To calm her nerves before giving birth, Madelaine Golec, a physiotherapist in Mississauga, Ont., signed up for hypnobirthing classes. She wanted to gain the confidence to handle whatever came her way during labour.
By employing relaxation techniques and offering a view of childbirth that doesn’t focus on pain and suffering, hypnobirthing aims to ease fear and anxiety during the birthing process and reduce overall pain.
?Having information about labour and how the body is designed to birth gave me confidence,? says Golec. ?Seeing examples of women giving birth in a calm and beautiful way made it possible in my mind that I could have it too.?
What is hypnobirthing" 
The term HypnoBirthing was coined in the 1989 book HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method by hypnotherapist Marie Mongan. She was influenced by the work of Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, the British obstetrician who popularized the phrase ?natural childbirth? in the 1940s. In his book, Childbirth without Fear, Dick-Read posited that fear was a factor in the experience of pain during childbirth. After having anesthetics forced on her during her first two births in the ’50s, Mongan delivered her third and fourth children without medication, and when her daughter was pregnant she started offering classes so that other couples who were so inclined could have similar experiences by using her techniques to manage their fear and anxiety.  (For reference, when we say HypnoBirthing with capital letters we?re referr...