We all know that cigarettes restrict the oxygen supply to your baby, so that its tiny heart has to beat harder every time you smoke. We also know that cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 toxic chemicals that cross over the placenta to your baby.
You know that you want the healthiest possible start in life for your baby. But quitting can be hard, especially during pregnancy when your emotions are all over the place!
If you’re amongst the 30% of women who smoke during pregnancy and feel it’s just too stressful to quit, help is at hand. Hypnotherapy has long been associated with helping people to quit smoking. But it is also an excellent way to reduce stress and anxiety.
Whilst other methods of quitting deal with the physical addiction to nicotine, hypnotherapy deals with the habit of smoking, which is what many people miss more than the nicotine. In fact, nicotine leaves your body within three days of stopping smoking, so you are no longer physically addicted then anyway. It’s usually the stress of missing the habit that foils attempts to be smoke-free. Or the fear you feel when you try to imagine never smoking again. Or the feeling that you’ve lost a trusty friend and won’t be able to cope without it.
These thoughts and feelings can drive you back to cigarettes. Hypnotherapy deals directly with the thoughts, feelings, beliefs and stresses that have been preventing you from being a happy non-smoker. Imagine if you could quit and feel pleased and excited to be free, rather than stressed and deprived; if you could happily let them go rather than be afraid to give them up; that you could cope with stress, social situations, boredom and anger without a cigarette; if you started to believe that life could be better as a non-smoker, what could happen, and how much better that is than the usual half-hearted, fearful efforts to quit.
If you can imagine this, or at least want this, then you’re already part of the way there. Let hypnotherapy help you the rest of the way so that you can have a smokefree pregnancy and give your baby the best start in life (and guarantee that you’ll still be around for the teenage tantrums, wedding day celebrations and grandchildren......).
For information on the *award-winning Easy Quit Smoking Programme, and a FREE initial consultation, contact Alison Bird on 01206 548175 / 07947 817464, or e mail abird073@aol.com
*The Hypnotherapy Society’s Award for Clinical Excellence
|