On a morning last December, Stephanie Benelli was floating on a cloud of strawberry-colored mist. The mist turned orange, then swept over her, bringing her even deeper into a relaxed state.
Was she getting a massage, or perhaps enjoying an aromatherapy session? Far from it.
Benelli was hunched on the floor on all fours, giving birth to her first child. Strangely, she wasn’t in any pain. More like discomfort.
“I would not describe childbirth as the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced,” says Benelli, 28, an interior designer from The Bronx.
“It was intense, but manageable with the HypnoBirthing techniques I’d learned.”
HypnoBirthing — a method of relaxation via visualization and deep breathing — is a growing trend among NYC-area moms-to-be who seek alternatives to medicated births. And devotees — like Benelli, now the proud parent of daughter Carolena — say it really works.
“I would give birth again tomorrow!” says Benelli. “I would do it once a year, just for the experience. But then I would have a litter of kids and my husband would kill me.”
The idea behind HypnoBirthing is that childbirth is a natural function and can be accomplished calmly if the mother can relax enough to let her body do its job.
HypnoBirthers believe modern birth — with epidurals, C-sections, Pitocin injections, etc. — build a culture of fear which causes women to release hormones during childbirth that increase pain.
HypnoBirthing founder Marie Mongan, who patented the word and wrote the book “HypnoBirthing, the Mongan Method” in 1992, aims to teach women self-hypnosis. When Mongan founded her technique 20 years ago, the movement was considered New-Agey. Now, as women begin to look more skeptically at hospitals that perform C-sections with assembly-line speed, HypnoBirthing is gaining traction.
When Yael Quittner, a practitioner from Crown Heights, began teaching three years ago, she says there were only five teachers in the NYC area. Now there are 12. The HypnoBirthing Institute in Epsom, NH, is even offering a weekend training session next month in New York City for budding practitioners.
But not everyone is under the HypnoBirthing spell. Dr. Samantha Feder, an OB-GYN with St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, says she saw one patient enter such a deep trance that she was hardly present during the birth.
“The patient is putting herself into a trancelike state, so she’s not very present in the room physically,” says Feder.
“She achieved her goal of not having any pain medication, but she seemed a little dulled to the experience.”
At another birth, Feder says the technique didn’t work at all. The mother needed immediate medical intervention.
Dr. Randi Hutter Epstein, author of “Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth From the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank,” says that while relaxation techniques during birth are positive for women, the pressure to deliver without drugs is enormous.
“We are so judgmental about the drug versus drug-free childbirth debate. Women who had an epidural or a C-section are made to feel lesser than other women who did not,” says the mother of four.
“It’s not like they’re sitting on the couch watching TV and eating chips or something.”
A HypnoBirthing packet, which includes two CDs, the book and five classes with a practitioner, costs about $375, says Joan Sabba, a practitioner from Brooklyn Heights. Some practitioners just train expectant mothers leading up to birth, while others will be in the delivery room. Prices vary; Sabba charges between $600 and $1,000 to attend the birth.
“There’s no marketing behind us,” says Quittner.
“Everything is word of mouth.” And the word is spreading.
New mom Annalyce Loretto, 26, always assumed she would want a pain-numbing epidural when she gave birth. But when the fashion model got pregnant last year, she had a change of heart.
The HypnoBirthing theory “just made sense to me,” she says. Loretto practiced the visualization techniques, and the birth of her baby Raffaela in February was an incredibly peaceful affair, she says.
“I wasn’t talking or screaming. There was discomfort but not pain. Nothing caused me to scream or clench up.”
The only problem, said husband Stefano Loretto, was that Annalyce was leaning back against him, and her elbows were digging into his thighs the entire time.
“I knew I couldn’t say anything without sounding like a total wuss, but it was actually pretty painful,” he says with a laugh. “I think I was in more pain than my wife was.”
HypnoBirther Cynthia Rodriguez, 30, of Williamsburg, is also a believer. When she gave birth, she imagined she was at a beach, swimming with dolphins.
“I was so relaxed that I wasn’t focusing on the chaos of the delivery room,” says Rodriguez, who had a boy in October. “I just kept thinking about the beach and kept hearing waves splashing and seeing myself swimming . . . And it worked.”
stefanie.cohen@nypost.com