Tag: antenatal education

Things For You To Try That Could Shorten Labour

If you’re pregnant, you may be wondering what you can do to shorten labour – because who wants to spend longer than necessary in labour rather than meeting your baby?! The good news is that there are several things you can do to help prepare your body for labour and potentially shorten the process, which can last between 14-21 hours depending on whether it’s your first baby or not. But of course, all bodies are different and there are lots of factors that affect how quickly a baby comes.

Stay Active In Pregnancy

Staying active throughout your pregnancy can help you prepare for labour and birth. Exercise strengthens your muscles, including your pelvic floor muscles, which can make pushing easier. Walking, swimming, and antenatal yoga are all great options for staying active. People who exercise 3 times a week in pregnancy can reduce the length of their labour by 50 minutes!

Antenatal Yoga

Yoga and other forms of stretching are excellent ways to help get your body for labour and birth. A lot of the movements help to keep you upright and open up your pelvis, as well as stretching and releasing the psoas muscle which supports the pelvic floor. If any of the muscles in your pelvic area are tight or imbalanced it can cause suboptimal positioning for baby, which in turn can cause labour to be longer. Yoga can also help turn your baby into an optimal position with their head down and chin tucked, and if baby’s in a great position then that can help reduce the amount of time it takes to meet them.

Antenatal Education

You wouldn’t head off to a job interview without doing some prep work first would you? Giving birth is exactly the same – birth preparation can help you prepare for your labour and birth. Knowing what your body does when giving birth, how you can optimise your birth physiology and what you might encounter if your birth throws you a curve ball can really help you reduce your stress hormones when the big day arrives. And we know stress hormones impact oxytocin and can slow your labour right down. The good news is we cover all of that and more in my classes – check out the store page to see what options suit you.

Eat Dates

Research tells us that eating dates can reduce the length of your labour as well as increasing your chances of going into spontaneous labour rather than being induced. Eating them also decreases the chance of having heave blood loss after birth. Around 7 dates a day from 36 weeks of pregnancy might mean you get a little bit bored of dates, but not bad for a humble fruit!

Raspberry Leaf Tea

Many women and birthing people swear to the power of raspberry leaf tea to tone the uterus and make contractions more effective, and in doing so making labour shorter. The evidence behind it isn’t robust but we do know it’s not going to cause any harm. Worth a shot, eh?

Oxytocin Boosters

Oxytocin stimulates contractions. Having a good healthy dose of oxytocin in your system will ensure your contractions are as effective and as efficient as possible leading to a shorter labour. Without enough oxytocin in the system, your contractions will slow and things will take longer. Find out ways you can encourage oxytocin here.

Breathe!

Breathing is a very powerful tool when giving birth. Not only does it help you relax which reduces physical tension and soreness, it trips your parasympathetic nervous system and reduces stress hormones – allowing oxytocin levels to rise and the wonderful positive feedback loop mentioned above to start. But that’s not all! A steady breathing pattern makes sure your body has plenty of oxygenated blood to carry to the birth muscles, and well oxygenated muscles work more effectively.

Continuous Support Partner

Whether this is from a birth partner, a doula, or both, research tells us that having a continuous support during birth can help improve outcomes. Having a non-medical person to help support you in different positions, with oxytocin boosters, to help you relax, and to make suggestions if things seem to be slowing down can help you optimise your birth.

Stay Home

We know that people who plan home births have fewer interventions because things aren’t progressing as quickly as expected as well as a whole heap of other benefits. Even if you’re not planning a home birth, staying at home for longer helps keep your oxytocin levels up which can reduce the amount of time you’re in labour (and hospital) for.

Try Different Birth Positions

Changing positions during labour can help ease pain and pressure and encourage your baby to move down. Some positions to try include squatting, kneeling, or standing and leaning forward. You can also try using a birthing stool or a birth sling. Positions that help you be upright and open are great ones to try. Being on a bed on your back generally slows things down as your body has to work against gravity and the pelvis doesn’t have space to open.

Use a Birthing Ball

Sitting on a birthing ball can help open up your pelvis and encourage your baby to move down. The gentle bouncing motion can also help ease pain and discomfort during contractions. If you don’t have a birthing ball, you can use a regular exercise ball or even a chair.

Eat, Drink and Be Merry

Staying hydrated and fuelled with calories is important during labour, as dehydration and not having enough calories can slow down the process. Make sure to drink to thirst (or have someone remind you) and snack on calorie dense food throughout labour.

Consider Medical Intervention

For some people, no matter what they try, labour will be slow progress. This might be due to lots of different factors such as baby’s position. If your labour isn’t progressing your midwife or doctor may suggest medical help such as an oxytocin drip or rupturing your membranes. When interventions are offered they must always discuss the benefits, risks and alternatives with you so you can give informed consent.

