Because of problems with the birth of her first child, Nicole Murray’s fears about the birth of her second threatened to take all the joy out of her pregnancy. That’s when a midwife at the Hollywood Birth Center recommended she see Marie-Paul Baxiu, C.C.H., R.P. Through Childbirth Hypnosis Training (CHT), Marie-Paul helped Nicole dispel her fears and envision a positive birth experience for her second child.

Because Nicole’s first child was stillborn, she was hyper vigilant and extremely worried about the impending birth. “I was paranoid about losing another baby,” she recalls. During CHT sessions with Marie-Paul, Nicole worked through her concerns and came to trust that she would have a normal birth experience and a healthy baby.

“Marie-Paul had me describe the birth I wanted—who would be there, what the baby would be like,” Nicole recalls. “I wanted a labor that was less than six hours, and Marie-Paul suggested that the birth would be just as I imagined. She made an audiotape of the session that my husband, Charles, and I could listen to.”

The results even surprised Nicole. “I labored for three hours and pushed for about fifteen minutes. It wasn’t exactly as I imagined it, but it was very close. The training had a huge impact on the birth. I was able to dig into my intuition and trust that everything would be OK.”

Nicole, 31, who lives in the Windsor Hills area of Los Angeles, was so happy with the hypnosis work that she has continued to see Marie-Paul after the birth of her daughter, Amel, to help in the transition to motherhood.

“I’ve been to other counselors but they weren’t able to get through to me the way the hypnosis did. I’m getting my Ph.D. at UCLA and I train teachers, so I like things to be scientific. I’m pretty driven and high-strung, my mind races and I’m always strategizing and figuring things out. I’m just not an easy person to relax and I didn’t really think the hypnosis would work—but it did.”