How To Prevent Tearing During Childbirth (Hint: This Works No Matter Where You’re Giving Birth)
Are you worried about tearing when you push your baby out? [I would make this a second subhead for this landing page – slightly smaller than the main headline)
You know what you want…
… to have a vaginal birth without any tearing. Doctors and midwives call this having an “intact perineum” – you just know that it means a lot less pain! And you definitely don’t want an episiotomy or being cut down there.
But…
…you feel doubts. Even if on the surface you feel confident and know you’ll succeed, every birthing woman has a shadow of anxiety at the back of her brain about what she wants. Do you secretly feel anxiety, or do you worry about possible disappointment, a future without success at the birth you want?
Will you succeed or be forced into having an episiotomy because you’re “too tight” or have a “slow” Pushing Stage?
Maybe you’ve had your perineum tear or an episiotomy in a previous birth. Maybe your pushing stage was too long.
Or, do you have pain being intimate? Maybe you pee when you cough, jump, laugh or run? Are you scared that it will get worse after this baby?
You want to have an intact perineum at this birth, but like all other pregnant women, you feel uncertain you can have what you want.
All pregnant moms feel uncertain. Birth is unknown. We can’t control it! Birthing Better moms have all been there. Their experience leads us to you! We’ve been committed to share our phenomenal skills.
Our New Zealand Charitable Trust has been sharing those skills online since 2000 – and for the 25 years prior to the Internet.
In all that time, we’ve had many people look at our online birthing classes and ask this question ‘Why do women need to be skilled to birth? Birth is natural. Women will naturally stretch.”
The Truth is … birth is natural and that means anything that might happen could happen. Birthing Better mothers and fathers faced this same reality. We did something about it.
We developed skills because even natural, physiological human processes benefit from skills … being a good lover is just one!
Most pregnant women worry they won’t have the birth they want. We all hear the failed stories and often we aren’t fully supported or understood by those closest to us. And, many birth providers are pretty ambivalent instead of encouraging.
We often feel alone with our thoughts and feelings.
The doubters aren’t going to go away…
…but we’ve got your back…
… Birthing Better families stretch back all the way to the early 1970s. That matters. There’s power in numbers – family after family, year after year, we’ve figured out the right steps to stop tearing and to protect our baby during delivery or Pushing Stage.
We’ve done it! We’ve opened up instead of stretched. We healed quickly and have not been left with trauma down there.
We’ve gotten through the hard part … the labor…
…and moved into the powerful part … birthing our baby vaginally.
We’ve done it with an intact perineum! And you want to birth without tearing too!
You know the benefits to yourself and baby of having an undamaged birth canal. You want a safe birth as well – you know a delay in the 2nd stage, or pushing, isn’t good for your baby or you. You’re looking for proven skills that reduce or prevent risks to you or your baby as well as the skills to prepare your birth canal. You want to know how to birth without tearing your perineum or needing to cut with an episiotomy.
We’re going to show you exactly what we did so you can too. You’ll gain confidence as you learn how to open your birthing body for your baby…
…and you’ll know exactly how to bring your baby down gently…
… you’ll be able to birth without tearing no matter the circumstances of your birth!
Come on board. Start your journey…
Here’s what our Trust has done. We’ve been doing this so long in a climate where the Natural Birth and Home Birth Midwifery Movements (since the mid1970s) has criticized the very concept that birth and birth-coaching skills have any validity much less essential.
After all, making ‘choices’ and a Birth Plan has been the go-to childbirth approach since the early 1980s. You just need to choose to not have an episiotomy and a hands-off approach to 2nd Stage.
But, too many women don’t have the birth they want because the ‘Choice-based’ approach to birth ignores two Universal Truths. There’s no way to know what your birth will be like and babies don’t come to plan.
We can’t be quiet any longer. If you don’t want to tear, be cut or left damaged then you need to specifically prepare your birth canal.
You know what the risks and damage are of having a tight vagina during birth. Your baby’s birth can be delayed which may result in your baby being stressed or needing to be resuscitated. You also know the risks to your own body. You might have a 3rd or 4th degree tear to or through your rectum that requires lots of stitches. Even a 2nd degree tear can leave life-long damage to your vagina and pain having sex throughout life. Or, by straining for hours to push your baby through your tight vagina, you might have a prolapse of your uterus, cervix, bladder or rectum and pee every time you laugh, jump, run or cough.
You want to prevent these potential issues.
It should just be normal and natural to help yourself and protect your body and baby!
Birthing Better families choose to prepare the birth canal and consider doing so their ‘homework’.
You must already feel very confident with your ability to work through the hard part of labor. You want to get to the pleasurable part of a vaginal delivery and you want this final passage to be pleasurable!
Just in case you’d like some great birth and birth-coaching skills, you’ll get those as part of the online birthing class along with how to prepare your birth canal.
Before we tell you what skills are in the class, we want to be very, very honest with you. We, Birthing Better families and Common Knowledge Trust, are passionate about skills for all births. We want you to become successfully skilled to birth your baby too.
Birthing Better fathers and mothers are thrilled by your efforts to have a safe and empowered birth and all of those who have come before you. Doing the activity of labor that can last for hours or days, being enjoyable or horrible is every woman’s Olympic Challenge, your Mt. Everest Climb and the most life transforming activity each woman does with her baby.
