TENS machine - anyone used one? and buying off ebay.

[~Hestia~]

I used a TENS when I had Moo and it was fantastic. I got to 8cms at home with it before heading into hospital. My midwife recommended a physio whom I hired it from. I'll be doing the same with this baby as the physio drew on my back where the pads needed to go, DH just kept going over it until the big day So there was no guess work for us.

[Bloom]

The labourTENs machine (which is actually its brand name) has a handy little controller buzzer type button. You had a low level of "buzzing"/stimulation when you are not contracting, and then you press the button when you start a contraction and it puts on a high level of stimulation and then you press the button again when you stop the contraction and you go back to the low level of stimulation. If that makes sense... Pretty easy to use and comes with a good instruction manual. I just whacked the things on my back, kinda where the picture showed them. For DS2, I put it on myself as DH was still asleep (and I didn't want to wake him up). So it still worked, even without proper placement (though I'm sure proper placement would have been better).

[misty]

SO, I have gone and bought a TENS machine off ebay. It cost me $25 (much much cheaper then hiring one). It is a regular TENS, EMS machine, rather then a labour TENS macchine. But it has 9 programs in it, plus room for adding three programs myself (if I can figure out how), and although it doesn't have a 'booster' button like the labour specific machines, it does have an intensity button on the unit which can go immediately from lower to higher intensity and back again (so it sounds like the same thing). It has four large electrode pad on it too (with 8 more spare). FX that it is as simple to use as it appears. I will take it into my physio and get them to go through it with me too after I get it and have a play with it myself.

If worst comes to worst, and for some reason it isn't appropriate for me to use in labour (or I don't get the chance/ or don't like it) then it was still nice and cheap (have wasted more money buying lunch at the food court) and DH can use it for his recurrent back pain.

[jackrose]

Sounds like a good buy!

Also sounds well worth it if your DH can make use of it. Great idea to get some help from your physio, it is nice to feel you have a confident grasp of how to use it. Make sure you word up your DH properly too. I tried to get DH to attach mine when in labour second time around and he made one of the most fatal mistakes... after attaching the electrodes he turned it on without checking the settings with me and zapped the begeezes out of me. If I could have jumped out of my skin, I would have and it set of a major contraction, starting at a peak rather than working up to one. Not something I recommend or care to repeat!