When is the best time to start childbirth classes?
Unless you're already in labor, you've come to the right place to get a handle on the ideal time to begin your HelloBirth hypnobirthing classes. Most of our educators are offering classes in our standard 4-week format: once per week for 4 weeks consecutively for 3 hours each week.
An ideal time to begin classes would be anywhere from 20 to 30 weeks pregnant. If you feel like 20 weeks is too early, don't worry. Once you finish with week 4 of your class, you will take a HelloBirth hypnobirthing listening schedule with you, and continue to listen to audio recordings at least 3x per week.
This has incredible benefit for training your brain to learn and utilize these tools. The more times you repeat these recordings, the more and more effective the techniques will become for you.
Finishing your HelloBirth series early in your pregnancy is also beneficial because you still have plenty of time to implement the information you learned and create a lasting practice around the daily and weekly activities. And if you've decided to make a provider switch based on what you've learned about your own birthing philosophy, that switch is going to be easiest and simplest around this time in your pregnancy.
What if I'm already 36 weeks pregnant? Should I still take the class?
Although you won't get as much benefit as you would have if starting earlier, we would still recommend it if there's a class you can join beginning this week.
In the first class, you will learn how hypnobirthing works, and you will begin learning your first birthing technique: The Release Button. If the above scenario describes you, we would recommend working with your instructor to adopt an accelerated listening schedule. This would probably mean that after attending your first class, you would listen to one track each day until Class 2. If your class began on a Saturday, your listening schedule would be:
- Your Release Button -- Sunday
- Your Soft Wave -- Monday
- Rock This Birth! -- Tuesday
- Release Your Fear -- Wednesday
- Optimal Position for Baby -- Thursday
- Comforting Touch -- Friday
- Attend Class 2 on Saturday
- Repeat rotation until baby comes!
If you need a class format that's more accelerated, reach out to Lindsey who has a pre-recorded option available.
You are going to get at least some benefit no matter how much prep you're able to get in. One of our clients actually took a class 10 days before her due date and went on to have a marvelous VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) using these hypnosis skills!
Although we would never recommend waiting this long, what we can say is that you will be empowered and inspired by choosing to access the HelloBirth audio library for your birth. We even include a Comfort for Induction track as well as a My Cesarean Birth track.