Hypnosis for Pregnancy
You are pregnant, and it is not quite what you had imagined.
There is the body changing faster than the mind can follow. The exhaustion of the first months, the kind nobody sees because nothing shows yet. Nights that become a question of position. And that moment, at three in the morning, when you look something up online that you could have asked your midwife.
There are the stories too. The ones people tell you without your asking, usually the most dramatic, which settle into a corner of your mind until the day itself. And there is the gap between what you feel and what is expected of you: pregnancy is supposed to be a state of fulfilment, and you are sometimes worried, sometimes ambivalent, sometimes simply tired.
This is a period of transformation, not a performance to be pulled off. You have nothing to prove, not now and not on the day you give birth.
A symptom during pregnancy is assessed medically first.
Contact your maternity unit, your midwife, your local health centre or emergency services without waiting in case of bleeding, regular contractions before term, fluid loss, any change in your baby's movements, fever, severe headaches with vision disturbance or pain under the ribs, sudden swelling, chest pain or sudden breathlessness, pain or swelling in one leg only, intense itching, or vomiting that stops you eating.
None of these belongs to hypnosis, and none should be put down to stress. Hypnosis replaces neither your pregnancy care nor your birth preparation. It comes alongside.
What is Hypnosis during Pregnancy?
Antenatal hypnosis is an accompaniment, not a treatment. It substitutes for no part of your care and never intervenes in anything medical.
A few notions are often confused and worth separating.
- Hypnosis during pregnancy covers what you are going through these months: the discomforts once they have been assessed, sleep, emotions, fears, the relationship to your body.
- Birth preparation through hypnosis, sometimes called hypnonatal or hypnobirthing depending on the method, is a course of self-hypnosis learning carried out in the final weeks. Solutions Hypnose offers a three-session programme, described on the page Birth and Perinatal Care.
- Birth preparation classes are the reference pathway, and they come first. In France, this is the *préparation à la naissance et à la parentalité*, led by a midwife or a doctor: seven sessions fully covered by the health insurance system, preceded by an early antenatal consultation that has been compulsory since 2022. In Quebec, these are the prenatal classes run by your CLSC, offered free of charge, in formats that vary by region. Hypnosis is never a substitute for them.
- Pregnancy care is the set of consultations and tests that monitor your health and your baby's. Nothing replaces it.
A word on safety. Hypnosis is a non-medicinal approach: it introduces no substance and changes nothing about what you are taking. It is used in hospital settings, including in maternity units. That does not mean it suits every situation: an old traumatic experience, a high-risk pregnancy or ongoing psychiatric care all mean speaking to the team caring for you first.
The nausea, pain and sleep problems of pregnancy are common and most often benign, but they are not to be interpreted on your own. Vomiting that stops you eating, pain that will not settle, insomnia with persistent sadness: these deserve to be assessed by a doctor or a midwife.
We accompany physical discomfort only after that assessment, never in its place. Every decision about your care or your treatment belongs exclusively to the medical team looking after you.
The impact of Pregnancy on daily life
The body first, and it makes itself felt. The nausea of the early months, the exhaustion, the back pain, the shortness of breath, the positions that no longer work. This is not incidental comfort: it takes up a good part of the day, and it decides the mood far more often than anyone admits. Sleep is affected from the first trimester in many women, and increasingly as the pregnancy advances. See Hypnosis for Sleep and Insomnia.
Emotions, sharper and more changeable, with an ambivalence few women allow themselves to put into words: you can want this child deeply and dread what it will change.
Fears, each with its own object: fear that something will happen to the baby, fear of the birth, fear of medical procedures and blood draws, fear of not knowing how. None is irrational and none deserves to be waved away.
Other people's stories, which are a burden in their own right. Accounts of difficult births circulate far more than the others, and they lodge themselves.
Work, with the exhaustion to hide, the announcement to make, and what comes next to organise. And the couple, whose configuration changes before the child even arrives.
