If I Could Only Say One Thing…

A young girl I know just birthed a beautiful baby girl. Her desire was to have a natural birth but she accepted an epidural as the contractions and labor grew so painful. I thought to myself that I was so glad to birth my babies at home so that I wasn’t faced with nurses who insisted this convenient painkiller. But I also thought that if I had one thing to say to a mother who wanted a drug-free birth it would be… Breathe into your pain. You may say this is silly and predictable but it is really important. It’s just like stretching, when you breathe into where you can feel the stretch you can go further. If you breathe into your labor pains, your body will open up rather than tense up and your baby can move further down the birth canal.

You can try it right now: Close your eyes, inhale, then when you exhale relax your muscles in your pelvic area and “blow” your breath to that area of your body. Your breath should roll out of your lungs and through your belly like a gentle ocean wave then into your pelvic area. It feels like your relaxing to go pee. If you do this during labor, your labor will probably be shorter because you won’t be “holding” the baby in.

A really great way to practice breathing into the sensations you feel during birth is to do perineal massages beginning at 36 weeks. Learn how to perform a perineal massage.