The Hypnobirthing Book

An Inspirational Guide for a Calm, Confident, Natural Birth

By: Katharine Graves

Narrated by: Robbin Goddard, Katharine Graves

Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's Summary

Childbirth can be an empowering and positive experience that you treasure for the rest of your life. KG Hypnobirthing teaches simple and gentle techniques that have a profound effect on you and on your baby.KG Hypnobirthing can reduce the need for pain relief and shorten labor, and you are more likely to experience a natural, calm, comfortable birth. It actively involves the father or partner; you will both learn skills to instill confidence about the birth and your role as parents.

The Hypnobirthing Book and audio relaxations are a complete antenatal preparation which guides you to achieve the birth you want -- for you and for your baby.

©2012, 2014 Katharine Graves (P)2017 Katharine Graves

A man is narrating, such a female needed voice!

Who is the geuniess that give a man this job??? it's so distracting when a man is explaining how to give birth and prepare your body for it!

Why would you have a man narrate a birthing book?

Seriously, why? The last thing I want to hear is another old man telling me how to have a baby. It’s superficial, but it changes the experience of the book.

Jarring Narration

I dont know why the publishers thought it would be a good idea to have a man narrate this book. I found his voice to be jarring and abrupt. I think a soft, peaceful female voice would have been far more palatable. I also think the book took to long to get to the point. Too much fluff.

Read differently

I would've preferred a woman reading the audio. The way I see it there's absolutely no way a man can comprehend what we women go through. However I did enjoy the book

Some helpful info

Narrated by a man- uh what?! Redundant. You’re better off reading Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to Childbirth.

Didn’t hear much information about actual hypnobirthing

There was information about birthing process, a lot about KG course and its benefits, many mediations. Why give mediations inside the book, if I cannot download them and listen later when I need it.
Quite disappointed. I expected to learn breathing techniques and more about state of mind. But, as for me, there was very little info about that.

Empowering and information.

I’m pregnant with my first child. My Mother had 9 and has commented that most of the information in here she didn’t learn till she was on her seventh child.
Thankfully the world has changed since she had children and all this information is readily available to us.
I highly recommend any woman to listen to this book, I loved learning more about my child and myself as well as ways to empower my body for childbirth.

Extremely useful and full of information

This book is so fantastic! It gave me so much information that I wasn’t aware of and I know it will help with my delivery. Thanks for writing this!

Great Book! Time to Practice!

I felt the audiobook was a great format for this book. The narrator is a man, but I found his voice to be soothing. However, I appreciated that the meditations were done by a woman. The bulk of the book is centered around stopping the fear surrounding childbirth. They achieve this through education. Thus, the book was like a mobile birthing class. The one downside is that the book's content is based in Europe and they operate slightly differently than we do. Nevertheless, the principles are the same. Another downside was that I had to manually take notes of which chapters had meditations at the end of them, which meditations were recommended for daily use, and which chapters were only a meditation. Once this was noted, I felt the helpfulness of this audiobook increased in folds. I hope you find this book as helpful as I did for preparing for an upcoming labor.

Couldn’t get past narration

The content is probably helpful but I could not get past a male narrator for a birth book.

A must for all pregnant people and their support person

I loved this book. Started listening to it at 34 weeks and really think it will be beneficial to my birth
So many good tips
I just wish the hypno recordings were labelled and listed seperately / easily accessible

Female voice to pitchy and anoying

The content of the book is good but I could not relax to the female voice. The way the voice goes up and down with pitchy high sounds is so un-natural to me. The way she talks makes me think more about where she puts the effort in each word rather than the context of what each sentence means. The man has a much more pleasant reading voice.

This has nothing to do with gender, I have been listening to another hypnobirthing book with a female narrator and she has a very comfortable and calming voice.

I would reccommend recording the book again with a different narrator for the female voice.

Narrated by a man - really?!

I can not believe this book which is written by a woman, for women, about female bodies is narrated by a man. I found this so jarring, listening to him explaining women's Birth experiences. Who made that decision!? (a man I'm guessing)

Factually, the book is good and is recommended by nhs midwifes. I hope they rerecord this with a new narrater.

Awful

Not only are the narrators voices really off putting on this one the general quality of the audio is not good. I was constantly having to adjust the volume. Having a male narrating all about birth really wasn't for me I'm afraid!

Needs to be re-recorded.

The content of this book is great but it really really really needs to be recorded again the sound is awful. His voice his deep and harsh on the speakers and her voice is high and scratchy! Very hard to do the relaxation techniques because of it.

Not the right book for me

I find Katherines' voice haunting, I'm glad most of it is narrated by someone else. It's a good start to hypnobirthing, and gives you plenty to think about and discuss with your midwife and partner but parts like how to say "no" in various ways is patronising, I don't know anybody who is that much of a pushover or any medical professional who's that forceful. I'm going to listen to a different book now until I find the one that speaks to me, we're all different so just give it a go, like I said you'll get something from the book/hypnobirthing just wasn't for me this author

I should have just got to book to read

Worst audio I've experienced. Not sure who's idea it was to have a male voice read it but this male in particular has a harsh voice and I can't retain the info because of it, I'm on my 3rd attempt at listening to chapter 4 as it's just not going in. it's a shame because I've seen a lot of women recommend this book recently. I don't think I'm going to continue as apparently the authors voice is even worse.

First time mum trying hypnobirthing

I genuinely do feel more relaxed after this books input. Great listening materials too.

Don’t listen if you’re having an induction

I was told I’d need to be induced, so to get myself prepared, I downloaded and began listening to this book to bolster the other hypnobirthing work I had been doing in the lead up.

In the first few lines, the reader advises that you will be in awful pain when having an induction. And there I turned it off. Hypnobirthing should be positive and inclusive of all birth scenarios.

Needs to be rerecorded

Why did they choose a man to narrate this book it sounds so patronising.
The content needs updating as it is out of date.
Chapters need labelling so you can find information easily.