Afterward, she said, she received almost 5,000 calls and emails. The Boston Globe reported that her book, “flew out of stock” in nine weeks.
Marie Madeline Flanagan, who went by Mickey, was born in San Diego on Feb. 1, 1933, to Marie and Patrick Flanagan. Her mother was a seamstress, and her father was a Navy chief petty officer who became a foreman at a fabric mill after the family moved to Franklin, N.H.
Mickey married her high school sweetheart, Gerald Bilodeau, in 1954 and graduated from what is now Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She then taught English at the high school she had attended.
The couple divorced in 1966. In 1970 she married Eugene Mongan, who died in 2013. In addition to Ms. Geddes, Ms. Mongan is survived by her three other children, Wayne Flanagan, Brian Kelly and Shawn Mongan; three stepchildren, Michelle Shoemaker, Steve Mongan and Nancy Kelley; 17 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Before her name became associated with hypnobirthing, Ms. Mongan had been dean of Pierce College for Women in Concord, N.H., appointed in 1965. It closed in 1972. Six years she later received a master’s degree in education from Plymouth State. In Concord she opened the Thomas Secretarial School, which is no longer in existence.
Her hypnobirthing classes led her to create the HypnoBirthing Institute, now HypnoBirthing International, based in Pembroke, N.H., of which Ms. Geddes is the chief executive. The organization has trained and certified doctors, doulas, midwives and laypeople to become hypnobirth educators in 46 countries, said Vivian Keeler, a chiropractor and doula who is the president of HypnoBirthing International.
