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Hi Everyone,
Just wondering how you all coped with your contractions? i had really painful contractions through the whole labour but had no drugs ( YAY).. So my whole labour was drug free.. Im just wondering if you all could tell me how to cope for when i have another baby as i want to stay at home longer and not feel as im dying in pain..
Thank you all so much for reading and replying.. :p
Lilly-Jayne Born FEB 2009
hmm good thread! I stayed at home for half of my labour and managed by keeping the room quite dark, walking around the house and alot of self- positive talk. WHen I got to hossy and the pain was intense, I said things to myself like, "I can do this", "the pain isnt too bad", "Its okay". I found it helped if I said these things out loud to myself.
Also having a great birth partner and supportive midwives helped. My midwives were saying to me every so often how well I was doing and that they couldnt believe for a first time pregnancy how well I was progressing. Even if I wasnt progressing well I would want them to say this as any negatrive thoughts I think can hinder your labour.
The shower also helpe me alot, hosing my belly and lower back.
I hope that helps and you get the birth that you want :)
I usually like to be standing up and when a contraction comes on I close my eyes, breath, and rotate my hips and imagine my cervix opening!! I also liked DH or the midwife applying presure to the small of my back
for me it was breathing through each contraction, nice deep breaths!
TENS machine was great. And breathing...
Focusing on breathing, thinking of the contraction as a sensation of pressure or tightening not pain, visualising the baby moving down and the cervix opening with each wave. I loved my heat pack and later the shower, the heat of the water on my lower tummy during the contractions was fantastic.
I read an article somewhere - probably on here about why labour hurts. It was excellent! By understanding why it was hurting I was able to go with it rather then fight it. In both my labours when things stepped up I wasn't really there if that makes sense. I was focused internally and didn't really have an awareness of what was going on around me. Funnily enough my first labour was atually easier and I think this was because I was alone (DH had to rush home to get things as it was an emergancy induction) whereas in my second labour DH was there and I couldn't get as focused, if that makes sense. I also found vocalising or a rhymic moaning felt really good. Also got to love the warm shower - wow who knew water was so powerful. Good luck, hope you find what works for you
I was singing a weird little ditty called "I can do this - yes, I caaaaaan ow, yes I caaaaaaan. I can do this, I AM doooooooooiiinnng thiiiiiis, I can do it"
Worked a treat!
I had my sister rub a HOT heat pack on the small of my back in between contractions, and then when they started ramping up a bit, I walked up and down the hallway and stomped my feet and moaned.
The only ones I felt were really challenging were the early ones before I had slipped into that labor haze iykim...after that I can't really remember them.
I had a old blue t-shirt in my maternity bag with DD#3 labour, i dont know how i got hold of it, but every time a contraction came, i would bury my face in this t-shirt....it worked.
I stomped my feet a lot... it seemed to take the focus away from the contraction and to me it felt like the pain would disappear down my legs each time I stomped.
saw each contraction as a wave. So it was only half as long. So on its way up and then on its way down. This was nice and calming...Then when times got tough, 1st baby....made grunting noises...so much so that id go "who is making that noise LOL" 2nd baby..more like a monkey and 3rd just looooooow moans!
Its all fun!
i kinda did a visualisation thingy like Tegam mentioned. although i used to be a high-diver and so i 'stole' our visualisation technique from that and viewed each contraction as a big phat beer barrel that i needed to 'jump' over...strange but true LOL!!!
i would recommend staying at home as LONG as possible too. those middies tend to be wayyy to keen to jab you with whatevers going at the time.
Stomped my feet, used heat packs (had to be very hot!), hot water from the shower head and strangely - reading something or thinking about something unrelated (distraction I guess). I only did the distraction thing when I was having the most painful contractions...I remember analysing every detail of the plastic chair in the shower...he he.
Birth pool - get one!
makes a world of difference!
Also - read Birth Skills by Juju Sundin (co-written with Sarah Murdoch). It has some great strategies to cope and help get you into the right mindset.
And remind yourself that you already have done this before! You don't need to prove anything to yourself - you have already done it! Your body knows exactly what to do! :bellyrubs:
Also remind yourself of the health benefits to you and your baby of avoiding pain relief as long as possible.
Make sure your hubby and MW's are supportive.
Write out a birth plan. Maybe saying that they not suggest pain relief to you, but you will request them if you want them. Maybe also note that you must only request relief in the break when you are thinking more clearly/rationally, not during a contraction.
No athlete could go for 5 hours and not feel their muscles burning - and that's what is happening. Your muscles are working harder than ever before, for hours on end. You are not broken - you are working. And even athletes hit the 'wall' (transition), where they doubt their ability to finish what they have started. But they push through it and finish it - just like you will.
