Episode 32: Labor Coping Tips (Birth Partner Cheat Sheet)

This is how we disrupt tension in labor & childbirth. (For more context, see last week's video on disrupting the fear-tension-pain cycle in labor and birth).

As a birth doula, these are the suggestions and phrases I find myself offering most often. I even made a cheat sheet for you to download and take with you to your labor.

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The tips we cover include:

-Ground your feet (no tense tip toe standing!)

-Slightly bend your knees (again, avoiding tensing up by keeping your lower body relaxed and fluid)

-Sway your hips (moving slightly to work with sensation and invite the baby to find their way down, as doula I'll often invite this movement by gently suggesting it with my hands during a hip squeeze)

- Moan low (high pitches create tension - try it! Compare a high "eeeeee" to a low moan in terms of tension. I moan in harmony with birthing people to help them get loud if they want!).

-Relax your jaw. (I'll sometimes gently run the back of my hand down the laboring person's jaw line to invite tension release without needing to say anything)

- Welcome each contraction with a "yes" or "welcome baby" either literally out loud or energetically (avoiding the unavoidable next contraction just creates suffering - Relax into it!)

-And remember: Change positions every 5 contractions or so. (Staying upright and moving around is associated with shorter labors)

Full Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the next episode of your free weekly, brave journey, birth preparation videos, where I pick a topic related to birth and postpartum and I talk about it. Today I'm going to be giving you some tips for labor, specifically nine tips for labor. You could also think of this as a cheat sheet for your partner.

So whoever will be at your labor to support you, your romantic partner, your spouse, or co-parent your mom, your sister, your best friend, whoever's going to be there to support. You can look and remember some of these tips and remind you while you are laboring I'm Cara Lee, I'm a birth doula and I'm a childbirth educator and let's get started.

So let's dive right into these tips. These tips are mostly targeted towards somebody who is laboring unmedicated, but a few of them are really, really relevant for people laboring with pharmacological pain medication, particularly the epidural, as well. So let's just run through them.

These are the things that I find myself saying all the time as a birth doula to people as they're laboring.

So that's why I wrote them all down in bullet point form cheat sheet form. First ground your feet. Now imagine you are in labor and you're standing up at the top of your tippy toes and your kind of trying to get away from the sensations of labor, inviting you to ground your feet means place your feet firmly on the ground and stop standing on your tippy does, you'd be surprised how many people start their labor up on their tippy toes.

And once you ground your feet, you just kind of settle into it, settle into the sensation, work through it, and it becomes more manageable.

Next tip, slightly bend your knees. So imagine you're grounding your feet, but your knees are locked and you're super firm and stiff in your body. Imagine what's happening in your hips when you're.

No, we don't want that kind of tension. What we want are slightly bent knees, which then invites a release and your hips and your pelvis and your pelvic floor. So you've got your feet grounded. And if you're watching this, you could totally just stand up and find this in your body. So first start off in your tippy toes and then ground down and feel how that changes all throughout your body.

And then with your feet grounded, lock your knees super, super straight, and then slightly bend them just a little bit and notice the difference in your pelvis.

The next tip, relax your jaw. And this is do it right now. Just with me. Right now. Relax your jaw. If you ever find that you have tension in your jaw, just relax it. It just something to always check in with, but your jaw is connected to your pelvis. I don't know why it's just this wisdom that has been shared, but your jaw and your pelvis. So if you can relax your jaw, then you often find that your pelvic floor is going to relax.

So again, you've grounded your feet. You've slightly bent. You've relaxed your jaw. And this is something that your birth partner can do. If it doesn't irritate you, if it irritates you then they shouldn't do it, but they can gently take their hands on your jaw. Just to remind you, they're not forcing your jaw to relax, but just a little reminder.

Next, relax your hands. So there are people who start their labor and they're trying to figure out how to cope. And they grip their hands really tight and they rise up to their tippy toes and they lock their knees. And so we've grounded our feet. We've released the tension in our knees and we've relaxed our jaw. And now we can release our hands.

And so this gives us a sense of fluidity to just let the sensation move through our body and work through our labor.

