In my article Rewriting Mom’s Birth Story with EFT, I describe the impact that birth trauma can cause on Mom’s excitement about having another child. In this report from U.K. EFT practitioner Mair Llewellyn-Edwards, we see how fears from a past birth experience seemed to contribute to infertility, and how EFT helped her relax and lead her to an eventual natural conception.
“Felicity”, a medical technician in a fertility clinic, calmly and deftly carried out the In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) procedure on her clients. To an onlooker she exuded self-assurance. However, despite her calm exterior, she also experienced the same fears as her clients—to the point of causing her own infertility.
Eighteen months ago Felicity rang our clinic here in South Yorkshire, UK. During that phone call she was making tentative enquiries on how I could help some of her clients with their anxiety during fertility treatment. She explained how fear and tension increased their discomfort as well as reducing their chances of conceiving.
I offered to talk to the team within the clinic about how we work with this type of problem but Felicity wanted to visit with me first. When she arrived, her warmth and friendly openness was a joy to see. She thoroughly enjoyed what she did within the clinic even though she had her own problems with conceiving her first and only child (she suffered severe trauma during the delivery).
Felicity openly admitted that her own problems were getting in the way of her work efficiency. She had been wanting a baby for the last 5 years and only realised recently that her own infertility may have been caused by the fear she felt at the panic of the professionals during her previous labour. However, knowing intuitively of this fear did not give her the tools to overcome her problem. This is exactly where EFT’s help would come in.
We begun to work right away at what Felicity felt was her “stuck feeling”. She rated that feeling around a 9 on the scale of intensity (0 no feeling, 10 extreme feeling). The first set up statement we chose was…
“Even though I’m stuck in my fear of panic at birth and it blocks conception, I really love and accept myself.”
On the second attempt I sensed that these words did not resonate for her. Accordingly, I intuitively changed the words to say…
“Even though I am terrified of giving birth again, I understand and love myself”
As Felicity spoke these words they carried much more emotion and she continued to repeat them over and over again, nodding her head and rubbing her sore spot at the same time. When we moved on to the EB point (we were doing this together) and said “Terrified of birth” she was too upset to follow along. We returned the sore spot and her emotions settled down, thereby allowing us to complete a round of the EFT procedure.
At the end of the first round Felicity said the intensity had dramatically dropped during the rubbing of her sore spot. Before rescaling the level of intensity, I asked her to take a few moments out for reflection on how she was feeling. I offered her a glass of water and recommended one or two relaxing breaths while imagining giving birth in the future. She took some time to complete this and a peaceful contented expression settled on her face. Then she smilingly opened her eyes.
During this future pacing exercise, Felicity had easily imagined going through the delivery energized, excited and eager to see and hold her baby. She no longer felt anxiety (except for one slight niggle) related to the actual birth. At the end of the session we tapped on…
“Even though there is just one slight niggle and I don’t know what it is, I feel good about myself” as well as
“Even though I don’t know if EFT will work for me …..”
This last statement touched the right spot. Felicity smiled, stopped and sighed half way through the procedure…so we left it right there.
On her second visit to me we tapped through one or two fears such as…“Even though I worry my birth fear wasn’t the problem in preventing conception….” as well as for her depressed feelings when her periods appeared. We also tapped for…
“Even though I cannot see myself with another baby…”
“Even though my love making has become a means to an end.” and
“Even though our love making seems mechanical now….”
Felicity promised to use EFT on everything including sad feelings when she knows her friends are pregnant or she sees them with their new babies. She left with high spirits and arranged to do our Practitioner EFT Training course.
Six months later she rang to discuss with me how well EFT was improving her work within the clinic. Not only was she getting good results with her clients but some of the members of her team were also using it effectively.
Recently, Felicity called in to see Tam (my husband) & myself to very excitedly tell us that she had conceived naturally and was very calm and happy about the up and coming birth. She was consistently using EFT and openly proclaimed that she was sure without the help of EFT she would not have relaxed enough to become pregnant and be able to share this exciting news with us.
I’d like to also note that Felicity worked in an infertility clinic where day-in and day-out she was immersed in the fears and concerns of couples who were trying to conceive. By the law of attraction, what we focus on we get more of… and she was seeing in these women many of her own fears. This drove her to get help for herself first (always a good idea) and through this process, she became empowered to help others using EFT as a tool.