Hey Reader,

Last week we were on holiday. In large and jam-packed lift my twins were doing what my twins do, wanting to be carried at exactly the same time, by me.

A woman next to me smiled. She had two daughters with her. The kind of smile that says, I see you.

Then she noticed my son. "Oh, you have three?"

I said, well actually four, and pointed to my daughter.

She looked genuinely shocked. And then, in front of a full lift of strangers, she looked at me slowly drew her finger across her throat.

I laughed. I always laugh in these awkward moments. I reached for my usual joke: "well, baby number three was actually two of them" and the doors opened, and everyone went their separate ways.

This reaction is not new to me. Four children attracts a certain kind of commentary.

But I was thinking about this for the rest of the day.

My conscious mind knew she meant no harm. It was intended as a joke. Clumsy, but a joke. And yet something underneath it had already filed away other messages: You're the odd one out. You've stepped outside the 2.4 children script. You're probably drowning.

It's interesting how quickly we absorb those signals. And how early it starts.

The comment about the size of a pregnant belly. The raised eyebrow at a birth choice. The opinion on how you feed your baby, how you parent, the kind of family you've built, whether that's four children or none, a same-sex partnership, a solo parent household, a blended family, a family that looks nothing like the one on the tin. Nobody asks permission. They just say it.

And those comments say everything about the person making them, and nothing about you.

The conscious mind usually knows this. The subconscious doesn't. It just quietly files it away, adding it to everything else it's already holding.

This is actually where fear of birth begins for so many women. Not with one dramatic moment, but with years of accumulated messages, absorbed quietly, stored deeply, that say: your body might not manage this. Birth is something that happens to you, not through you. Be afraid.

Hypnobirthing works because it goes to that same place. Not to suppress the fear or push it aside, but to transform it, to replace those stored messages with something true. That your body is designed for this. That calm and safety are available to you. That you are not at the mercy of other people's stories about what birth has to be.

It is slow, deliberate work at the level of the subconscious. And it changes things. Not just in the birth room, but in the lift, too.

The next Calm and Confident Mama course starts on 29th August. If you're pregnant, there are a limited number of spots. And if you know someone who is, send this to them. It might be exactly what they need to hear.

>>> FIND OUT MORE HERE​

With love,

Krish