Look into my Eyes
Over the last few thousand years, mankind has invented the wheel, explored outer space and bombed half the planet. Yet the greatest miracle of all, childbirth, still eludes us. So father of two, Simeon de la Torre, bravely underwent hypnosis in an attempt to experience the impossible…
It was the nausea that hit me first. A churning queasiness that spewed bile up into my throat. “What are you feeling now?” asked the therapist. “Sick, really sick.” I replied, “and… woozy.” Woozy wasn’t really the word for it though, my head was lolling about on the recliner and my brain was spinning as if it was on a slow cycle in the washing machine. And then, deep in my stomach I could feel a growing pressure pushing against my perineum. It felt like a… baby’s… head.
When I embarked upon this mission, I did so armed with a healthy dose of journalistic objectivity. My mates were worried that I’d be screaming in agony by the end of it, but I reckoned that – seeing as I didn’t have lady bits – it was impossible that I’d be able to feel anything at all. I knew that stage hypnotists could make people eat raw onions and think they were juicy apples, but today’s experiment would be a step too far, surely?
Why then, as I pressed the buzzer to Nicola Dexter’s surgery in Camden, was I feeling distinctly apprehensive?
“I’ve not done this sort of thing before,” Nicola cheerfully admitted as she motioned to a leather recliner, “there’s been no call for it”. Ah, no, of course not. Hypnotherapists usually deal with anxiety, smoking, depression, lack of confidence, things like that. They don’t have much call for recreating the symptoms of pregnancy and childbirth in 33 year old male journalists. “Still, I’m willing to give it a go as an experiment. I know a few techniques we can try.”
In fact, many women do use hypnotherapists such as Nicola to help them to relax during pregnancy and prepare them for childbirth. In fact, ‘hypnobirthing’ is an increasingly popular procedure in which the mother is in a conscious but hypnotic state during labour to achieve an easier birth without drugs or other medical intervention. Advocates say that because the mother is deeply relaxed, she doesn't react with fear and increased tension to her body's natural muscular responses. In turn, her body does not release adrenaline that can cause stress to both herself and the baby and prolong the labour.
With a soothing voice Nicola encouraged me to stare at a spinning wheel on top of her filing cabinet and to slowly close my eyes. “Just relax, nothing can disturb you now, if you hear sounds outside merely accept them and imagine you’re somewhere where you feel most comfortable; be it on a beach with the sun beating down on you or anywhere else you please.”
I was going. As she continued counting me down into deeper and deeper into a meditative state I could feel a mental shift and I began floating above myself. It was as if my body and mind were disconnected. I was kind of ‘floating’ above myself, completely aware of my surroundings – but completely open to suggestion.
“What we’re going to do is to imagine that you’re your wife, Clare. I want you to see yourself floating above her and to slowly lower yourself into her body. Imagine that she’s just found out that she’s pregnant with Evie [my youngest]. How do you feel?” Now, if I was asked this question outside the four walls of Nicola’s office I’d have said: delighted. Why did I find myself saying “Angry. I feel as if she wants to hit me,” then? Hmm… I’d have to ask Clare about this one when I got home.
Back to the surgery. Nicola told me to imagine that I could visualise my wife’s life stretching out behind her, she called this Clare’s timeline. The reason for doing this was to enable me to ‘dip into’ any of her past life events and experience them for myself. I was told to travel up the timeline to when Clare was pregnant with Evie [my youngest]. She had had a bit of tough old time of it and spent much of the pregnancy on our sofa chundering into a bucket. I raised a mental eyebrow when I realised that I appeared to be physically feeling the same sort of intense stomach-flipping nausea that had floored Clare. ‘Ah, so that’s what it feels like’ I thought. I knew she was ill, but not this ill. Going through this all day, every day for months must’ve been miserable.
Nicola encouraged me to float down the timeline again, this time to Evie’s birth. Wham! Suddenly, I felt frighteningly nauseous and dizzy. I actually thought I was going to vomit all over the leather recliner and I broke out into a shirt-drenching sweat. A section of my brain flagged up a warning sign that said, “you’ve gone too far here old horse, pull out, pull out!,” and I squirmed around on the chair as waves of sickness passed over me. “That’ll be the gas and air taking effect,” another part of my brain reasoned.
I felt guilty. I’d actually thought that the high from nitrous oxide would’ve been a nice little bonus for Clare, and I remember actually feeling quite jealous when she was sucking on the gas mask. What a tit. Having a baby wasn’t about experimenting with recreational drugs – it was hell, and I was living it right now.
Nicola could see that I was in trouble, so she calmly told me how to get things back under control. “Imagine there’s a dial with numbers one to ten on it. At any time you can reach out and turn the dial to the desired intensity. Do that and bring yourself back to a comfortable level.” I mentally yanked the dial round to ‘three’ from where it was at ‘eight’.
“OK, now float up again and let’s go further back over Clare’s timeline to when she was giving birth to Sofia [my eldest]” said Nicola and within a split second I’d mentally slammed onto the bed at the Bristol Maternity Hospital. The nausea and the temperature had subsided, but there was a definite tingling sensation in my fingers and a growing ache in the pit of my stomach. I turned the dial up on my personal intensityometer.
It’s not that unfamiliar with the female form, but I’d sort of thought prior to the experiment, that if it was going to work I was going to feel some sort of sensation just below my belly button. I was wrong.
Deep, deep inside my lower stomach, behind my penis, I could feel discomfort. An ache that was getting more and more intense with every beat of my racing heart. And then… pressure. I could feel a distinct pressure from within upon my perineum. Crimminy! I was going to have this baby after all – and I was going to have it now! Shit. What was Clare going to think when I came home with another infant to add to our already burgeoning brood?
My wife wasn’t going to think anything of course, because I wasn’t going to have a baby. Not now, not ever. The simple fact of the matter was that I’d lost it a bit. Before the experiment I’d discussed it with Clare and we were agreed that no man could ever experience the pain of childbirth. However, it seemed as if we were both wrong.
I’d totally immersed myself in the experiment and had become one of those goons who eats onions in stage hypnosis acts. I’d been under for more than an hour (although it felt like ten minutes) and as Nicola counted me up out of the trance, I noticed that my face was wet with tears and that I was sat in a pool of my own sweat. “Blimey, so the experiment worked then” she said as I wiped my brow and looked around the room, disorientated.
You could say that.
When I returned home I asked Clare if any of it made sense to her, but I was surprised by her response. “I’m a bit upset, to be honest. You had one of my experiences. Childbirth is the one thing that women have for themselves, that men can never experience. It’s a beautiful, precious moment and I don’t think it’s right that you’ve had a taste of what it’s like. And I was angry with you when I first fell pregnant, but it was just the hormones – it’s not something we need to bring up again,” she replied. We’ve not discussed it since.
Upon reflection, I agree with her. Of course, I didn’t actually have a baby, but I believe that my subconscious had collated all I’d read, seen and experienced about childbirth and labour and channeled it into a fair physical representation of what it must be like. I’ll never ‘have’ another baby. And, I don’t think I want Clare to go through that ever again either.
That said, the payoff, of course, is that women 'get' a child in return for all that wailing and gnashing of teeth. They become lifelong mothers and enjoy that extra special bond with their children that fathers often can’t share. And that's a big payoff. One that's worth suffering for...
Thanks to: Nicola Dexter
www.nicoladexter.com
0207 267 4706.
END
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