The recognised approaches outside Hypnosis
The point of entry is your doctor, your midwife or your gynaecologist. They follow the pregnancy, assess symptoms and refer on.
- Birth preparation classes, in whatever form they take where you live: the *préparation à la naissance et à la parentalité* led by a midwife in France, the CLSC prenatal classes in Quebec. That is the foundation.
- Psychological care, particularly where anxiety is significant, where the pregnancy follows a perinatal loss or a difficult experience, or where there is a psychiatric history. Many maternity units have a psychologist.
- Adapted physical activity and physiotherapy, particularly for back and pelvic pain.
- The body-based approaches offered in maternity units: sophrology, antenatal yoga, pool sessions, depending on what is available near you.
- Stopping smoking, supported and without blame: Hypnosis to Quit Smoking.
- Specialist consultations when a fear becomes overwhelming, particularly fear of childbirth, which has a name, tokophobia, and for which perinatal mental health pathways exist. When it reaches that point, those consultations are where to go, not to us.
Hypnosis places itself alongside these approaches, on the side of emotions, sleep and the relationship to the body.
Video available in French
Video transcript
Bonjour, je suis Charlotte de Joybert, sophrologue et hypnothérapeute. Mon rôle a toujours été d'être au service des autres en plaçant l'humain au centre de mes préoccupations. J'accompagne les adultes et les enfants sur des sujets comme la gestion de l'anxiété ou de certaines peurs. Des changements de comportement comme pour l'alimentation et le tabac, l'image de soi et la confiance en soi. J'aide également les femmes dans leur grossesse et leur post-partum, mais également lors de leur parcours PMA.
La sophrologie et l'hypnose sont de magnifiques techniques qui font partie de la famille des thérapies brèves et qui permettent de se sentir mieux rapidement. Ces techniques peuvent également aider des femmes au moment de leur grossesse et c'est d'ailleurs ce que allons voir. Alors, durant leur grossesse, les femmes subissent un véritable bouleversement physique, hormonal et bien sûr psychologique. Et du côté physiologique, la sophrologie et l'hypnose peuvent soulager certains maux de grossesse comme la fatigue, les insomnies, les nausées ou le stress qu'engendre un tel événement.
Souvent, elles ont surtout besoin de discuter et trouver du réconfort. Elles ont aussi besoin de ressentir dans leur corps que tout va bien se passer. Je les aide donc à rétablir le contact avec elles mêmes. Je me souviens d'une femme enceinte que j'ai accompagnée, qui avait procédé à un don d'ovocytes et qui avait besoin de séances pour se sentir pleinement maman de cet enfant à venir. Ayant également pour projet d'accoucher naturellement, on a donc travaillé sur une routine jusqu'à l'accouchement.
On avait enregistré la séance de relaxation pour qu'elle puisse l'écouter tous les jours et ensuite sur la visualisation de son accouchement avec des affirmations positives à se répéter afin d'accepter au mieux les contractions et tout le travail à venir. Alors les séances d'hypnose aident les personnes à mieux accéder à leurs ressources. Les exercices proposés sont également à refaire à la maison comme l'auto hypnose qui est un outil très efficace.
Grâce à lui, je peux aider la future maman à communiquer avec son bébé. Il faut fermer les yeux, poser les mains sur son ventre et visualiser son bébé. Si la cliente parvient à visualiser un bébé apaisé, cela aura un impact positif sur elle, mais également sur le fœtus. Jusqu'au quatrième mois, pour éviter les nausées, on peut tenter de visualiser ses hormones afin d'apaiser le processus de changement à l'intérieur du corps.
Et pour les aider à bien s'endormir, nous pouvons mettre en place la visualisation positive. Il s'agit d'inciter la cliente à se concentrer sur un paysage ou un endroit qui lui procure du bien être. Et travailler sur la respiration à l'aide de la cohérence cardiaque. C'est un outil redoutable pour les émotions, le sommeil et qui servira à l'accouchement également. Le but est également de donner des outils à la maman pour qu'elle puisse les utiliser tout au long de la grossesse.
