2025 Childbirth Tips … Communication Skills
Remember the question asked to AI was: ‘What birth skills should a woman have?
AI’s response included communication skills for this purpose … “To express needs to care providers”
Ok. And this is where AI is not ‘thinking’ … but you can and should!
Communication skills are essential in childbirth.
- How you communicate to yourself! Imagine that!
- How you communicate to your birth coach
- How you communicate with your birth provider
All BirthingBetter skills were developed by hundreds of fathers and mothers in the 1970s/80s/90s and now there are 20 BirthingBetter online courses!
The skills were often developed by questions we asked about our own birthing experiences:
- “What can I/we do when ….?”
- “What could I/we have done when …?’
- “Had I/we known that then …”
Communication was one of those BIG areas. This is what we learned.
- When we are talking to ourselves, we can still apply skills.
- When we are talking to our birth partner, we can use non-verbal and verbal communication skills
SELF-TALK:
Not many women like labor contractions when they get intense. We talk to ourselves all the time and we keep it short … ‘I’m dying” or “that wasn’t too bad’ or ‘I hate this”
What we learned is that one part of our brain talks to us. The other part of our brain can apply skills When/If we have the birthing skills! We need to grow a broad Societal message that every pregnant family needs to self-learn birth and coaching skills.
It’s really hard in labor to get out long and nuanced sentences.
SOLUTION: Learn, practice and use birth and coaching skills no matter what you’re saying to yourself. That’s yak-yak. Skills are what you DO!
COMMUNCATING TO OTHERS:
What we learned was simple:
- We had to use lots of non-verbal communication skills we and our birth partner understood:
- If you don’t want to be touched now … shake your head or put your hand up in a ‘stop’ motion
- When you want to be touch, take your partner’s hand and place it where you want to be touched.
- Communicate appreciation
- Smile
- Nod
- Pat
- Rest your head on the other person
You can learn more about BirthingBetter Communication Skills in the short Soft Skills online course