If it's unbareable, then take pain relief - that's what it is for.
And remember that every contraction's an action (baby moving down and one step closer to being in your arms). It won't last forever, and when it's all over you will forget about the pain in an instant.
Bets of luck - not that you'll need it.... You'll be great!
LMFAO! I have to try this! At the very least it will amuse the kids! If they are home that is.:
Personally I just bent over, breathed a lot and kept telling myself that it will be over soon. I was exceptionally proud at how much of Harrys labour I coped with at home. I arrived at the hospy in transition and he was born 15mins later.
Oh, and I bit down on the handle of my hairbrush, haha. DH bought me a new one after I had baby because it had big gouge marks in it.
I had gas and I bit on the mouthpiece a lot towards the end, I didn't care about the gas, something to bite on was great. Heat packs, shower, and vocalising...not that I planned that , just that I remember moaning etc & the midwife saying things like, 'that's great, go with it, you're labouring very intuitively' etc (really? clever me! I had no idea!) FWIW I agree with Alibaby re the supportive partner/ midwives etc BIG help it made me feel like 'I can do this'.
Check out how this mama coped with contractions! Whew! Most of it is in French, but the few English sentences are so powerful and beautiful:
Dailymotion - Naitre_enchantee - a Vie pratique video
The things that are going to enhance the release of your endorphins are going to help the contractions be more manageable. Such as:
* dark, quiet room
* relaxation
* rhythmical movement, rocking, swaying, stepping, breathing
* warmth
* no disturbance or interuptions
* allowing yourself to drift away with the surging hormones
* massage
* water
* staying well hydrated and fed with nourishing food
I remember one birth i supported, when I arrived the mama was kneeling on her bedroom floor and she was already having a hard time with the pain and feeling gah I can't do this, get me to hospital! I knew if we went so soon it would set her up for intervention and I knew she did not really want that. So ... what could we do to help her get through?
I talked to her and suggested she try getting up and moving, I said, it won't hurt *more* if you move. She ended up pacing up and down her house like a caged tiger, holding a wheat pack one in front and one behind. That rhythmical pacing seemed to help her much more than being stuck still in one position. When that stopped helping, she went in the shower with her dh, and that worked for her for about half an hour (until the water ran out!) I was amazed how she went from really being stuck and 'over it', to ebing able to labour at home nearly another 4 hours before we left for the hospital. She was 10 cm when she arrived at the hospital!!
One more tip, I think Labour Ade is worth a try, because the calcium in it is supposed to help with pain management, and also when you're dehydrated you cope less well - when your fluid & electrolyte balance is good seems like you cope better.
If you plan to labour at home, I think a birth pool or deep spa or bath is a huge help.
What is this Julie? And where can I get it?:
Labour ade is a drink you make yourself... Here's a recipe i have:
1/3 cup lemon juice (energy)
1/3 cup honey (energy)
1/4-1/2 tsp salt (prevents dehydration)
1/4 tsp baking soda (calms the stomach)
1-2 calcium tablets, with magnesium, crushed (relaxes muscles)
Add enough water to make 1 litre. Add either an additional cup of water or a cup of your favorite juice to flavour.
You sip it after every 2nd or 3rd contraction (or mre if you're thirsty) but some women drink it at the end of PG too. I added a cup of raspberry leaf tea to mine, rather than juice, but if i'm honest i really didn't want to drink or eat during my (very fast) labour.
Bx
Thanks! Will definitely give that a try :D
I was repeating in my head during every contraction " i am determined " for some reason. And at the same time shaking my head from side to side. With my first, I sat on chair and tapped my toes and moved my legs with every one. Deep breathing.
That's a great labour ade recipe. My clients love it. You can use lime or grapefruit juice if you prefer. You can also add potassium salts along with the calcium & magnesium. I use active Manuka Honey because it is so good for your immune system.
I also used Birth Tea during my labours. That's a blend of RLT, lavendar, basil and nutmeg, plus honey & lemon for flavour. Raspberry Leaf Tea is meant to tone the uterus muscle and support strong effective contractions.
I think also, the less resistance or opposition to the baby moving down, the less painful the contractions should feel. So, if the baby is in a tricky position or the baby's progress is obstructed in any way, it stands to reason the labour could be more painful until the obstacle/s are removed. So, chiropractic care and Optimal Foetal Positioning might be helpful in setting the baby up to be in a good possie for the trip through the pelvis. When you're moving around, walking, going up and down stairs, circling your hips like a belly dancer, rotating your hips while on hands and knees, doing lunges and so on, you're making different 'shapes' with your pelvis, maximizing the space your baby has to wriggle and rotate as s/he finds his/her route through your pelvis. This may also support the way the baby's head is applied to your cervix. Gravity helps with this, too. That helps your cervix as it is dilating, which helps the descent of the baby as s/he comes lower and lower. It's easy to feel like, I don't want to move, it hurts more if I do. But if your movements are helping your progressm and the baby's progress, the end result is going to be less pain - not more, right? (If you're having a very fast labour anyway and don't feel the need to move things along, you might be the kind of birther who stays very quiet and still and hardly moves at all. You know your body!)