L'auto hypnose pourra aider la consultante à constituer à sa guise des moments et des endroits de sécurité intérieure tout au long de cette grande aventure. En sophrologie, certains exercices permettent à la future maman de soulager le corps qui change durant neuf mois, pallier les émotions intenses que l'on peut vivre avec les changements hormonaux et un sommeil qui devient compliqué. Et donc ainsi à se préparer à l'accouchement avec l'aide de la respiration.
L'hypnose, la sophrologie et l'auto hypnose ont un impact concret et positif sur la maman et donc sur le bébé. Il ne faut vraiment pas hésiter à mettre toutes les chances de son côté pour que ces périodes se passent dans les meilleures conditions. Voilà, vous avez à présent quelques outils pour que votre grossesse ou celle de votre proche se passe bien. Pour plus d'informations sur l'hypnose et comment elle peut vous aider, prenez contact avec moi.
Toute l'équipe de Solutions Hypnose est là pour vous accompagner en cabinet ou par visio, cela fonctionne aussi très bien. N'hésitez pas à poser vos questions et à partager votre expérience. Nous aurons plaisir à vous lire. Et si vous avez aimé cette vidéo, n'oubliez pas de liker et de vous abonner pour plus de conseils. A très bientôt pour une nouvelle vidéo.
Hypnotherapy is a complementary form of support and does not replace medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns about your health, please consult a physician first.
Hypnosis for Pregnancy: aims and benefits
Let us start with what hypnosis does not do.
It replaces neither your care nor your birth preparation classes. It does not guarantee an easy, quick or painless birth. It does not spare you the epidural and it does not prepare you to "do without". It acts on no medical parameter of the pregnancy, and it protects the baby from nothing.
What an accompaniment aims at
- Getting through discomfort differently, once it has been assessed. Hypnosis has long been used in hospital settings on the perception of discomfort, particularly around surgery. See Hypnosis for Pain Management.
- Finding sleep again, or at least an easier drift off and a faster return to sleep.
- Easing fears, taking them one at a time rather than as a block. Fear of needles and of examinations can be worked on very concretely, and it poisons a great many pregnancies. See Hypnosis for Fears and Phobias.
- Making room for ambivalence, without having to choose between being happy and being worried.
- Inhabiting a changing body, rather than enduring it or monitoring it.
- Preparing for the meeting, in your own way and with no imposed script.
After the birth, what follows is on Hypnosis for the Postpartum Period. And if you arrive here before being pregnant, what comes before is on Hypnosis for Fertility.
Preparing for the birth
This is the most frequent request, and it deserves to be framed properly.
What is learned in session is a set of tools: a state of calm you can call on, an anchor, a breathing pattern, a resource image, and the ability to bring your attention where you want it when the intensity rises. These tools belong to you, and they remain usable whatever the course of the birth, including if it takes a turn nobody had planned for.
What we will not do, and this matters just as much: we will not prepare you for a specific scenario, and we will not present the epidural as a surrender. How you handle pain on the day is decided with you and with the medical team, in the moment. Asking for an epidural is not a failure of the preparation, and a birth that goes differently from the plan is not a failed birth.
Many women who prepare with hypnosis describe above all having been less overtaken by fear in the preceding weeks. That is already a good reason, and it commits to no promise. The three-session programme is described on the page Birth and Perinatal Care.
What the research says
This is one of the rare subjects where hypnosis has been studied seriously, and the result is nuanced.
A Cochrane review published in 2016 brought together nine randomised trials covering 2,954 women in total. Women in the hypnosis groups used pain relief less often than those in the control groups, but the authors rate that finding as very low-quality evidence, with considerable heterogeneity between studies. On the other hand, hypnosis does not reduce epidural use, the review found no clear difference in the likelihood of a spontaneous vaginal birth, and there is not enough evidence to say whether it improves satisfaction or the sense of coping during labour. All of these findings are rated as low-quality evidence, and the authors call for better trials.
