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| Me snuggling with my newborn. Best feeling in the world! |
My background: I had an unmedicated birth with a nurse midwife at a hospital, and I think it was overall a positive and empowering experience. I never felt the need to ask for pain relief, and labor was fast.
Here are some things I did that I think helped me, as well as some tips that friends who had unmedicated births gave me that helped me better prepare.
#1 Practice Abdominal Breathing at least 10 minutes per day:
Imagine your lungs are down in your lower abdomen then 4 seconds breathe in; 4 seconds hold; 4 seconds exhale, pulling in abdominal muscles tight to exhale all the air. This will tone your diaphram and make your labor more relaxed and smooth! The "4 second" time is just a general goal, but you likely won't be able to start there, and if you can get toned enough to go even longer that is great! What this does is get oxygen down to your baby and those lower abdominal muscles so they can relax. Without that oxygen down there, believe me, contractions will hurt!” When I really focused on breathing deeply I could literally feel my baby descend every time.
#2 During labor use massage, breathing, very warm showers/baths and/or music as much as possible to help your body relax! Know yourself and what truly helps you to relax.
For me labor went too fast for me to even think about getting into a bath, but maybe next time.
For massage we tried several things at first but nothing seemed to helping until a nurse came in and pushed on my knees while I was sitting up. It was INSTANT RELIEF. So my mom, husband, doula, and a nurse all took turns pushing on my knees the rest of the time and I was completely fine after that.
My doula gave me this links for my husband to practice learning in case it helped:
How to use a birthing ball:
Double hip squeeze:
Tennis Ball- helping back pain:
Some other things you can do are walking up and down stairs, standing and leaning on a chair with one leg, standing and completely leaning onto someone during a contraction, and one friend mentioned how much a robozo and the “apple shake” helped her.
I shake it off!
Just let gravity do a lot of the work for you!
One last thing that helped me focus was taking the clock down from the hospital room; after it was taken down time flew by.
#3 Transition. When you get to the point where you can't seem to stay on top of your contractions any more with just the deep breathing, know that you are almost there! My body just took over and started doing tiny pushes during transition, which the nurse said was ok but stay relaxed and don't push too hard.
#4 Choose a couple of your favorite encouraging, faith-promoting scripture verses/mantras and start to memorizing to help you keep your mind firm and focused on truth. Use inspiring music too if needed or desired. Sometimes I've appreciated music, but often it seems I prefer quiet.
Also when I felt anxious if I could actually do it, I would remind myself that Christ is by my side and gives me strength to do whatever is necessary, and ultimately there is no failure in childbirth. That feeling took the pressure off to have a “perfect birth”
#5 Raspberry Leaf Tea. So supposedly raspberry leaf tea helps strengthen the muscles of the uterus. I’m not 100% sure if it really made the difference drinking it a lot at the end of pregnancy, but I will probably do it again for my next pregnancy (and plus it helped me to relax a bit). Next pregnancy I would like to try eating dates (an interesting study on date consumption in pregnancy here).
#6 If you have the time, the two books I read that I think helped were Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way. As always when reading advice, take what you think will help and discard the quirky stuff J
#7 Physical exercises I did were mostly walking, gentle strength training, & yoga.
I love this routine.
I think yoga helped me the most since it helped me practice breathing through discomfort and focusing inward.
Also my third trimester I started doing some other exercises such as squatting, sitting cross-legged on the floor as much as possible instead of the couch to strengthen the pelvic muscles, Kegels, and “cat and cow” back exercises.
#8 Jaw=Cervix. I learned about "Psoas” muscles and that there is an inextricable link between the functionality of the jaw and that of the pelvis. Opening and releasing the jaw has the same effect on the pelvis. For me I blew air through my lips and that helped me to relax. I knew I looked ridiculous but the great thing about labor is that you don't care what people think anymore.
#9 Visualizations I think helped me mostly in preparation to not be anxious when labor would come. Some things I did was taking some time to lie down (with pillows) and do a full body scan and just breathe into the muscles and relax. Another thing was when I started feel Braxton Hicks I would just imagine the tightening as waves of the ocean going back and forth. During actual labor my doula would remind to take a deep breath and imagine my cervix opening and I would say quietly “open”
#10 Other than that bring a water bottler and chocolate and make sure someone has a hot meal ready when the baby is born because I was HUNGRAAAAYYYY J
#11 (Bonus!) You.
Really, the most important thing to have is you there, present and finding the strength within yourself.
You got this!!
