

When labour comes, these tools help you remain in the driver’s seat — not a passenger. Mothers who practise regularly are often surprised to feel themselves flowing through contractions, staying centred, and avoiding interventions that arise from tension or fear.

Why these three practices matter — especially in Australia and Tasmania

• In Australia, caesarean section rates are high — around 39 % of births in 2022 were by C-section. AIHW

• Over time, intervention rates (inductions, instrumental births, etc.) have also been climbing, and unassisted non-instrumental vaginal births are decreasing. BioMed Central+1

• When we approach birth with more calm, trust, and mental preparation, the physiological processes can operate more freely, reducing the cascade of unnecessary interventions.

• In Tasmania, while national birth rates have declined, Tasmania is one of the few states bucking that trend: it has shown a slight bump in births when others are falling. Herald Sun

Because our island community is tightly knit, and many of us birth in familiar local hospitals or birthing centres, the influence of mindset and preparation is strong. Knowing your body, trusting your mind, and having a birth partner who is aligned becomes even more meaningful in that setting.

Practical tips to begin today

• Pick one affirmation you love; write it somewhere you’ll see it daily (mirror, fridge, phone screen).

• Take 5 minutes each evening to visualise your birth — from early surges to meeting your baby.

• Use a short self-hypnosis recording (even just 5 or 10 minutes) when you’re calm — the brain learns best when relaxed.

• Share these practices with your birth partner — when you rehearse together, their presence becomes a source of resonance and support.