When we are pregnant for the first time the first thing we want is an exact guide to pregnancy and our coming birth.
Birthing Better skills are your guide to preparing for your first birth and how to do your first birth. The latter part of that sentence is a BIG statement but yes, Birthing Better is the resource to give you and your partner the very best birth and birth coaching skills for your coming first birth … no matter what type of birth unfolds.
Here’s the thing. You can find heaps of information to fill your first pregnancy guide with knowledge about you and your baby’s health … diet, exercise, changes in your body, week to week pregnancy development. Until you stumbled over Birthing Better you will find it very challenging to find a guide to your first birth. In reality that is what you really want to know.
We all know the reality … there is NO way for any of us to know what our birth will be like. That’s particularly true for you being a first time mother or father-to-be. Even if a woman has previously given birth she won’t know what her next birth will be like. However, women who have given birth usually know this … ‘My birth will happen and I’ll get through it’. That’s not much help is it?
Even though your coming first birth is unknown, it will unfold. Most first time pregnant mothers and fathers then take this approach: ‘I’ll hope for the best and deal with the worst’. Not a great feeling.
As a first pregnancy/birth guide, Birthing Better online learning multi-media resource is heads above all other resources because these skills were developed by mothers and fathers alike. From 24 weeks into your first pregnancy you just need the skills to start preparing your pregnant body for your first birth. The skills are simple to learn and fun to do. You’ll gain so much confidence because Birthing Better skills will begin to show you exactly how-to do any birth. What a relief!
Here are some of the skills you’ll learn:
- The Hip Lift … create space for your baby inside your body
- Sacrum manoeuvre … create space, reduce chance of back labour, help a posterior baby turn and deal with any back labor that happens
- Pelvic Clock … soften inside your pelvis and help your cervix to open, reduce or prevent long 1st stage of labor.
- Sit Bone Spread … reduce or prevent long pushing stage of birth.
- Internal Work … you will naturally stretch in your vagina however, a delay in 2nd stage can also lead to interventions as well as cause damage to your body.
- More
One purpose of all these skills is to give your baby the ability to open your body to be born more easily. Men share the same body so it’s easy for first time fathers-to-be to learn as well.
Another purpose of these skills is to give you more understanding of your pregnant/birthing body that leads to confidence that you know you’ll cope, manage, handle, deal with and work through your first birth as it unfolds. Being confident will change how you approach birth.
As you prepare your pregnant body Birthing Better will also give you skills to actually use throughout your baby’s birth. Here are just some of the birth and birth coaching skills you’ll be able to use.
- Directed Breathing … yes, you’ll breathe all the time. Now you can learn the best breathing methods for you. Breathing skills that adapt and adjust and help you work through your baby’s birth well.
- Deep Touch Relaxation … it’s vitally important that you know exactly how-to relax during the birth whether you’re feeling pain, having medical interventions done to you or just feel anxious.
- Working Together … yes, there are exact skills to work together with your partner and how to use both verbal and non-verbal communication well throughout your baby’s birth and afterwards.
- Niggling Labors … one of those natural issues that can lead to more interventions.
- 5 Phases of contractions … at each phase you can use one or more of your skills and stay on top of and in control of each contraction no matter how painful!
- Progression of labor … learn to read every contraction so your labor contractions are effective. Feeling your labor progresses actually helps you cope better with contraction pain.
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Are you getting the picture? Your first pregnancy guide should become filled with appropriate first birth skills. You might have little or lots of medical care throughout your pregnancy and birth … just use skills. You might birth at home or in hospital … just use skills. You might like or hate the birth as it unfolds … just use skills. You might labor and have a vaginal birth or have a non-laboring Caesarean … just use skills. Why?
Giving birth is something you have to ‘do’! Let’s repeat this. Giving birth … no matter how your birth unfolds … is an activity you have to do. No one else can birth your baby except you!
If you find yourself having a non-laboring Caesarean for your first birth then just use your birth and birth coaching skills while you drive to hospital, while being prepped and during surgery. You’re birthing your baby!
If you will labor then the skills will help you stay in control and on top of the natural occurring pain. You’re birthing your baby!
Fill your first pregnancy guide with a Birth Plan full of the birth and birth coaching skills that you’ll use. Then take that Skills-based Birth Plan to your birth and use it as your first birth cheat sheet to remind yourself to keep using your skills. You are birthing your baby!
Birthing Better is an online resource organised for you to work through anytime from 24 weeks onward in your first pregnancy or you can download the digital version.Join the 1000’s of Birthing Better families.