You know that natural childbirth is a healthy choice for you and your baby, but thinking of the pain can be scary. What will contractions actually feel like?
Finding out what's normal, what to expect, and how you can handle contractions and pain during your baby's birth will make it an event you want to remember (even if it hurts).
Working through and handling your contractions is the most challenging part of labor for many women. They describe contractions in a number of ways:
Women experience contractions differently. Some find them very easy to handle, some find them challenging, and some find them very painful.
Each contraction brings you closer and closer to meeting your baby. Keeping this in mind makes childbirth easier.
Great Pregnancy Skill: Being Grateful
Be grateful for being pregnant and the experience, even when you are tired of it. Make gratefulness an attitude in your daily life. It makes pregnancy and childbirth easier, plus it's a great habit for the sometimes challenging job of being a mom ;)
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.
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.
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 work to be born.
Leading midwife 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 don't be scared of it.
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. The best thing you can do is to educate yourself and make your birth plans as a completely aware individual.
Okay, the reality is that childbirth usually hurts. Some women have pain-free births, but most of us will feel some pain. Can you still have a great birth experience?
All of my labors have had pain. I feel like all of my births were good births (and all natural labors), but my fourth and fifth babies were really great experiences. Why were their births different?
With Galen and Honor I figured out that it really didn't matter how much childbirth hurts. It didn't really matter if I was a little scared of the pain (and yes, even after all my babies, the thought of labor is still a little scary.
I did work through my biggest fears (like worry about a c-section). But the biggest change for me was realizing I could practice birth skills before labor -- skills that would help me handle labor and birth (even if it hurt)!
You can learn the same skills (believe me, I'm not remarkable in any way). These skills work together with what you've learned in your childbirth classes or through your pregnancy and birth books. They help you to help your baby's efforts to be born. Imagine knowing how to get your labor going again, even if it seems "stalled." Imagine knowing how to handle a contraction confidently, even if it's painful. Imagine knowing that you can calm down and get in control again, even if you lose it during one of your contractions!
Childbirth uses a specific set of skills that you learn (just like you learn to drive a car). To get more information on these go-to skills for childbirth, click here to check out the Pink Kit.
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