Next tip, sway your hips. I started kind of doing anyways, I'm doing with my shoulders, but as you're standing and laboring, staying upright, remember upright positions are linked with shorter labors..

So you're standing and you're swaying and you're moving and you have relaxed your shoulders, relax your hands, relax, your knees and your feet are grounded. And now you're swaying your hips. And this upright moving position can help you work through your contractions.

Next moan low. So if you find that you have found a high pitched tone *mimics high pitched 'eeee' sound* or screech. Relax it. Making noise in labor: awesome. Awesome.

Roar and labor, low sounds, Moan in labor. Let the energy relax as you open your mouth and you make moaning sounds. Your jaw is releasing. Your pelvic floor is releasing. You're grounding into the earth. But don't screech. Don't go high because high creates this sense of tension in the body. And we don't want to go high. We want to go low. So reminder to moan low. And not "don't moan". It's not "be quiet". It's moan low. It's keep your tones low.

So your feet are grounded. Your knees are bent. Your hips are swaying. Your shoulders are lowered. Your jaws released and you are moaning, moaning low.

Now, a couple of quick tips that are not related to your body, but just some things to keep in mind as you labor.

One: change positions every five contractions or so. So this works out if your contractions are three to five minutes apart, that's about, oh, I got to do math on the fly. Now that's five times three, 15 to 25 minutes. So every 15 to twenty-five minutes, every five contractions or so, change positions. And this could be as little as if you're leaning forward laboring for a little while that you tuck your tailbone for a few contractions and that's a position change.

You're still leaning forward. You're just tucking your tailbone instead of sticking your tailbone behind you. Uh, it could be going from kneeling to standing. Or take a few contractions on the birth ball and then stand up again. It's just this idea: keep moving. So imagine this baby is making, this is the baby's head and this is the birth canal.

They're making a big path. You can kind of imagine they're making these rotations as they move through labor with you. And as you move, you are offering them an opportunity to find new positions for themselves as well. So you're leaning forward. You're staying upright. You're changing positions, every five contractions.

And then this last tip is to welcome the contraction. Say yes. If you find yourself saying "no, no, no, no, no" tensing hands, clenched shoulders up, tippy toes... you're going to ground and say "yes", because each contraction is bringing your baby closer. Weak, ineffective contractions that you are avoiding or that are easy to get through aren't going to bring your baby here.

.Well, some people they will, but for most people you want a really intense and strong and effective contraction to bring your baby here. So that welcoming. Here's that next contraction, here it builds, here it builds, "yes". "Bring baby". You can say things like "bring baby" or "come, baby come" or "yes, baby, yes". Just anything but. Avoid these things like, "no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not ready. I'm not ready" cause it just makes it that much worse. So your energy is "yes, here it comes. Here, comes another surge". As the hypnobirthing, people say another surge, another contraction and other wave, whatever you call it. Welcome it because it is bringing your baby here and that energy can shift how you feel.

Within these contractions, and I'm not going to cover it in this free video. But, um, we talk about this in the Brave Journey Birth Preparation Program,, the difference between pain and suffering. Some of these tips, this mindset shift is the difference between pain and suffering. You, you may be experiencing pain or intensity, but it's not necessarily causing you suffering. It's for a purpose. It's bringing your baby here.

So those are the checks I'm going to go through them quickly. Although I repeated them like each time, it's like one of those children's stories where, the coyote that eats all the things in the desert and by the hinder listing 30 things, I kind of did that. So I've been maybe reading too many children's books through these last few years.

Let's go through them again. You're going to ground your feet. You're going to slightly bend your knees. You're going to lower your shoulders and relax your jaw. You're going to relax your hips sway your hips. Excuse me, relax your hands, sway your hips. You're going to moan low instead of high. So everything is focused on releasing tension in your body and relaxing into these sensations.

You're going to change positions about every five contractions or so, which is like every 15 to twenty-five minutes. And you are going to welcome each contraction with the energy of, yes. This is bringing my baby here. Yes. Here comes another contraction. Yes, baby's coming.

Okay. That's it for today. I'll see you next week.