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Natural Child Birth Pain Relief
Natural child birth is a good thing. It's healthy for you and it's healthy for your baby.
It's also much more than that. It's an intense experience, it's a journey, and it's empowering.
Birthing your baby will change your life - and not just because you have become a mother. The experience of birth itself will change you.
Researcher P. Simkin has found that women recall their childbirth experiences with amazing clarity decades after they happened.
Follow your instincts and the cues that your body will give you. Not too sure about your instincts and cues? The Pink Kit gives you the practical information and the practice you need to recognize and know your own cues and instincts. Here are some practical suggestions to help you through labor:
Movement and Music
Rhythmic movement can help you relax during labor - slow dancing, belly dancing, or simply swaying back and forth.
Choose music beforehand. If you've been doing prenatal yoga to music that music will help you relax during labor. Some women choose music that is significant to them and their partner. Music is especially wonderful at muting the sounds of a busy hospital.
You may prefer sitting during labor. You can sit and rock back and forth if you still crave movement.
Try sitting on the toilet during labor, rocking back and forth. There's good reason to like the toilet - you find it easy to relax on the toilet because you relax there every day.
Birth balls give excellent support to your pregnant body and allow you to move relatively freely while sitting on them. You can also drape across them while you're on your knees or squatting.
Try walking around between contractions. When a contraction comes brace yourself on something like a low table or counter top.
You can grab onto somebody and hold them. Putting your arms around someone's neck and letting them support your weight can really help. Some women like to walk outside and find that trees are always willing supports during contractions ;)
Thinking of Contractions
The subject of how to think of contractions is an interesting one. In the hospital contractions are monitored with a machine. Everyone stares at a screen so they can tell the laboring woman "you're having a contraction."
Watching such a scene unfolds creates the desire to make a sarcastic "well duh" comment - but it also brings sadness. Is the birthing woman reduced to nothing while this almighty machine gets the attention?
Contractions and how to cope with them are the work of women - not machines. When you're in labor you'll work with your contractions. Child birth is not a trial or a punishment you are being put through.
Each contraction brings you closer and closer to meeting your baby. Have that mindset and you'll be more able enjoy your natural childbirth.
An excellent attitude to develop during pregnancy is learning to be grateful. Be grateful for being pregnant and the experience of it, even when you are tired of it. Make gratefulness an attitude in your daily life. It will make it easier to move through labor ;)
Your labor assistants will be able to remind you that each contraction has a purpose - to open you up, to bring you one step closer to your baby.
Spritual Midwifery
has wonderful birth stories. The stories are inspiring and empowering, and they are full of women who learned to be grateful for pregnancy and child birth. The book is written in dated "hippie" language, but it is a true gem - a diamond among dull pregnancy books.
The women of the Farm, where the birth stories in Spiritual Midwifery come from, think of contractions as "rushes." The term was coined by midwife Ina May Gaskin, who felt that "contraction" brought to mind a tightening, which is completely opposite of what birthing women need to think about!
Changing your perception of contractions now will help you during labor. See each one as something to ride up and over, one step closer to your baby.
Pain Perception
The way you think of labor pain influences how you're able to deal with it.
You usually try to flee from pain - it's a sign that something is wrong. But the pain you may feel during your natural child birth is a different kind of pain. It's a pain that invites you to go deeper and embrace your baby's birth - to relax and allow your body to take over.
Ina May Gaskin encourages women to think of contractions as "interesting sensations that require your complete attention" rather than as "uterine contractions." It's true that for many women child birth is painful - but it does not need to be feared.
Studies have shown that women's expectations of labor pain match their experience. In other words if you expect labor to be horribly painful and you won't be able to handle it, you probably won't be able to.
In the United States most women expect child birth to be very painful and expect to need medication - and they do. In other cultures around the world, women don't perceive child birth as such a big deal and don't expect medication. It is women's work and they are designed for it.
There are women who give birth in pleasure. Ecstatic birth is a reality. Some women describe child birth, or part of their labor, as being an orgasmic experience. This experience is not guaranteed, but neither is it not allowed.
It may be taboo to talk about in many cultures, but it's OK to enjoy your birth, even to find it ecstatic. I encourage you to read Ina May's Guide to Childbirth for an exceptional chapter on pain/pleasure perception in natural childbirth. Laura Shanley's book Unassisted Childbirth is also a must-read, even if you're planning a doctor or midwife-assisted birth.
Cultural conditioning plays a big part in the way that women perceive the work of labor. Educate yourself and research all you can about labor and birth. Realize that some care providers encourage these fear-filled perceptions of child birth to get patients to comply with routine procedures. The best thing you can do is to educate yourself and make your birth plans as a completely aware individual.
- Part 1: Planning
- Part 3: When You're in Labor
- Practical Pain Relief Checklist
- The Pink Kit for child birth will give you the skills and knowledge you need to be in control during labor. It has practical advice gathered from hundreds of families who had great birth experiences. I recommend it highly.