When Marie Mongan became pregnant with her third child in the 1950s, she had an unusual request. She told the doctor that when the time came for her to give birth, she did not want anesthesia and that if the doctor did not agree to the terms, she would find someone to give her anesthesia.
She refused anesthesia during her first two pregnancies, but in both cases the nurses didn’t listen. They pinned her wrists with leather straps and forced her etheric cone into her face.
Mongan said that after her second child was born “in the same sad way”, she vowed “never again!”
Mongan had spent years preparing for an unmedicated birth. During her first pregnancy, she loved the writings of British obstetrician Grantly Dickread, who popularized the term “natural childbirth” and championed relaxation to reduce pain. After she read his book, “Childbirth Without Fear,” she learned how to put herself into a deep state of relaxation.
She finally experienced unmedicated labor and birth in 1959, when her third child, Maura, was born. It was “the most beautiful birth I could have ever imagined,” she said. She gave birth to her fourth child the same way, which she said was just “spectacular.”
Ms. Mongan was a longtime educator in New Hampshire and later became a certified hypnotherapist. But it wasn’t until 1989, when his girlfriend Maura became pregnant, that Mongan began offering hypnobirthing classes. Hypnobirthing is a set of techniques that use hypnosis, positive affirmations, visualization, and meditation to naturally relieve the pain of childbirth.
“I think this was her entry point,” her daughter, now married as Maura Geddes, said in a phone interview.
The Mongan method was first taught to Geddes and several other couples, and began to spread by word of mouth in the early 1990s. Although hypnosis has been used in obstetrics for more than a century, it has not been widely studied as a tool for childbirth. Mongan was soon asked to train not only parents but also nurses, doulas, and hypnotherapists. Subsequent books, national newspapers, and eventually Ms. Mongan’s own laboratory made hypnobirthing popular around the world, with her method used and endorsed by celebrities such as Kate Middleton and Jessica Alba. it was done.
Mongan was 86 years old when he died on June 17, 2019, at his daughter’s home in Bow, New Hampshire. Her death was not widely reported at the time, but she gained widespread attention last month when the Washington Post reported on it. Geddes said her cause was complications from Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease.
When Mongan was young, her mother often told her about her birth. She said her mother believed her labor and birth were so traumatic that she caused permanent damage to her body.
“I felt a great deal of guilt growing up,” Mongan wrote in the fourth edition of her book Hypnobirthing: The Mongan Method, published in 1992.
When Geddes became pregnant, Mongan, who had by then qualified as a hypnotherapist, guided her daughter through a peaceful birth experience while playing music she called “rainbow relaxation.”
“The nurses came in and said, ‘I can’t believe she’s so calm,'” Geddes recalled. She had a boy named Kyle.
Mongan says that mothers who were trained in hypnobirthing “baby in deep relaxation,” in contrast to the breathtaking breathing rhythms characteristic of early iterations of the Lamaze method, popularized in the 1960s. “I’m breathing until my head hits the ground,” he wrote. .
Mongan told the Washington Times in 2000 that hypnosis does not put women into a trance or put them to sleep. Track what’s happening around you,” she said. “You can feel completely relaxed, yet completely in control.”
She added: “In childbirth, when the mind accepts the belief that the birth will proceed naturally without complications, that there will be no pain, and that no pain will be experienced.”
In 1999, about 10 years after Kyle’s birth, the NBC News show Dateline aired a segment about a Florida obstetrician-gynecologist who used hypnosis on his patients, calling it an “amazing technique.” Introduce it to the audience, and some people say, “hypnosis is possible.” Labor is easy and even fun! ” Mongan was not mentioned on the broadcast, but her name appeared in an online article that included a link to her website.
Since then, they have received approximately 5,000 calls and emails. The Boston Globe reported that her book was “out of stock” in nine weeks.
Marie Madeline Flanagan (commonly known as Mickey) was born in San Diego on February 1, 1933 to Marie and Patrick Flanagan. Her mother was a seamstress and her father was a naval petty officer, but after her family moved to Franklin, New Hampshire, she became a foreman in a textile mill.
Mickey married his high school sweetheart, Gerald Bilodeau, in 1954 and graduated from Plymouth State University in what is now New Hampshire. Later, she taught English at the high school she attended.
The couple divorced in 1966. In 1970 she married Eugene Mongan, who died in 2013. In addition to Geddes, Mongan is survived by three children: Wayne Flanagan, Brian Kelly and Sean Mongan. three stepchildren, Michelle Shoemaker, Steve Mongan and Nancy Kelley; 17 grandchildren. and four great-grandchildren.
Before Ms. Mongan’s name became associated with hypnobirthing, she was dean of Pierce College for Women in Concord, New Hampshire, to which she was appointed in 1965. This university closed in 1972. Six years later, she earned her master’s degree in education from Plymouth State University. She opened the Thomas Secretarial School in Concord, which no longer exists.
Her hypnobirthing classes led to the founding of the HypnoBirthing Institute, now HypnoBirthing International, based in Pembroke, New Hampshire, of which Ms. Geddes serves as chief executive. Vivian Keeler, a chiropractor and doula and president of HypnoBirthing International, said the organization has trained and certified doctors, doulas, midwives and laypeople as hypnobirthing educators in 46 countries.
Despite the popularity of hypnobirthing, in 2016 the Cochrane Collaboration, a respected network of independent researchers, reviewed nine clinical trials involving approximately 3,000 women and found that hypnosis found that there is not enough evidence to reliably determine whether it helps reduce pain during childbirth. , or whether it will help you cope better with childbirth.
However, a clinical trial published in 2015 in BJOG, a peer-reviewed international journal of obstetrics and gynecology, showed that hypnobirthing can help women feel less fear and anxiety during childbirth.
Dr Sue Down, one of the study’s authors and professor of midwifery at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, said participants “were initially skeptical, but in the end their partners became very positive about the technology as well”. ” he said. he told the New York Times in 2019.
Mongan’s grandson, Kyle Geddes, now 31, recalled being hypnotized by his grandmother as a child and needing help falling asleep. He and his wife are currently expecting their first child and are taking hypnobirthing classes.
Geddes said hypnosis training also helped Mongan when she became ill several times in her later years and at one point required open-heart surgery.
In her final months after losing her sight, she continued to work on a new book on hypnobirthing, dictating her ideas to her secretary.
“She was really good at taking something seriously and seeing it through to the end,” said Keeler, president of HypnoBirthing International. “One of the things I said to her was, ‘You lost your sight, but you never lost your sight.'”
Alain Delaquérière contributed to the research.
