Enchanted Beginnings for Pre-Pregnant and Pregnant Couples

What is Conscious Conception?
The Benefits of Conscious Parenting
Your Journey Into Life Affects you as a Parent.
Create an Empowering Birth and Secure Bonding
Healing For Your Baby In the Womb
Tips for empowerment in Pregnancy & Birth
Integrating a Difficult Birth

If your mom was stressed throughout her pregnancy, you may be too. It is not that we are making a conscious decision to be stressed, it is an unconscious imprint stored in our energy, our cells and our limbic brain. These imprints are stored in our body, and that’s why we don’t remember them cognitively. They are present in our daily life, but especially so when we contemplate, or enter into, parenthood. Often they are expressing themselves in relational behaviors and patterns, fears, anxieties and terror, bodily aches, pains and dis-eases, blocks and stuckness, an inability to feel at home in our body, feeling unsettled or anxious, and in many other ways. They can inform the choices we make. E.g., you may choose a natural birth because yours was a traumatic hospital birth. This is a good birthing choice, but it is arising out of your own unresolved trauma, which may surface during birthing. This may cause a repeat of your own birth even though you held the best intentions for a different experience.

The Benefits of Conscious Parenting from Pre-Conception or during Pregnancy:
I love to support couples to explore their early imprints with an intention to have a conscious, fulfilling and empowering journey into parenthood, from pre-conception through birthing to post-birth bonding. Prenates are always lovingly included in this work whether it is your inner prenate, or a baby in your tummy.

Take this opportunity to focus on what needs illumination, healing or re-patterning specifically in relation to entering parenthood. Re-connecting with your own journey into life will begin the raising and expansion of your consciousness as new parents.

You will learn how to listen to your body in a new way, and to use the information you receive from your somatic self to integrate (include in your conscious sense of self) early imprints and build new resources. This process will inform your parenting choices, and prevent a repeat of your own journey into life, if that is one of your intentions. The new science of epigenetic's has now proven that although we may not be able to alter our genes we can alter their expression, and pass that change on to our children. (see Bruce Lipton’s book The Biology of Belief).

Your Journey Into Life Affects You as a Parent:
Here are some of the major areas in which we can experience interruption, stress, difficulty, and trauma during our journey into life:

• Conception - was it planned - or not? Were you wanted?
  Imprints from conception include your parents' energy, and the kind of relationship they were having; How it felt to come into the physical realm; The influences from your ancestral lines that have been repeated for generations, which you may choose not to repeat.
  

Prenatal imprints arise from both the nature of the womb environment and your experiences over the gestational period:

• Was the womb you came into healthy or toxic?
  
• Major occurrences during gestation including traumatic or stressful events, e.g. considered/attempted abortion, divorce/separation, lost twin, bereavement of a significant person in the family, abuse, violence, neglect, or an ongoing stressful situation. Our prenatal experiences affect the way we experience our birth, and our birth affects the way we give birth later on as an adult.
  

Our own birth affects the way that we give birth:

• Birth can be very traumatic, especially a high intervention hospital birth. Even if it is not traumatic, it is a significant and intense transition from the inside to the outside, which has a profound affect on us all.
  
• Unresolved womb, birth, and other traumas, can come up in pregnancy and affect the opening up and letting go necessary to give birth naturally. Past traumatic imprints can manifest in the present and distort your perception of what is happening in the moment. Self-healing before birthing helps clear the way for baby and creates the space for a joyful, positive and empowering birth experience for the whole birthing family.
  

Bonding:

• After you were born how were you received and what was the quality of bonding primarily with your mother, with your father, and/or significant others? How was your early bonding affected by your prenatal and birth experiences?
  

See 'Signs of Trauma' and 'FAQ's' for further information on these subjects.

It is possible to re-pattern our early imprints, so that we can make different choices, and have our attention more in the present. Talk therapies don’t heal or change early imprints. Cognitive understanding doesn’t change them because they are somatic based imprints. The re-patterning can’t happen in our cognitive brain and that’s why somatic therapy works best.

Prepare for the new person coming into your lives. Connecting with your own journey into life deepens your empathy for your child’s journey. Prenatal bonding and communication with your unborn baby create a strong foundation and healthy relational skills for the family.

For more information/reading/resources: See ‘Writings’, ‘Bibliography’, and ‘Links’.

