Pregnancy & Birth
Pregnancy involves a multitude of changes both emotionally and physically. Pre and perinatal psychology teaches us the same about your baby being a sentient being growing in your womb. You are both preparing for one of life’s most significant and profound events; birth. Constant changes present new challenges with staying connected to your needs while also staying connected to the needs of your prenate. You become called on as mother to develop a capacity to simultaneously be in relationship with your centre while also being attuned with your baby. A fundamental realization is that stepping into parenting actually starts in the prenatal period and one could say even before. For this reason, it is wise to create a circle of support early on that understands and celebrates this ongoing process of human transformation and that recognizes the life long significance of early bonding, a conscious welcoming, and a supportive surround.
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy effectively supports your individual health priorities for you and for your baby, as well as the co-creating of a secure attachment between the two of you. Together, these promote optimal birth outcomes and ease in breastfeeding, as well as paving the way for your baby’s own future personal development, healthy relationship building, and living a balanced life.
Maternity Session
Your initial session includes reviewing your health history and your current health priorities. We also take a look at prenatal insights that can support you and your baby. At the start of every session, I invite you to set an intention and consciously include your baby as being a part
of the session, which supports prenatal bonding. Craniosacral therapy supports both your physical and emotional wellbeing, all the while cultivating attuning to your baby and deepening your connection with each other
Based on your needs, sessions can include preparing for birth and preparing for breastfeeding. The self care you grant yourself during your pregnancy will promote your nervous system to regulate with ease and help your newborn’s nervous system to settle with ease. Cultivating this “template” of health plays an influential role in supporting the rising and falling continuum of your newborn’s 9 instinctive stages when placed on you skin to skin.
With every session, there is an opportunity to go over what you noticed and sensed, followed by what I noticed and sensed. We end with discussing resources and strategies for supporting you and your baby during pregnancy and for attuning to deepening your mutual experience of prenatal bonding. These help you optimize and prolong the benefits of your session, as well as enhance your self care practices.
Perinatal Home Session (by special request)
For pregnant mother: Sometimes the expectant mother and her in-utero baby need to have additional rest and in home care prior to the birth.
For mother and newborn: This supports the recovery process. Also the prompt detection of any trauma imprints enables them to dissolve away sooner and more easily and benefits the transition to breastfeeding. Sessions contribute to a baby thriving during the postpartum period: feeling safe, breastfeeding with ease, sleeping more deeply, and having a strong bond with his/her parents.
Unfacilitated Latching Completes the Birth Process
The experience of birth, whether it be vaginally or by cesarean, calls for a much needed immediate resting period. The opportunity to rest skin to skin gives way to a new series of meaningful postnatal impulses within your baby’s body to emerge. They express themselves in a rise and fall rhythm of potency surging and settling and are involved in establishing a healthy balanced nervous system.
It is of great value and importance to the newborn for their parents and birth caregivers to yield to the natural sequencing that completes the birth process, known today as the magical hour or more precisely as the 9 instinctive newborn stages.
Waiting for these stages to arise naturally during the first hour after birth (possibly longer with medicated births) is the sacred time when babies get the chance to do what is biologically programmed in the brain at the time of birth; to claim their mother. By keeping mother and baby skin to skin together, not only do these 9 instinctive stages support nervous system co-regulation and reducing the impact of shock from childbirth, they also significantly optimize breastfeeding success. Each stage can be viewed as a piece of a foundational neurological sequence. Disruption to them impacts the health of the Triune-Autonomic Nervous System influencing secure attachment, which is needed for developing an abundant baseline of health from which the newborn can feel safe, and therefore can grow and thrive.
This uninterrupted time of skin to skin with your baby on you creates a sense of safety that is a whole-body sensation activating the amygdala and registering in the frontal cortex that all is well. The 9 instinctive stages of the newborn completes with breastfeeding initiated by your baby’s own will and readiness. It can feel quite primitive since all kinds of messaging is taking place including activating the caregiving responses for looking after your newborn. Those who are present for the yielding to this final milestone of birth are given the gift of witnessing the miraculous wisdom that lives both within the newborn’s body and within the wider lens of birth reaching its completion.
When I became pregnant with my third child, I sought out Christina Hamill to walk my family and me through our new journey. She was highly recommended by friends who had benefited from her BCST and doula services.
My pregnancy and birth experience were nothing short of transformational for me. Christina’s sincerity, intuition and wisdom helped me prepare for the birth as well as savour the time that my baby was in utero. She patiently guided me through my fears, helped me nurture trust in myself, in the process of birth, and helped me to really connect with the soul growing inside me and be in communication with my own body and being.