Also, the more you can relax, the less resistance there in in your soft tissues. We don't really know *how* to relax in the soft tissues of the pelvis, but there are a few tricks that can help.
Jenny Blyth teaches how to 'let down' in your pelvis. Try standing with feet slightly apart and knees bent. You tighten your pelvic floor, then release. You notice the 'letting go' feeling, and the 'open' feeling. You breathe in through your nose, and gently exhale through soft lips. Then this time, you tighten your pelvic floor muscles as you breathe in, and let go on the out-breathe. The 'letting go' sensation should feel even more when you coordinate it with your breathing. It's very subtle so don't feel too frustrated if you don't 'get it' the first few times. Just practice it a few times until relaxing with your out-breathe feels more habitual. When you couple this with the hand-assist of a sit-bone spread, you can really notice the feeling of being more open and relaxed through your pelvis.
The rebozo is another way to support relaxation through the pelvis. It feels soooo nice!
Your birth hormones help you so much with this relaxation. Oxytocin and endorphins are designed to help you go soft and dreamy, into a place of deep relaxation. I've heard people say, "soft lips help your cervix be soft." When a birthing woman's hormonal release is undisturbed and uninterrupted, her face and lips look very soft, almost as if she is asleep or feeling very dreamy. She rarely needs reminding to soften her lips. Sometimes, a gentle reminder to lower the pitch of her voice helps. A high pitched yell or scream can scare her or cause her to tense, even subtly. If she can change that to a lower pitch, like a deep roar, it may help her direct her energy low as she pitches her voice lower.
I think your natural endorphins provide the best pain relief, so figuring out how best to support the peak flow of your hormones (everyone is slightly different) seems to be the go. Some people might wonder, what is the point of stuff like candles, music, aromatherapy, massage oils, symbolic art and affirmations, breathing, near-darkness etc ... like, that's all going to do stuff all once real contractions kick in, right? But the reason some women use such things is because they're trying to enhance the flow of their hormones, and they've figured out these are the things that do it for them. These strategies are less effective if you are still having to cope with regular interruptions, questions asked, people coming and going, exams, etc, - which disturb and inhibit the release of birth hormones.
Verbal encouragement and spoken affirmations are vital for some women. I'm a real word person (gee, you can't half tell) so people speaking kindly and respectfully to me during labour was significant for me. Other women prefer total silence and only wish to be spoken to if really necessary - because that's what supports their hormonal release the best.
I second that - I really felt I was in a good way for birth because of regular chiro care...:
So, chiropractic care and Optimal Foetal Positioning might be helpful in setting the baby up to be in a good possie for the trip through the pelvis.
Here is one of my favourite articles about Chiropractic care. One of my clients had such bad SPD, she could barely walk. After reading this article, she went to see a Chiro. Overnight, her SPD pain stopped - and her baby turned LOA! She gave birth a week later, exactly 5 minutes after arriving in the Birth Centre. Dad caught the baby, while a midwife and myself looked on, smiling. After a traumatic birth the time before, this mama was pretty thrilled with the outcome.
:
One of the most interesting side-effects of a misalignment of the pelvic bones is that anecdotally, it often seems associated with malpositions of the baby, including:
breech (feet or butt-first)
occiput posterior (head-down but facing the mother's stomach instead of her back)
asynclitic (head tilted to one side so that the parietal bones presents first instead of the crown)
compound (hand or arm by face)
All of these malpositions tend to cause more difficult labors, with greater pain and often great difficulty in dilation or descent of the baby. There is a high rate of operative intervention when malpositions are present, including lots of forceps in vaginal births, and many cesareans as well. In fact, research shows that only a small percentage of babies with persistent malpositions actually are born spontaneously and without interventions. (See the FAQ on Malpositions on this website for further information and references.)
As noted on the website of the Australian Osteopathic Association:
The descent of the baby through the pelvis is determined by factors such as ligament laxity, hormonal control, uterine contraction, gravity and position of the baby. If the mother's pelvis is mechanically unstable or is lacking mobility, it may interfere with the baby's passage through the birth canal.