The two largest trials point the same way. The biggest, conducted in Denmark with 1,222 women expecting their first child, found no difference in epidural use (31.2% against 30.0%). A British trial published in 2015 in the *BJOG*, covering 680 women, reached the same conclusion (27.9% against 30.3%). That trial does report two secondary findings: the gap between anticipated fear and anxiety and what was actually experienced was smaller in the hypnosis group. These are two outcomes out of twenty-nine measured, and the authors themselves conclude that the point deserves further study: a lead, not a demonstration.
What this means for you, put simply: hypnosis can be a useful resource, particularly for the anxiety of the final weeks, and it will not replace the choice of pain relief made on the day. Any page promising you a painless birth thanks to hypnosis goes far beyond what is known.
An example of accompaniment
*An illustrative example. The name is changed and the path described belongs only to the person who lived it.*
Sarah came in her sixth month. What brought her was not the birth, still distant in her eyes, but the blood tests: she had a long-standing fear of needles, and every appointment became an ordeal she prepared for days in advance. She described a whole week made unusable by dread, every time, and the absurd feeling of spoiling her pregnancy over three minutes of a needle that everyone around her treated as nothing at all.
The work bore first on that, very concretely, with a short exercise to use in the waiting room. Then, at her request, on the birth stories her family had been telling her since the announcement and which she could no longer shake off.
> "Mostly I stopped spending the week before dreading the appointment. That gave me back whole days." > Sarah, name changed
She gave birth a few months later. She says she used her exercise at the start of labour, then asked for an epidural, and has no regrets about it. Every situation is different, and Sarah's path says nothing about what you will experience.
How a Hypnosis session on this subject unfolds
The conversation. Where you are in your pregnancy, who is caring for you, what bothers you most, your history and your medication. We will also ask whether your care is under way, and whether there was a difficult pregnancy or birth before, because that changes how we work.
The aim, framed together and concrete. For example: sleeping longer at a stretch, getting through the next scan without dread, or stopping the loop of a story someone told you.
The induction. A natural state of attention you already know without naming it. You stay conscious, you hear everything, you can speak and you can stop whenever you wish.
The work. On this subject it most often bears on physical comfort, on sleep, on a specific fear, and, in the final weeks, on the tools you will carry with you on the day.
The return and the exercise. A conversation about what you experienced, and a self-hypnosis exercise to take away. Here more than anywhere, it is the practice at home that counts: these are your tools, not the practitioner's.
The number of sessions is settled at the first conversation. The programme and the fees for birth preparation are on the page Birth and Perinatal Care.
Book an appointment
Sessions work in person as well as by video, and video is often simpler late in pregnancy: no journey, no position to hold on public transport, no extra appointment to fit into a diary already full of scans and blood tests. Your partner can attend a session, particularly for birth preparation, and it is frequently useful: they learn what to do and what to say on the day, which changes their place a great deal. Here is how video works.
In person, the practitioners who cover birth and perinatal care in English see clients in Quebec, in Montreal, Sherbrooke and Gatineau, and in France in Paris and Lille.
A question before you decide? Write to us. If someone else seems better suited to your situation, we will tell you.
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Frequently asked questions about Hypnosis for Pregnancy
Hypnosis is a state of focused attention, with no substance and no procedure. The trials conducted on hypnosis during labour reported no adverse effects attributed to it. As with any complementary approach, mention it to the midwife or doctor caring for you, and tell us about any particular situation at the first conversation.
Nobody can say, and you should be wary of anyone who claims otherwise. What is known is that a foetus hears low-frequency sounds from outside at around twenty-four weeks, and that you can feel their movements from about twenty weeks. Some women report different activity during a quiet moment. Reading that as a reply or a conversation belongs to your own experience, not to established fact, and that is perfectly fine. What we will never tell you is that your stress harms your baby: that sentence circulates widely, it adds guilt to a period that has no shortage of it, and it is not what will help you.
