I'm Hannah Barnes, founder of Calm Births UK. I teach hypnobirthing and birth education to expectant parents and run teacher training for midwives and birth professionals. My goal is straightforward: to help parents and their partners approach birth feeling calm, informed and confident.
At Calm Births we mix practical, evidence-based antenatal education with modern hypnobirthing techniques. We help families replace fear with trust, and we give midwives clear, reliable tools to pass that knowledge on.
Working as a midwife, I saw how anxiety and misinformation could turn a positive experience into a stressful one. I also saw that good preparation, calm, confident, grounded, made all the difference for parents and birth teams alike.
I built Calm Births UK to make hypnobirthing realistic, useful and widely available. I wanted parents to have access to practical tools that actually work, and midwives to have well-structured, evidence-based materials they could rely on.
Birth education often falls into two camps: overly medical or overly abstract. What was missing was a balance, midwife-led, science-backed, calm-birth teaching that professionals could confidently use. I kept seeing anxiety and myths making birth seem frightening, hypnobirthing dismissed as unscientific or "alternative", midwives without the resources to teach relaxation effectively, hospitals disconnected from calm birth principles, and education that pushed one "right way" instead of supporting choice.
Calm Births UK fills that gap by offering realistic, adaptable, evidence-based teaching that fits any birth setting.
I started small, running local sessions in Wiltshire, teaching breathing, visualisation and mindset tools. Word spread through maternity circles, and before long, I created the Calm Births Teacher Training Programme. It's now taught nationwide.
Each course combines theory, practical sessions and mentoring. Teachers leave ready to integrate calm-birth techniques into hospitals, community settings and private practice.
Our core programmes include hypnobirthing for expectant parents, birth education and antenatal courses, teacher training for midwives and professionals, evidence-based materials and resources, ongoing mentoring for trained teachers, and NHS partnership programmes.
What began as small local sessions has grown into a national training organisation. Hundreds of parents and midwives now complete Calm Births courses each year, and trained teachers run classes across the UK.
We've built partnerships with NHS trusts and independent midwives who see the difference calm-birth methods make to both outcomes and experience.
Referrals from parents and midwives come through word of mouth from satisfied course participants. Partnerships with NHS trusts recognize improved outcomes and experience. An alumni network of trained teachers expands reach across the UK. Clinical credibility through a midwife-led approach builds professional trust. Real stories and testimonials feature feedback from parents and professionals demonstrating impact.
If I were starting again, I would launch digital learning options sooner to make training accessible internationally, collect and share more success stories early on as the most powerful evidence of impact, build online CPD modules faster for scalable professional development, and track outcomes and satisfaction more systematically for data-driven demonstration of effectiveness.
Next, we're expanding the teacher-training network, building online CPD courses, and extending our reach internationally. My aim is for Calm Births UK to remain the trusted, midwife-led standard for calm, informed, and positive birth education, accessible to every parent and every professional.
The primary goal is to help you and your partner approach birth feeling calm, informed, and confident. It combines practical, evidence-based antenatal education with modern hypnobirthing techniques to replace fear with trust.
It fills a gap between overly medical and overly abstract birth education. The approach is midwife-led, backed by science, and provides realistic, adaptable tools that work in any birth setting, from home births to hospital settings.
Not at all. The Calm Births UK method is designed to be inclusive, supporting all your birth choices. It is equally effective whether you are planning a birth at home or in a hospital, with or without medication.
The courses are for expectant parents looking for birth education and hypnobirthing. There are also dedicated teacher training programmes for midwives and other birth professionals who want to share these valuable techniques.
