36 Weeks Pregnant
36 weeks pregnant and you now are entering the last few weeks of pregnancy. You feel like a beached whale or washing machine off balance. You can balance a dinner plate on your belly and watch your baby kick and roll around. It’s an exciting time getting ready for the Birth.
Women get sick of being pregnant somewhere between now and when your birth unfolds. This is especially true for women who spontaneously go into labor and not so true if you have a planned c-section.
Weird words
Drop/Lighten
Within the next few weeks your baby ‘drops’ as mentioned in What To Expect. Your baby doesn’t actually ‘drop’ Â or ‘lighten’. Â We use such funny words! Really, where does your baby ‘drop’ to?
What actually happens is that your uterine muscles begin to shorten and tighten more in preparation for the task this unique muscle will do … contract and pull open it’s closure (the cervix). This makes the space inside for your baby smaller and your baby starts to place it’s head (or butt) into your bony pelvis.
Can you now understand why you’ve learned all the Birthing Better skills to create space inside your bony pelvis as well as knowing how to soften inside your Pelvic Clock? Your skills are beginning to really take form and make such deep common sense.
Engaged
Engaging is when the biggest part of your baby’s head moves to inside the narrowest part of your bony pelvis. If you’ve been doing the Internal Work then you’ve also learned to ‘check’ yourself. If your baby is engaged then you’ll feel a nice curve of your baby’s head on the other side of the soft tissue of the top of your vagina which is now the lower part of your uterus.
When you try to feel your baby’s head above your pubic bone, you’ll have to push down through the bottom of your baby because now your baby is behind your pubic bone!
Your baby can still be ‘high’ (just such funny words!) which means not ‘engaged’. If you check yourself you will not feel anything of your baby’s head from inside but you’ll feel your baby’s head bobbing above your pubic bone.
Your baby may be ‘very low‘, which means you’ll feel like you’re sitting on a ball and can feel a very pronounced curve of your baby’s head. You’ll also have trouble feeling the head from your belly but your baby’s shoulders will be above the pubic bone.
The Baby Center post is very interesting because there’s a video about the 7 labor myths. Now we will discuss these myths and how our ‘facts’ differ.
Birthing Better families want to add at 36 weeks pregnant:
- Thoughts lead to words. Words lead to actions
Let’s put it this way. You are constantly being taught about the present trend in childbirth. We want to make certain you are also taught about a NEW way to approach the birth of your baby!
Present childbirth trend
- You have ideas (thoughts) about labor.
- You have read, experienced or told (words) about the experience of labor.
- You are being encouraged to do things (take actions) about your birth experience … mostly make a Birth Plan, here’s information on medical pain relief and there’s some mention in a magical sense of alternative techniques.
Birthing Better NEW approach to your baby’s birth
- Your thoughts come from being exposed to the present childbirth trend. Include in these thoughts: ‘I have been preparing my pregnant body to give birth, prepared my baby’s birth passage and learned birth and birth-coaching skills which we are practicing daily because we are going to be skilled birthing our baby’
- You’ve been exposed one way or another about how other women are experiencing labor even if that exposure is from TV, YouTube, yourself, friends and relatives. Include in these thoughts: ‘When I see births on TV, or YouTube, I don’t usually see a woman using skills or fathers effectively helping! That’s not going to be us!  When I see videos of women looking relaxed, I know she is totally using skills! We’ll be able to explain to others what skills we used! Their midwife, doula or obstetrician doesn’t seem to be encouraging the mother or father to use any skills! We won’t wait for them to use our skills! Birthing Better skills have helped us realise that our baby’s birth is an activity we will be doing. We now have the skills to do that activity.Â
- You’ve made a Birth Plan, know there is medical pain relief and now you know a simple yet complex set of skills that give you and your partner an effective way to cope, manage, deal with, work through, stay on top of and in control of the natural occurring pain during contractions as long as you feel very capable and confident. ‘Medical pain relief is an option. My partner and I are committed to using our skills no matter what. This is our baby’s birth and we’re going to skillfully work with our baby’s effort to be born’
- Seven labor myths
In the Baby Center video, there are seven myths about labor.
      1.  ‘It will be the worst pain I’ve ever felt’ … The Baby Center video talks about your subjective feelings about pain. That’s the present trend!
A new skills-based approach to childbirth doesn’t focus on your subjective viewpoint, rather how you use skills to cope with both internal and external experiences. In the eBook Positive and Negative Voice, you will learn one profound PERMISSION. You can hate every single moment of your birth yet feel incredibly proud that you’ve used skills to cope well.
When women subjectively feel that the natural occurring pain of contractions is the worst ever felt, then dislike and fear accompanies those feelings. Without skills, it’s easy to couple pain with dislike and then you feel overwhelmed. With skills, you can hate the whole experience but you choose to use skills to deal with the pain! These skills are life skills!
      2.  Medication is the only way to ease labor pains. The video does mention natural techniques. Like most women and men, if you aren’t told or know specifically ‘natural techniques’ or skills then those words make no sense. You know what an epidural is but without skills, you’ll have no clue what ‘natural techniques’ are and therefore won’t use them!
     3.  There’s no downside of using medical pain relief. Birthing Better families ended up making their own decisions. Skills hugely helped families use ‘natural techniques’ and used less medical pain relief. If medical pain relief was used, Birthing Better families used their skills and didn’t beat themselves up. There are potential risks and no risk in everything!
     4. The best way to labor is lying in bed. When we learned about positions and how our baby responded to them, then all postures and positions began to make sense. We could either ‘choose’ a position or modified a required one. Choosing a position meant we used the skills to ‘stay open’ and to read our baby’s messages as to whether each position helped create a Bell Shape Curve to each contraction or flattened it.
We chose positions that created the Curve which indicated our baby was happy with our choice. We got out of positions that spaced out our contractions even if these ‘backed off’ the pain. Having skills gave us the ability to deal with the pain and not waste one contraction.
     5. ‘I shouldn’t eat or drink in labor’ Birthing Better families had to make their own choices. It’s hard to couple the use of skills with whether you can or should eat or drink, so we’ll pass on this one.
     6. ‘I shouldn’t soak in a tub after my water breaks’ Birthing Better families made their own choices about this. We’ll pass again.
     7. ‘My primary caregiver will coach me through labor’ And there you have it! Why would any woman think that? Only because they have never been told to become skilled and have a skilled partner! Birthing Better families want to change this. This is the fundamental shift between the present childbirth trend and having a skilled-birthing population!
It’s totally natural to believe your caregiver will act to coach you through labor when you lack skills. When you are highly skilled and read Birthing Better eBook Three Birth Roles then you understand your role, the role of your birth-coach and your caregiver.
 These are the resources in LESSON THIRTEEN in the comprehensive Birthing Better online course.
LISTEN and READ: Call it a ‘rush, surge, wave, intense’. If you feel pain during birth you want the skills to cope and manage. It’s simple. You find birth not terribly painful … great. You can stay on top of birth pain when you use your Birthing Better skills because they adjust and adapt to your individual circumstances.
- Audio: Childbirth Pain Mp3 – 2:38
- Audio: Childbirth Pain Tips Mp3 – 5:15
- Audio: Fathers as Great Birth-Coach Mp3 – 8:39
- PDF: The Hows and Whys of Pain – 22 pages
- PDF: Working with Pain – 12 pages
Birthing Better skills were developed by moms and dads in the early 1970s in the US and used by many thousands globally in all types of birth. Birthing Better online birthing classes are housed in Common Knowledge Trust.
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