Healing For Your Baby In the Womb (before birth):

In an ideal world a pregnant mother would have a stress and trauma free pregnancy. The reality is that we live rather stressful lives and sometimes have ongoing stress, or traumatic events during pregnancy. When prenatal trauma and stress are resolved and relationships are repaired before birth, there is a higher chance for a good birth outcome. This process also increases bonding in the pregnant family, which can only improve the birthing experience. For example, if at the discovery of your pregnancy there was a period of time in which one or both of you considered an abortion, healing and repairing this with your baby as soon as possible will ensure that he/she can finish their gestation period feeling safe and wanted. Or, if you are going through a hard time together in your relationship during your pregnancy, I can teach you some parenting skills that will help the whole family. Learn how to make repair with your baby, and and to have your life with all its normal stresses, etc and take care of your baby at the same time. Top

FEE:
$80.00 per hour
$120.00 per 1-1/2 hour.
The first session is 1-1/2 hour and I often work to this length. This is negotiable depending on how an hour or longer works for you).
10 x 1 hour sessions pre-paid $675.00
10 x 1-1/2 hour sessions pre-paid $1,000.00
Fees are negotiable.
Visa, Master Card, Discover and American Express are all available.

Tips for Empowerment in Pregnancy & Birth:
Support yourselves by making intentional choices about all aspects of your pregnancy, birth and parenting. Nutrition, your environment, and your ability to choose, and receive, the right support are crucial. Becoming a parent is a time for opening and expanding, both into what parenthood means for you individually and as a couple, and into creating the space for a new life. It is natural at these times for your own prenatal and birth experiences to surface, and for your experiences with your own parents to be remembered.

During pregnancy you are in one of the most creative times of your life, a time in which you may feel inspired to create in other ways! Try writing, poetry, art, or learning something new, focus on what inspires you and nourishes you. Talk to your baby and listen to her/him too (see Karen's Writing's: Prenatal Parenting: Bonding with Your Unborn Child). Birth requires the presence of a great deal of trust and a feeling of safety for a woman to open herself so her new baby can come through her, so choose your birth attendants well and nurture your relationships with those people throughout your pregnancy as you prepare (doula, midwife, family, friends, etc).

Your own personal preparation may include some intentional based work to clear past events or trauma’s you have experienced that may get in the way of what you are wanting for yourself now. Be proactive, create the experience you want for your new family, and get the right support. We are not meant to be alone as we go through these big transitions in life, it takes a tribe, and it is important to be with people who know and love you so that you can relax and feel safe. It is only in this loving circle that a birthing woman can open up to the new life coming through her, and feel empowered in the process. Birth is natural. Top

Integrating A Difficult Birth:
Even with the best laid plans, intentions and preparation birthing is an unpredictable event which can take its own direction. It may not turn out the way you hoped and this can leave a family with all kinds of feelings. Disappointment, anger, sadness, and grief are all normal feelings for a family whose birthing experience did not go according to plan, and who may have had a difficult or traumatic birth. This can cause bonding and feeding problems afterwards, and may cause post partum depression. If a mom is depressed, so is her baby.

After a C-section birth a mom may find it hard to bond with her baby because she is separated from him/her at that crucial time in the first hour after birth when the oxytocin is flowing. If dad gets to be with baby instead, he may be the one who gets to have this oxytocin bond, later making it difficult for the mom to find her place with baby. This kind of role confusion is common in cesarean births.

Those of you who had a home birth planned and had to transport to the hospital may find it particularly difficult to integrate your experiences. Often a cesarean section, preceded by various drugs such as pitocin and epidural/anesthesia's, can be the most devastating outcome for a family whose ideal birth would have been a natural one at home.

Each person was having their own experience which needs to be integrated - mom, dad and baby.

If you have had a difficult birthing experience and are planning to have another child, integrating and healing your previous birthing experience prior to the conception of your next child is ideal, although it is always possible to heal at any point in your next pregnancy.

Privacy Notice: Your personal information will be respected.

A Cesarean Birth:
"I felt I never got to do things my own way, at my own pace, and I had become obsessed with this in my life. I have to do everything in my own time! And, I was always waiting for someone to come and 'save me' just like the doctor did, so I didn't have to do it myself. It's always been hard for me to finish things…I realize that this is because I never got to finish my own birth, so I was missing that positive imprint."

"Karen is kind of like an angel - she is patient, delicate, sensitive, thorough and kind yet strong, wise, caring and thoughtful. Her support in nurturing, genuine and sincere. I have felt very well taken care of in her care and council. I highly recommend Karen, and I trust her integrity." Jeff Roth, CEO, Gifted Touch