We chose to focus a lot of our birth preparation on preparing our body to open, be internally soft and pliable so this big object can come down, through and out our body with no or little trauma.
We commit. Our partner/birth-coach commits, and if we are going to birth alone, we double down into our commitment to birth our baby skillfully.
We work for an intact perineum – no tearing! Like learning any skill, we develop mastery once we get past feeling new and awkward. Birthing Better skills are easy to learn, integrate easily into our lives as we practice or apply them, make sense and take very little time per day.
It only takes 5 minutes/day from 32 weeks to reduce or prevent tearing our perineum during delivery.
It’s so easy to tell women all they need to do is ‘choose’ not to tear or not to have an episiotomy, ‘choose’ a supportive birth provider, make a Birth Plan and trust birth. But, there’s no way to know what your birth will be like and babies don’t usually come exactly as planned.
Giving birth is hard, hard, hard work… maybe you won’t tear, maybe your baby won’t get delayed in your vagina, maybe you won’t need an episiotomy and maybe you won’t be left with life-long damage to your body. Maybe is not the best way to go into birth.
…You need to do the work to learn skills to do the hard work using your skills. Your skills will pay off! We know!
Our Trust passionately supports your choice to birth without tearing your perineum. We know your success may well lie with you choosing to become highly skilled. We developed the skills so we could birth with an intact perineum!
We can show you exactly what skills prepare your body, how your partner/other can help you prepare your body. And we’ll show you how to put the skills all together and how to use them throughout your labor and delivery.
Here’s what we’ve put together as a comprehensive online birthing class to get you through labor and delivery:
- Specific skills to create space in your bony pelvis of pregnant/birthing body so your labor keeps moving smoothly (no “stalls” to hold your baby up – he or she just keeps coming down and out!)
- Further skills to help you soften the soft tissue inside your pelvis so your cervix dilates smoothly and you make consistent progress through labor
- This one simple sentence will keep you rested before labor starts – so you have plenty of energy for every stage of birth
- Learn skills to build teamwork with your birth-coach (these work after the birth to keep your relationship strong, too)
- How to create your 2nd and most important Birth Plan (plus why you need it)
- Understand the two parts of our brain and how to use them throughout labor to feel in control – and keep labor moving
- Why ‘practice’ is SO simple and effortless.
- Use each of the 5 phases of each contraction to stay in control throughout labor.
- The specific skills to prepare all of your birth canal so you open like a lotus flower rather than experience that dreaded ‘Ring Of Fire’.
- Simple way to ‘check’ yourself so you KNOW when to go to hospital or call your midwife.
- Why the best birth-coach is someone who will stay in your baby’s life after birth.
- Why women are always birthing alone (even with 100 people in the room) – and what this means of your birth
- Don’t be afraid if you’re a solo mom – we have exactly what you need to have a great birth – and get things off to a great start with your baby
- How your baby gives you messages in each contraction (and how to respond to keep labor moving)
- Explore your pelvic map so you know what space your baby is working through
- Learn the 3 reasons labors get stalled (and how to overcome them)
- How to discover your best breathing patterns that adjust and adapt so you stay calm and in control throughout labor
- Learn an important Truth … men and women are exactly alike (and how this will help your birth partner be a REAL help)
- Two simple lists that will guide you and your birth-coach to a positive birth in all circumstances.
- Come to grips with “I’m afraid/anxious about my birth’ or “I hate this (when you’re in labor)”
- The one skill to use if you have ‘interventions’
- We’ll give you the best skill to negotiate with your birth professional.
- Learn the secret to an empowered birth
- The 2nd Stage positions that keep your birth canal relaxed (and protect it from staying stretched postpartum – so you feel better faster and don’t need to worry about pelvic floor problems!].
This online birthing class targets and shares all the skills Birthing Better families developed.
- We’ll cover how pregnant women and birth-coach/other should go through the skills.
- We’ll help you move from a skills novice to an experienced, skilled birthing woman and birth-coaching dad/other.
Like all other Birthing Better VBAC families, you’ll feel ready, willing and able to birth your baby confident you’ll succeed in birthing your baby without tearing.
This specific and targeted class is your route to a successful labor and delivery. More importantly, these skills will expand your mind so you use them throughout your baby’s birth journey. This is what every birthing mom and dad need.
Usually, our Trust charges $150/hour to work one-on-one with expectant families yet we just charge an honest amount for all these birthing skills of $150US for immediate access online. But, of course, there’s a 20% discount when you purchase. And to sweeten the offer, there’s a complimentary one-on-one with the Director of Common Knowledge Trust who developed these skills with families. Ask her anything.
P.S. You know you want to birth without tearing – or having an episiotomy – but lingering fears and anxieties can undermine you confidence … particularly if you’ve torn before or had an episiotomy.
…to be honest, birth will always, always be unknown and things happen even with the best care. But, you are more likely to be injured in an auto accident and your baby via an accident at home. We can promise you the best skills because we developed, refined and picked them apart so we know they work!
Thousands of Birthing Better moms and dads have had empowered births with an intact perineum even when there are many challenges.
You, your partner/other, and baby have everything to gain and nothing to lose. These skills are for you!