Unfortunately, very few doctors in recent years have paid much attention to malpositions (except to do cesareans for breech). Only in the midwifery, osteopathic, and chiropractic communities have these positions received much attention, and then only recently. Interest is now just beginning to re-surface in the obstetric community, but is very limited in mainstream obstetric journals as of now.
There is little scientific data to show that pelvic misalignment is associated with malpositions because traditional medicine does not recognize misalignment as a problem or research it, nor do they take the idea of "pelvic misalignment" seriously. Really, they barely take the idea of non-breech malpositions seriously! Therefore, it cannot be stated from an evidence-based point of view that pelvic alignment is associated with fetal malpositions or difficult labors, or that re-aligning the pelvis would prevent malpositions, prevent cesareans, or lessen the incidence of difficult labors.
Obviously, research into this issue is very important, but quite unlikely to occur anytime soon. The funding and interest is simply not there in the traditional medical community. This lack of data does not prove or disprove the misalignment theory; it simply has not been researched in the traditional scientific manner. Chiropractors, on the other hand, have seen in their own practices for years that women with misaligned backs and pelvises tended to have more malpositioned babies. There are some limited case series studies on this available in chiropractic research journals, but even this is not very well-documented.
The first really significant work was done by Dr. Larry Webster, founder of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association. He found that simply by realigning the pelvis and releasing the soft tissues, most breech babies turned head-down within a few treatments. It is important to emphasize that he did NOT manually turn the baby in any way, but simply realigned the mother's pelvis and 'released' the ligaments supporting the uterus. The baby then was not "constrained" anymore from assuming the best possible position, and so usually quickly turned vertex.
Dr. Webster taught this "Webster In-Utero Constraint Technique" to many other chiropractors. Success rates depend on the skill of the practitioner, but usually are documented at about 80% or more in turning the breech baby. This is much higher than the success rates for manually turning the baby with the often-rough procedure known as a "External Cephalic Version". ECV success rates generally run anywhere from 40-65% or so, whereas the Webster Technique successfully turns 80% or so, at least in the data available so far.
Thus, it seems likely that many cases of breech babies are quite probably associated with pelvic misalignment, and that treatment to re-align the pelvis may help many breech babies turn head-down. However, proof of this is limited to anecdotal evidence, lectures and articles from Dr. Webster, a few small case series, and surveys about chiropractors' experience with the Webster Technique. Not overwhelming evidence by any means, but all we have at this point. Yet it may be women's best bet in preventing malpositions and relieving pelvic pain.
The Webster Technique also has a variant that can be used with babies that are head-down but facing the wrong way (posterior). Although little formal data exists on this, anecdotally many women and midwives have reported this to be helpful for non-breech malpositions as well. Thus, it is quite likely that in many cases, pelvic misalignment is often accompanied by baby malposition of varying types, not just breech presentations, and treatment may help resolve such malpositions.
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that many women who have had past cesareans for non-progressive labor or "Cephalo-Pelvic Disproportion" (supposedly, baby too big or pelvis too small) actually may have had malpositioned babies. It's not that the baby was too big or the mom's pelvis too small, it's that the baby's position did not permit it to go through easily, causing it to get "stuck." These women (one of whom is Kmom!) often report that if they get regular chiropractic care in subsequent pregnancies, they frequently go on to have a Vaginal Birth After Cesarean because the baby malposition is prevented or is more easily resolved. They also regularly report that their pubic symphysis pain decreases significantly with treatment.
So although little concrete scientific data exists from mainstream studies (largely because it has not been studied), and although anecdotal evidence has to be treated with caution, women with misaligned pelvises often seem to experience pelvic pain/SPD, and possibly a higher rate of malpositioned babies. It seems logical (though unproven) that treatment to help re-align the pelvis may help lessen pelvic pain, and may also prevent or correct a fetal malposition.
Although not every women with SPD experiences a malpositioned baby, it does seem to be very common in this group. Since baby malpositions commonly lead to lots of interventions like epidurals and forceps that tend to worsen pubic pain and may even damage the pubic symphysis permanently, checking for misalignments and working carefully to avoid/treat baby malpositions may be important to avoiding long-term pain or permanent pubic symphysis damage. This is a fascinating area that is just beginning to be researched but has potentially far-reaching implications.
Pubic Pain
in early labor I walked and rocked thru the contractions with a hot wheat pack on my lower back.
When things got tough I got in the bath- It was FANTASTIC! The water helped me to relax so well that I went to another planet and just made low sounding vocolisations thru the contractions.
it's nice to have your partner with you through this. it didn't work 100% effectively, but breath in and out and tell yourself that you can do it. i didn't know what it was like not having contractions, because i didn't have any pain relief until after birth.