2025 Childbirth Tips … Pain coping strategies
AI was asked: What birth skills should a woman have?
The response was: Pain coping strategies (e.g., visualization, massage)
Sure .. makes sense sort of. What visualizations? What type of massage?
Labor can be very, very, very, very intensely painful as 2nd stage/the birth gets closer. Women can hate it so it’s hard to visualize anything pleasant! And many women would bite a hand off if touched at the wrong time, wrong place, and wrong way.
Yet, visualization and massage are skills and childbirth skills matter!
Let me talk to you about our BirthingBetter skills to cope, manage, work with, handle, stay on top of and feel in control when experience childbirth pains … all … not just labor pains!
The hundreds of fathers and mothers who developed BirthingBetter skills, want you to know what there are lots of diverse skills so that you can deal with, handle, cope, manage, work through, deal with, stay on top of and feel in control while you are doing the activity of birthing your baby. Learn heaps because giving birth is like climbing Mt.Everest and you know you’d prepare to do that by having lots and lots of diverse skills. Sadly, we can’t practice labor before it happens.
And, there’s a global Truth about birth: ‘You never know what birth is going to be like” and the vast majority of women will tell you after the birth: “It was nothing like I thought it would be”.
Giving birth will happen to you one way or another. It’s an activity. Every human activity is best done with some level of skills. Making a Birth Plan of what you ‘want’ is not the same as learning birth and birth coaching skills and using them to ‘do’ the activity. There’s a huge difference between ‘want’ and ‘do’. For example, we ‘want’ a nice wedding. We ‘do’ the activity of being married.
The importance of sharing birth and coaching skills and working together is essential because your baby’s birth is important to both of you and you’ll be working together as parents after birth. Develop your teamwork now.
BirthingBetter skills are very diverse because many were developed in reponse to: ‘OH F….. THIS HURTS!’
I mean, DUH, birthing women want to feel in control, that they can cope, manage, work through, deal with, handle and stay on top of the “OH F… THIS HURTS”
The breathing skills are primary because you will inhale and exhale at every moment of your life including labor and giving birth. BirthingBetter breathing skills are highly effective because we understood how we can choose the most effective breathing skills that could adapt, adjust and be sustainable.
There are 4 ways we all breathe and each has variations and some variations help you cope and others indict you’re not coping so well. Of course, there’s even skills as to how to keep a woman’s breathing effective throughout the constant changes she experiences internally and what might be happening to and around her.
Communicating well, really helps you cope with pain: ‘Breathe with me!” … “Don’t touch me!” … nod head yes when something feels good … letting yourself use skills even if you mind is yabber on about negative feelings.
And there are heaps of other BirthingBetter skills to cope with pain. Preparing your body when pregnant can stop you from having a long-labor so ‘cope with pain’ can come from preparation that might lead to a more progressive and effective labor and delivery. Women naturally cope better when labors are progressive: ‘I can feel things changing” rather than “I’ve had the same contraction for hours!”
Touch is another skill so you can cope with pain or anything else that’s going on. However, we learned the touch had to be at the right time, in the right way and in the right place. The communication skills really helped to get this right.
No woman has to go into labor feeling unskilled or uncertain. What’s amazing about coping with childbirth pain is that pretty much anything you do to try to cope helps you cope. You can just let it rip and not make continued, persistent efforts to work through each contraction. Hate it but do it!
Keep in mind, The Birth will happen and you’ll remember your Birth Story the rest of your life. When birth just happens to women, often their Birth Story is complex. When we work through the activty with some skills, we come away saying things like: “That was intense but I keep using skills to try to cope and I feel really proud of myself” … ‘Nailed it” … “Better than I imagined” … “I was F… AMAZING!”
And with shared birth skills, these are comments about your birth coach: ‘He/she was totally amazing” or ‘I couldn’t have done it without him/her” or ‘We worked together beautifully” or ‘I’m so happy we took time to learn the skills”