Tips to overcome fear of birth

As my due date gets closer I am finding myself becoming more and more scared of having to give birth. To date I have been taking the head in the sand approach but the rationale part of me knows the way to overcome the fear is to get educated. I am going to a birth class in a couple of weeks but I feel I am going to need to do a bit more than that to prepare myself. In no particular order the things I am scared of include- having to have a c-section, not being able to cope with the pain, tearing so badly I do permanent damage, something bad happening to bubs etc.

So what are your top tips for a first time mum preparing for labour? What are the things you are glad you knew/ wish you had of known in advance?

Read some positive birth stories. Do some meditation - this will help centre yourself and get to know your body.
Sorry it's quick I will try to come back later for more

Don't feel you have to go the full educated route because others do if it doesn't suit you. I knew I'd overthink it if I let myself get too deep in information so I went the head in the sand approach.

Two brilliant births. It was right for me.

So my tip is just don't think about it lol. When you're in the moment of labour you have to face it so you do. Before labour all you can do is speculate.

Havent updated it in a bit but here you go - top 12 fears of birth

https://www.bellybelly.com.au/birth/...h-top-12-fears

Do a Hypnobabies or hypnobirth class.

Work out your birth preferences and discuss with your care providers.

Imagine you're training for a marathon. It may be tough, but you can get through it.

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Don't feel you have to go the full educated route because others do if it doesn't suit you. I knew I'd overthink it if I let myself get too deep in information so I went the head in the sand approach.

Two brilliant births. It was right for me.

So my tip is just don't think about it lol. When you're in the moment of labour you have to face it so you do. Before labour all you can do is speculate.

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I share similar views to jellyfish. I took a head in the sand approach, more or less. There just seemed to be too much information for me, and too many variables. I knew what i absolutely did not want, and the rest I left up to the night.

I know that this approach ( if it can be called that!) isn't for everyone. But just wanted you to know that it's ok not to have read up and studied, if that's not really your thing. I love information and education, but for me birth was going to be very subjective.

Depends what sort of birth you want though. Rhea Dempsey talks about the different types of women going into labour - from completely pain avoiding to completely avoiding intervention. She has great names for them all, including the 'Wait and See' woman, who waits, she sees, she doesn't like - and ends up down the intervention route. Or the 'Status Quo' woman who thinks that hospitals are good and safe, doctors are experts, they'll take care of me and it will all be good. Then they too head down the intervention route. Its really interesting - after 30 years of births, she's noticed strong patterns in birthing women and is pretty good at predicting what sort of birth you will have just by talking to you and your partner. Rhea has finally put it all into a book too :) Recommended reading!

My personal tips would be to go to independent education, it will give you confidence and strength, where some hospital based classes gear you up for drugs and can leave you more fearful (have seen this a fair bit, but not always of course), as L&B said, Calmbirth, Hypnobirth etc, get a doula for support, read empowering books/info only. I believe with information comes power and confidence, if you pick the right materials. You dont have to read a heap, just a couple of goodies. Lastly, trust and believe you were made to do this and take one contraction at a time. Nature gives you a break between contractions and a kind slow build up.

I second the reading good birth stories I read and watched heaps before both of mine it gave me a heads up of what to expect and also reminds you at the end that you get a beautiful baby

If you can afford it a doula is a good way to go too or an independent midwife to support you

After my two i am amazed at what my body can do it is such a natural thing every part of your and the baby's body works together

I recon you don't have to go over the top but its good to educate yourself on the pros and cons of each pain medication and intervention so if the dr recommends it you can make an informed choice and be a bit more in control as I did find drs to be a bit intervention happy to speed things up

Think about what kind of birth you might like but stay open into change

I had a really bad tear with my first and ended up with a prolapse but I don't care I have a gorgeous boy and would do it again and surprisingly my second labour improved it you can hardly see the scar now

I felt very much like you did when pregnant with DD1, I was in tears most of the weekend before I was induced because I was so scared (partly because of the induction - which by the way turned out to be fine). I did find that getting educated was a good path for me, some of it was the fear of the unknown and making some of it less unknown helped. I also found reading books like Birth Skills really useful, it gives you strategies that you can try and permission to be loud or physical or embarrassing(!) in labour but if nothing else it has examples and brief stories of other peoples experiences and reading of other peoples strength helped give me strength.

I guess now having done it twice I can use hindsight to try and reason some of the fear away but I totally get that if some one had of said some of this stuff to me pre DD1 I don't think I would have been in the right head space to take it on board, but I'll give it a shot any ;)

Our bodies have so many mechanisms that it employs when we are in labour that you can't really anticipate until you are there - your mind goes into a zone which helps you deal with it, your body does all sorts of hormonal and physical things it has never done before and will only do in labour, you are like a different version of you with different coping mechanisms to what you have as non-labouring you. You don't have these mechanisms at your disposal if say you break your leg, that is just out and out pain until some one gives you something to take it away! But in labour it is pain but your body responds soooooo differently because that is what it is designed to do. It's really really really hard to imagine what this will be like because it is different to anything you've dealt with before, but when the time comes those mechanisms will be there to meet you and help you along.

The BEST pain management tool I had second time around was my mind. I'm not sure if I could have explained this to my pre-baby self, but my mind and my mind set had such an big impact on how things panned out both times (first time negatively, second time positively). The quick and overly simple explanation is that fear messes with the chemicals rolling around in your body and makes the pain feel worse. Feeling confident and powerful and comfortable makes it better. It took me a long time to get there but eventually with no.2 I managed to convince my self that hey, I'm a pretty tough and determined cookie when it comes to the crunch with other things in life, why should I be any different in labour? Why shouldn't I be just as resilient now as any other time? This is a challenge that I can face head on and do it well.

