Your Birth Beliefs: The Brain Behind Your Experience

So we'll start off with the hippocampus, my gorgeous little brain library.

This is like the librarian of the brain, okay? So this catalogs and stores all the memories, beliefs, and experiences you've accumulated over your lifetime.

So it's filled with stories, images, emotions related to birth.

So think about this.

Even times when we wasn't even thinking about being pregnant, it's all still in there.

Our mother's experiences, our grandmother's experiences, um, we might have been in situations when we were younger where we heard stories.

We've watched things on TV.

Basically everything, down to even movies we've watched, offhand comments, um, just whether it was empowering or it was scary or whatever, has been tucked away in this library.

And when you think about birth, your brain library opens this birth file, right? And it pulls up whatever's stored in there.

So imagine flipping through its pages.

Like, what's in that file right now? Is it filled with positive, empowering stories? Is it calm, connected births? Or is it actually packed with fear-based narratives and dramatic stuff that you've seen on TV from One Born Every Minute or Rachel from Friends giving birth? Because, you know, it's pretty intense.

The catch basically is that the hippocampus, the brain library, it doesn't judge whether a memory is helpful or whether it is shitty.

It just stores everything.

Stores it all in your birth file, right? What- whatever it is.

And this is where repetition, intensity, and frequency come into play.

Because the more often you hear or see something, the more strongly it's imprinted within the brain library.

So if you've spent years hearing about how painful and scary birth can be, those pathways are well-trodden, babe.

They are super freaking highways in there right now.

[laughs] And they become the default narrative that your brain pulls up when you think about birth.

But here is the good news.

Your brain is so adaptable.

Neuroplasticity, like it can change, adapt, move.

It can do so much.

You can create new pathways in your hippocampus by consciously feeding it with positive, empowering stories and information.

So what you're doing right now just by listening to this audio, you are literally rewiring.