MUMS-TO-BE in East Lancashire are to be taught how to hypnotise themselves as an alternative to painkillers while giving birth.

Expectant women will learn to put themselves in a trance-like state during labour in the hope they will not need costly drug treatments such as epidurals, laughing gas or morphine.

More than 800 new mothers from Blackburn and Burnley will take part in the study, which will be the world’s largest trial on the effectiveness of self-hypnosis.

The training consists of deep breathing and relaxation techniques, which women and their partners are taught to self-administer.

These aim to induce a state of consciousness, not unlike that between waking and sleeping, to help overcome pain and fear.

Critics have claimed self-hypnosis works for only one in four women and said conventional pain relief options must still be made available.

The 18-month trial will be led by Professor Soo Downe, an international childbirth expert and specialist in midwifery at the University of Central Lancashire.

She hopes that the training, which can cost up to £800 when paid for privately on a one-to-one basis, could eventually be provided free on the NHS.

Professor Downe said: “The women will turn up to groups when they are about 32 weeks pregnant and again at 35 weeks and will be taught to hypnotise themselves.

“It is important to stress that they will still have the care they would normally have, because this is just an extra option, and if they need painkillers or an epidural they will receive them.

“They use it quite successfully in other medicine areas like chronic pain and irritable bowel syndrome, but it's never been tested properly in childbirth.

“As far as we are aware it is the biggest trial of hypnosis in healthcare ever in the world.”

Rineke Schram, medical director at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, said fit and healthy women interested in taking part in the pilot, which will be partly funded by the National Institute for Health Research, would be selected over the coming months.

Mrs Schram said participants would be randomly put in two groups, one learning the self-hypnosis and the other not, to see how many women in each group in the end need an epidural.

She said: “We will do tests to see if they are the sort of person that can self-hypnotise and then will give some people training sessions.

“Each lasts around 90 minutes, and then they are given a CD they can listen to and refer back to.

“Hypnobirthing is another way of providing pain relief, we need to prove it works and if we prove that then it will be among the many different things women can choose.

“We are not going to stop offering epidurals or other alternatives, because they will be the right thing for some women.”

In some hospitals as many as 60 per cent of mothers have epidurals, anaesthetics injected into their spine, while others are given injections of diamorphine, a form of morphine, pethidine or inhale laughing gas.

The drugs are expensive and epidurals have been found to increase the length of childbirth, making it more likely that a woman will need a caesarean.

Natural childbirth advocates have also said the drowsiness brought on by painkillers can prevent a woman fully appreciating the joy of childbirth.

Maureen Treadwell, co-founder of the Birth Trauma Association, a charity which helps mums who experience traumatic pregnancies, said the technique would probably onlu work for one in four women.

She added that hypnobirthing was positive if it helped women cope with pain, but must not be used as a replacement for effective anaesthetic.

She said: “There is a bit of competition and pressure from healthcare professionals, the media and other women to see if you can manage without pain relief.

“It doesn't matter how you have your baby.

“The important thing should be if you are well and the baby is well, and that is nothing to do with pain relief.”

A National Childbirth Trust spokesman said women who were worried about childbirth, either because it was their first baby or because they had experienced difficult births previously, could find hypnotherapy ‘very useful’.

She said: “We should be exploring ways of letting people get over fear.”