Mandy’s Journey to Becoming a Hypnobirthing Teacher

Mandy’s Journey to Becoming a Hypnobirthing Teacher

Mandy from Assertive Birth shares her journey to becoming a hypnobirthing teacher. 

My name is Mandy and I’m a hypnobirthing teacher based in West Lothian, Scotland. I wanted to write a blog post about my journey to becoming a hypnobirthing teacher in the hope that it will encourage others who are considering taking this leap. 

So how did I end up following this path?

Well I have four children, so I’ve given birth a fair few times. With my first I had that typical mindset of - I’ll just go into it with an open mind, see what happens, no need for a plan but the hope of a drug free water birth. Well I quickly learned that if you want your dream birth it takes a bit more preparation than just having an open mind. And needless to say that drug free water birth did not happen.

My second baby was born very quickly at home, not the plan, but it was an amazing experience and it really led me to want to know much more about birth, how it works and why birth experiences can be so different.

With my next two births I went all in with preparation and really embraced hypnobirthing. And what a transformation - it completely changed my mindset about birth as well as my birth experiences.

I always had this little niggle that I wanted to share this with others and it became a real passion but I never really considered being a hypnobirthing teacher. I’ve worked in the same career for 20 years and had a decent permanent role with a really good salary. So a change of career wasn’t something I had considered.

Suddenly when I was on maternity leave with my fourth baby I started to have all these lightbulb moments. I realised I was getting zero joy from my current role, despite the stability and so I handed in my notice. At the same time I began chatting with another lovely local hypnobirthing teacher about her journey and training - she had done the expansion course with Love Your Birth after initially training elsewhere and really recommended Abby. Soon after she told me about Abby’s five day free training and it sounds cheesy but it was as if everything just aligned perfectly to push me in this direction. 

As soon as I had done day 1 of the free training I knew it was for me and I knew it had to be Abby I trained with. And after signing up for the full course I’ve never regretted it for a single moment. Definitely the right decision. The content and structure of the course has been brilliant. The online modules don’t feel tedious or boring, they’re really engaging and enjoyable. And then the immersive weekend was just pure magic - not only Abby and her amazing teaching style and personality but also all the other ladies training with me just made it special. 

And it isn’t over when you’ve done the training, the support afterwards is worth its weight in gold - the Facebook group of other hypnobirthing teachers, the CPD opportunities and the business mentoring. I’ve done things I could never have imagined - like building my own website from scratch - just with the help and support of others within the group. 

I completed my training in December and right away I held a launch event in the beautiful venue where I’m running my in person classes. We had a bit of a hypnobirthing taster session, two beautiful guided relaxations, cake, chat and lovely little goodie bags. Everyone who came along loved it and a few of the girls even booked in for a course with me in January. I had never done anything like this before but I was completely in my element and it just felt so right. 

Since then I’ve already supported lots of other families both formally and informally. I’ve held two group courses in January of this year, with amazing 5 star feedback. And I have more group courses booked in for the rest of the year as well as 121’s. I also hold pregnancy relaxation classes once a week which I’ve really loved doing, using the hypnosis scripts from Abby’s course. 

I feel like this has all just opened up a world of opportunity for me and pushed me so far out of my comfort zone and whilst at times its felt a little scary its always felt right. I feel absolute joy in what I’m doing. 

My vision is to help parents to feel calm, assertive and confident in pregnancy, birth and beyond. With hard work and dedication as well as the strong foundation of the Love Your Birth training and the ongoing support I know that this vision is already starting to become a reality. 

To anyone reading this who is considering doing this course I would say go for it, I really don’t think you’d ever regret it. 

You can watch Mandy talk about her experience of teaching hypnobirthing on the Instagram live that we did recently, the link to watch is here or by clicking the image below. 

You can follow Mandy over on her Instagram page @assertive_birth or visit her website to find out more about her courses www.assertivebirth.com. 

If you are interested in becoming a hypnobirthing teacher or up-levelling your existing hypnobirthing course then click here for more information. 

Abby xx