HOW DID CHRISTIAN HYPNOBIRTHING START?
The Christian Hypnobirthing app was created by Tara Menzies in early 2018 after the birth of her first son. Being unable to find faith-based hypnobirthing resources during her pregnancy, she realised what a massive difference they could have made to her birth experience.
At the beginning of her bestselling book Faith-Filled Childbirth, Tara describes the journey of how she came to create the Christian Hypnobirthing app, and subsequently the Faith-Filled Childbirth Course and book which have now helped more than 150,000 women to experience more relaxed, confident and faith-filled births.
Here is an excerpt from the book:

Tara Menzies with her book Faith-Filled Childbirth
"After a difficult start to our parenthood journey, including three consecutive miscarriages, when I fell pregnant with our rainbow baby, Charlie, I found myself feeling almost constantly anxious and worried. My sister-in-law told me about something called hypnobirthing, which she said had helped her with anxiety during her pregnancies. At first, I didn’t like the sound of it. Hypno sounded pretty strange, and as a Christian, I didn’t want to do anything that went against my faith. After looking into it, I became more relaxed when I found out it had nothing to do with a man on stage waving a pocket watch in front of someone’s face or any kind of mind control, and was simply a relaxation practice for birth using positive words and imagery, combined with antenatal education. There were times, though, when I was listening to some of the relaxation tracks, that I would find myself having to change certain words, like the universe or inner goddess, to make them fit with my personal beliefs, so I decided to google “Christian Hypnobirthing” and was disappointed to find that it didn’t exist.
A little later in my pregnancy, I came across a Christian book, which, while helpful in some ways, was quite discouraging of natural birthing methods and instead suggested that just by having enough faith, birth could be pain-free. Unfortunately, because of this, I stopped using hypnobirthing techniques to prepare for my birth and decided that I would just have faith, like the book said. One of the major downsides to the idea of a pain-free birth being the result of having enough faith is that if you are experiencing pain, you start blaming yourself. It puts the responsibility solely on the mother and doesn’t take into account the environment she’s in, how supported she feels by those around her, whether she’s able to labor in an upright position, the position of the baby, and the many other factors that massively impact the level of comfort a woman feels during childbirth.

Faith-Filled Childbirth featured on Nasdaq billboard in Times Square NYC
When I went into labor with my son, we set off for the birth center. Unfortunately, when we arrived, they told us it was full and sent us to the labor ward. I was given a midwife who kept telling me I would need drugs and ended up insisting I get hooked up to an IV, have constant monitoring, and also convinced me to have my waters broken. The process was a far cry from what I had envisioned, and I felt deeply shocked by the level of pain I was in. I thought it must have been because of a lack of faith, or that God had abandoned me, or that I was doing something wrong. I had no awareness of the massive impact that intervention, the hospital environment, and fear have on how our body works during labor and how we experience pain.
I had really wanted to give birth unmedicated, but it had become so painful, and with being strapped to the monitor and having the IV in my arm, unable to move around, and all the midwife’s negativity, I felt exhausted, disheartened, and like it was impossible. Thankfully, my husband was an absolutely incredible support; he had been doing light touch massage on me for hours, and when I felt I couldn’t go on, he reminded me of our prayers in the lead-up to birth and that I could do it. Just after that, I had one of the most spiritual experiences of my life. It was a profound moment, and one I don’t really know how to describe. It was like time and space disappeared, and it was just me and God for a moment. I was able to see that God had never abandoned me, that he had been with me the whole time, but that there were many other things going on that were making the birth experience so much more difficult than it was designed to be.
Suddenly, I got this renewed strength, and I started praying with power, filled with this knowledge that I could do it. Not long after, I started getting the urge to push, and the midwife kept telling me not to, and that I wasn’t anywhere near ready. I reached down and shouted, “I can feel his head!” The midwife then went running out of the room to get help. I got down on my knees, leaned against the bed, and in about ten minutes, our beautiful boy was born, weighing in at a hefty 9lb 8oz—an absolute miracle.
Despite feeling very grateful to have a beautiful baby boy, in the days and weeks that followed Charlie’s birth, I spent a lot of time reflecting on what happened and couldn’t help feeling that it was so much more difficult than I believed it could have been. While it was overall a positive outcome, there was a lingering feeling of trauma. I remember thinking that it would have been such a different experience if I’d had relaxation tools and breathing techniques that could have helped me stay calm and positive, reminding me to draw near to God, and if I’d been educated on the different routine procedures so I could have made informed decisions instead of feeling coerced into things I didn’t fully understand. I really felt that Christian mothers deserved to have tools like those provided in hypnobirthing, but which aligned with their beliefs, and would help them feel God’s strength, love, and support throughout birth." (To continue reading you can get the book HERE)
Tara currently lives in Western Australia with her husband Will, their two sons Charlie and Sammy, and their doggy Nugget. They are also expecting a baby girl at the end of August.

Tara with Will, Charlie and Sam at Nature's Window, Kalbarri, Western Australia