After the initial shock of finding out I was pregnant, my thoughts become consumed with the fear of giving birth. Having been visually assaulted by the over exaggerated birth scenes in movies and television shows, I had a distorted perception about the idea of birth. I held onto the belief that birth is painful, involved agonizing screaming, and was extremely dramatic. As a person who tries to engage in mindfulness throughout their life i knew I had to kick the irrational fears that were giving me anxiety to the curb. It was the first few months and time literally seemed to come to a crawl as I worried every day about what birth would be like for me.   I knew something had to change so I entered the words “mindful birth” into the Amazon search bar and immediately, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body, ad Heart for Childbirth and Beyond had popped up at the top of the results page. 

This book had such an impact on helping me realize that through practicing mindful techniques I could overcome my fears and have the natural birth that I truly desired. It was through reading the chapters of this book that I learned to substitute the word pain for pressure and learned to trust my body to do the job that it was meant to do.