I think the best advice I heard before I had DD1 was something a physio (who had had children of her own) said to some one in our prenatal aquarobics class. The woman was getting quite stressed about tearing and looking to buy this product or do that to try and avoid it and the physio said you know if you do tear, you just deal with it. It isn't a show stopper and you have this amazing precious little baby and your all loved up and you have hormones going all over the place and you just deal with that recovery stuff. Some people who have unexpectedly had c-sections say the same thing, it's not what you would choose and you'd avoid it if you can but if that is the cards you've been dealt you suck it up and deal with the recovery, you fall in love with your new little being and the other stuff is just details.

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having to have a c-section, not being able to cope with the pain, tearing so badly I do permanent damage, something bad happening to bubs etc.

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All of these things can be avoided, they aren't common IF you lessen your risk of the likelihood of them happening.

Having a c-section - inductions, epidurals, intervention - all make the risk of a c-section higher. So avoid them if possible. If you end up with an induction, stay active as much as possible to help the baby move down and out :)

Coping with pain - read hypnobirthing books. Or positive birth stories without pain relief. Its hard to believe that we can in fact cope with that level of pain, but its not a pain you can describe to someone? Its not like breaking your leg for instance, nobody would want to do that deliberately so they can sit there in pain - labour pain is productive. Its actually doing something useful - its birthing your baby. The more you fight it, the more it hurts. So the ONLY thing you need to do is breathe and relax. Forget about mind stuff, just breathe. Everyone can breathe. There are going to be around 300,000 women in the world giving birth at the same time you will be, and not all of them are going to be using pain relief. So you can cope, and you will. Every contraction you have brings you closer to your baby.

Tearing - the way you push the baby out and position of birth can help minimise your risk of tearing. I hardly tore for my VBA2C because I listened to my midwife and hesitated briefly - more than I did with my second VBA2C. I did tear with that one, but I didn't need stitches, so even if you do tear, its not necessarily going to be the worst outcome. If it makes you feel better, massage the area before birth :)

Something bad happening to bubs - most births are without anything bad happening to bubs. A low percentage of babies die during labour - very low. And there are signs of something going "wrong" and your midwife worries about that - its her job. So don't worry about it, because its not your job. Its hers. Lay the responsibility with her and acknowledge release of that control over to her. Trust in her.

I think its perfectly normal to be scared of birth, I've had several freak outs this pregnancy even though I've already done it drug free - twice! But you never know what you are going to be dealt, nobody does, plan for the best and know that at the time you are capable of doing anything.

Breathe. And relax. Leave all the other business to everyone else. We know how to breathe, we know how to relax and our body knows what to do. Have faith in it.

:)

Totally read birth stories! I remember spending hours reading them in the weeks leading up to my due date.
I listened to calm birth CDs and learned to focus on my breathing.
I had been terrified my whole life of the thought of labour. I realized it was something that I could educate myself about and I decided to trust my body and channel some of fear into excitement.... The day of my baby's birth should be an exciting day.
There were times in labour where I said I couldn't do it but I did it.
I surprised myself and I look back and think I wasted a lot of time being scared.

Goodluck I can't wait to read your BA!

Lots of good ideas above.

How do you feel about your care provider? I think this is really key.
What do you want from birth and are their attitudes in tune with yours?
Do they tell you your options, explaining them and offer their recommendation and then let you decide what you want to do, or do they tell you what you're going to do? Either way, how do you feel about that?

A great care provider will work with you to face and overcome your fears. They won't validate them by saying "Oh, don't worry, I'll take care of that" they'll inform and support you so you feel more empowered, no matter how the birth goes. Because a really good care provider knows that birth is all about you, and they know that how you feel about it is also important.

I was worried about the pain. Someone said to me prior to goving birth that when a contraction came, I should count to 30. By the time you get to 30 you'll be over halfway through a contraction and it'll be easing off, meaning you're through the worst of it. I found this worked for me. Thinking of it in essentially 30 second bursts of pain seemed managable to me, and it was. I literally thought about it one contraction at a time.

Wow thanks so much. There is so much good info in the posts and I am going to go back and read them all again and let it really sink in. I will look up the books mentioned as well.

Arimeh- I think you summed it up perfectly for me with the lessening the liklihood. in my line of work (ohs) it's all about looking at the worst credible outcome and putting controls in place to minimise the liklihood of it occurring so I need to apply the same principles to birth.

I am very happy with my care provider. It is an OB but he definitely takes the time to explain things to me and is supportive of a hands off birth. He also has midwifes based at his clinic who I also see at every appointment who are also very informative.

Once again thanks so much for taking the time to reply. I'm already feeling more empowered by having a bit of an action plan in place of what I need to do to get in the right headspace.

I'm happy to send you some books if you want, I've got some good ones here that helped me. Others I got from the library :)

Top tips:

My mother, her mother, her mother etc all did it. I come from a long line of women who birth. I can too.

Pain has purpose. I have had worse periods, as that pain has no purpose. Birthing was an exciting discomfort as I was going to meet my baby.

Get someone on your side in with you. Trust is vital.

watch some really empowering birth videos. there are some lovely ones on youtube. i also recommend checking out 'birth without fear'. some good stories and videos.

i did a calmbirth course. i highly recommend them as they are just so awesome and your partner also learns alot of cool stuff and is also empowered to be part of the birth process in a postive and mindful way.