No, and no preparation can promise that. The Cochrane review on the subject finds less use of pain relief overall in the hypnosis groups, while rating that finding as very low-quality evidence, but no reduction in epidural use. What preparation offers is a set of tools usable whatever happens on the day.
No. An epidural is not a failure, and we never present it as one. The choice of pain relief is made with the medical team, in the moment, and it belongs to you. A preparation that made you feel guilty for accepting one would be a bad preparation.
No. The hypnotic state is a state of focused attention, not sleep and not being placed under someone's influence. You stay conscious, you hear everything, and you keep the ability to refuse a suggestion, to speak or to stop the session.
Hypnosis is a non-medicinal approach: it introduces no substance and changes nothing about what you are taking. Simply tell us what your treatment is and who is caring for you. Every decision about it belongs exclusively to the doctor who prescribed it, and that is especially true during pregnancy.
Psychotherapy is a regulated framework, practised by professionals whose title is protected, and it can cover the whole of psychological functioning and established disorders. Hypnosis as we practise it is a more circumscribed accompaniment. If your anxiety is overwhelming, if you are pregnant after a perinatal loss, or if you have a psychiatric history, psychological care remains the reference, and many maternity units offer it.
For discomfort, emotions and sleep, at any point in the pregnancy. For birth preparation, the programme sits in the final weeks, so that the tools are fresh on the day.
Yes, and it is often useful, particularly for the preparation session. Partners learn what to do and what to say, which changes their place a great deal on the day of the birth.
Sources and references
On pregnancy
- From Tiny Tot to Toddler. Institut national de santé publique du Québec, offered free to all expectant parents in Quebec
- Warning signs during pregnancy. INSPQ, and Pregnancy symptoms you need to get help for. National Health Service: the two lists behind the box at the top of this page
- Foetal development. INSPQ, in French
Birth preparation
- Birth and parenthood preparation sessions: *1000 premiers jours*, French health ministry, in French
- Article L2122-1 of the French public health code: the early antenatal consultation, compulsory since 1 July 2022
- Préparation à la naissance et à la parentalité. Haute Autorité de santé, in French
What the research says about hypnosis
- Hypnosis for pain management during labour and childbirth. Madden K., Middleton P., Cyna A.M., Matthewson M., Jones L., Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2016, CD009356. Nine trials, 2,954 women. Plain language summary
- Werner A. et al. (2013). Self-hypnosis for coping with labour pain: a randomised controlled trial. BJOG, 120(3), 346-353: 1,222 women, no difference in epidural use.
- Self-hypnosis for intrapartum pain management in pregnant nulliparous women. Downe S., Finlayson K., Melvin C. et al., BJOG, 2015;122(9):1226-1234: 680 women, the SHIP trial.
Resources
- Quebec: Info-Social 811, option 2, around the clock · your CLSC and its prenatal classes · 811, option 1, a priority line for parents of children aged 0 to 17, day and night
- France: your midwife, the early antenatal consultation, and the 1000 premiers jours website
- Emergencies: 911 in Quebec, 15 or 112 in France
Hypnosis as practised by the members of Solutions Hypnose is a complementary support approach. It is neither a medical act, nor a diagnosis, nor psychotherapy in the regulatory sense, and it in no way replaces a consultation, follow-up or treatment prescribed by a health professional.
Our practitioners do not assess and do not treat mental disorders or illnesses. They never ask for an ongoing treatment to be stopped or changed: that decision rests exclusively with your doctor.
No result can be guaranteed. The testimonials and examples presented on this page describe individual experiences and do not predict what you will experience.
In case of significant distress, unexplained physical symptoms or suicidal thoughts, contact a doctor, emergency services or a helpline without delay.
Page written by Jessica Reid
hypnotherapist
partner at Solutions Hypnose.
English version reviewed by David Veilleux