Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Ruth Felton.
Lauren Ruth, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Around the time I became pregnant with my first son, I saw a documentary called “The Business of Being Born” that sparked my interest in having a natural birth. I wanted to birth my son peacefully, so I researched ways to have a calm birth and found hypnobirthing. Hypnobirthing is a way to train your mind and body for birth using relaxation, visualization, affirmations and breathing techniques.
Since then, I have had two painless natural childbirths and created my company, Guide To Painless Natural Birth, to make hypnobirthing more accessible and relatable to millennial mothers. I also want to broaden the birth narrative to include more positive experiences, especially for Black women whose maternal mortality rate is 3.2 times higher than white women per the CDC.
Has it been a smooth road?
When I first decided I wanted to have a natural birth using hypnobirthing, I was met with so much resistance. My first OB/GYN was dismissive of my birth wishes. She told me that mind over matter was very difficult, that she had seen few women do it, and to lower my expectations.
I instead found a more supportive midwife who directed me to a hypnobirthing class in Silverlake. My husband was also skeptical that hypnobirthing would work but he came to all of my classes to support me.
I learned to be selective in who I shared my birth vision with because when I told people, most would just share their negative birth experiences. I needed to protect my optimism.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Guide To Painless Natural Birth story. Tell us more about the business.
Guide To Painless Natural Birth is on a mission to empower birthing mothers and change the birth narrative. I offer a guided meditation for birth called “Calm As A Mother,” webinars on best practices for natural birth (there is a free one on my website now called “You Are A Dope Queen: Unlocking Your Body’s Natural Dopamine in Birth), and one-on-one hypnobirth coaching.
Something that sets my methodology apart from traditional hypnobirthing is my inclusion of faith in birthing. I teach women not to birth from their own strength alone, but to tap into their supernatural resources. I offer expecting mothers a free, Christian-based birth mantra devotional on my website to jump-start their positive mindset shift for birth.
I am most proud when I get emails from women who I have helped or inspired. I’ve received emails from women who read my devotional, who said the mantras helped keep them calm in birth, or that they were more confident going into birth because of my coaching.
Not all women who hypnobirth will have a pain free birth or even a natural birth, but if I can help make birth a more positive experience and take away some of the fear of birth that many women are operating under then that is success to me.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
In life and business, I’ve had many serendipitous moments. I wrote a prayer for everything I wanted in a husband ten years ago and met my husband two weeks later at a law student conference. The morning of the conference my late father randomly told me I was going to meet a “nice, young, ambitious guy” at this conference and to give him my email address. I missed my flight and got to the conference much later in the day than I planned. When I walked into the hotel, my now husband was in the lobby. He approached me to see if I needed any help with my bags. We saw each other again at the hotel restaurant that night and exchanged email addresses. We have been together ever since. I later found the prayer I wrote and realized the date it was written on was my husband’s birthday. Luck, providence, God’s grace, whatever miracle of life that aligned all of that goodness, I am thankful for it. On my blog (lovelaurenruth.com) I share that prayer as a bonus for joining the mailing list.
More recently, in my business, I have conducted webinars on hypnobirthing. I set up a meeting with the team at Hey Mama Co., which is a nation-wide networking group of working mothers, with the intention of pitching a hypnobirthing webinar for their members. As luck would have it, they were planning their 5th Annual Strong Like A Mama Conference and invited me to serve on their Strong Mamas panel. I gave a 10-minute TED-like talk, and have gotten great feedback from it.
Pricing:
- 3-Day Birth Mantra Devotional // Free
- “Calm As A Mother” Guided Meditation For Birth // $10
Contact Info:
- Website: www.painlessnaturalbirth.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: instagram.com/painlessnaturalbirth
- Other: instagram.com/love.laurenruth
Image Credit:
Photo Credit for the main horizontal picture of me with the stroller and the pregnancy portrait of me in the white dress: Furaha Golden
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