Pregnancy and childbirth are life-changing and transformational events for women, and Magdalena Finn has made it her mission to guide them through this journey, giving them the best chance to experience birth at the peak of their personal power, feeling confident and relaxed. She wants new mothers to enter parenthood with a set of skills that will help them navigate through this significant stage of their lives with comfort and knowledge. Offering comprehensive antenatal and hypnobirthing courses, both online and in person in North East Leeds and West Yorkshire, UK, at Power in Birth they guide women to a self-empowered and positive birth. Here Magdalena talks to The Natural Parent Magazine about the inspiration behind her business, how she balances work and family, and her hopes and dreams for the future.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
In many Western societies, a birth experience is often perceived as a painful medical event and something to get over with. I wanted to go through this big moment differently, with joy, dignity, and at the peak of my personal power. More than anything else, I was determined to give my baby the life-long benefits of a physiological birth, and to enjoy myself in the process. I started reading voraciously about physiology of labour and related topics. My thorough preparation was well rewarded with a birth experience that I love to look back on. The way we’re born and the way we birth our babies matters, and it is still, to a large extent, insider knowledge in the world of new parents. Setting up Power in Birth® was a natural progression of my growing interest in the beauty and transformation of birth, and of my drive to share the birth skills with other expectant parents.
The launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
Enamoured with the birth of my son, I started to talk about the impact of a beautiful birth experience to my family, friends, and anyone who cared to listen. This led to me informally guiding friends through their pregnancy and birth and creating authorial content for them to refer to when preparing for labour and beyond. Awed by my friends’ positive and self-empowered births, I felt sharing birth and parenting skills was what I wanted to do. I devoured every birthy course and book in sight, and took a formal training including hypnobirthing practitioner, biomechanics, and pregnancy and birth rights, and others, to enhance the content I offered to my friends.
The innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
Preparing couples for a beautiful birth requires a mindset change, so I’m up against sometimes nearly 40 years of negative societal conditioning. I realised early on that to counterbalance those effects, I need to create a thorough birth preparation program, and that I can’t offer a quick fix. Birth has many aspects from physiology to emotional and spiritual significance, and because of its transformational powers, it requires a deep work and multi-disciplinary approach. The most important part of my work is facilitating individual choices, providing parents with practical tools and signposting to self-empowerment, so they can truly decide what is right for them in their individual situation. There’s also a wealth of information about antenatal preparation and hypnobirthing out there, so my role is to help families to balance that information load with their ability to tune into their own needs and picking what they need most, on a practical and intuitive level.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
Still working on this one, probably like many parents out there. Fortunately, my work is flexible most of the time, so I try to plan it around my family life. We are a pretty outdoorsy bunch, so spending time in nature, foraging, or going for long walks fills any spare time. I also do something special for myself once in a while, be it a somatic movement workshop, taking part in a mothering circle, or simply doing a restorative yoga session. Remembering about my needs and honouring them is important not only in my private life but also in this line of work, as I want to feel my best to connect with mums and parents and to provide the support they so much deserve.