There are no guarantees when it comes to giving birth but we do know that lots of things can help – and hinder! – the process. Make sure the team around you know how they can help you with some of these things.

Where Can You Give Birth: Your Birth Place Options

Women and birthing people are supposed to be informed of their choices about where they can give birth and, crucially, are supposed to be supported in their choice. But we know this doesn’t always happen – according to the CQC Maternity Survey Results published in January 2023 a fifth of women said they were not offered any choices about where they can have their baby. Even if they are, the choices are often presented as a list rather than a proper discussion about them. How can you pick something as important as where to birth your baby if you don’t know what each option means?!

Read on for an overview of your choices of where you can give birth.

Home Birth

A home birth is exactly what it says – you give birth at home. Midwives come to you when you’re in labour and stay until you’ve given birth. They examine you post birth, help you with a shower, feeding, and tuck you into bed and go on their merry way. There is NOTHING like getting in to your own bed after giving birth and not sharing a postnatal ward with several other mums, partners and babies.  

You’re supposed to be told that home birth is a good choice for ‘low-risk’ women as there’s a lower intervention rate and the outcomes for mums and babies is no different to in a hospital setting – there’s lots of evidence for this. You’re also supposed to be supported in a home birth if you’re ‘high risk’. You can choose to birth at home whether you’re low or high risk.

To hear more about what I’ve got to say about home birth, click here or here.

Birth Centre / Midwife Led Unit

Midwife Led Units (MLUs) are generally called Birth Centres. They come in two variations:

Alongside Midwifery Unit (AMU) – these are alongside the obstetric unit, ie on the same hospital site. Because they’re on the same site if you need extra support such as certain types of pain relief or necessary interventions, it’s a short trip usually taking a matter of minutes in order to receive it (and doctors do also have legs and can come to you if it’s really necessary!).

Freestanding Midwifery Unit (FMU) – these are on a separate site to the obstetric unit. Because they’re not in the same place it will take more time to receive extra help. If you needed that support you would need to be transferred to the local obstetric unit.

Midwifery Led Units are, as the name suggests, led by midwives rather than care being shared between midwives and doctors. They tend to be a little bit more ‘home from home’ like than labour wards and often have birth pools, twinkly lights and pretty murals on the wall. If it’s a particularly well-equipped one you might even find birth ropes, birth stools and other exciting birth equipment.

You have the right to choose to give birth at a Birth Centre if you wish, however sometimes this may involve a negotiation as your trust literally hold the keys and may encourage you to believe that it’s ‘not allowed’.

Labour Ward / Delivery Suite / Obstetric Unit

On Labour Wards care is shared between doctors and midwives. This is generally where those who are expected to have a complicated birth are recommended to give birth, however sometimes your definition of “expected to” may differ from your caregiver’s definition! It’s also where caesarean births take place.

The environment tends to be more clinical looking and less oxytocin-promoting than at home or in Birth Centres, which is a bit silly because people having complicated births are arguably more in need of oxytocin promotion! There is access to more significant pharmacological pain relief such as opiates and epidurals if you want them. By definition, more interventions happen here – because they can’t take place at home or on the Birth Centre.

You have the right to choose to give birth in a Labour Ward either vaginally or by planned caesarean section if you want to. However, you should be advised that unnecessary intervention is more likely to happen on a Labour Ward than either at home or Birth Centres.

So there’s your whistle stop tour of where you can give birth. Where you choose to give birth to your baby is a really important decision because even planning to give birth in one place but actually giving birth in another can change your birth outcomes. So make sure you really consider it and don’t dismiss any of the places until you’ve thought about them properly. And remember, you can change your mind at any point before your baby arrives!

Antenatal Education: Why Is It Important?

The pregnancy and perinatal period is one of immense change for a woman as she gets to grips with becoming a mother, both physically and emotionally. In many regards, particularly for first-time mothers, pregnancy is a threshold which separates the known world from one that will be radically different. In this context, emotional balance is likely to be disturbed readily and substantially. Antenatal classes provide a safe space for women to explore this change and empower themselves with knowledge and confidence, while reflecting in an informed manner on the change that awaits them. As will be elucidated here, this provision of balance is achieved through the careful consideration of and respect for the relevant social, hormonal and bonding factors, as well as each mother’s own belief structures and anxieties.

A big consideration when thinking about a woman’s changing emotional state while pregnant is that of her adaptation to her new role, either as a first-time mother or when changing the family dynamic to include more children. Both parents are understandably nervous about that which they don’t yet know and this can cause extreme challenges within the family unit and for the parent’s mental health. Cowan and Cowan argue that there is a “conspiracy of silence[1]” around the pregnancy and newborn period that can make parents feel that they’re the only ones that are struggling. One only needs to take a quick glance at the multitude of mother forums online to see a glut of ‘am I the only one…’ and ‘is this normal…’ postings by mothers who suffer from a lack of support around them. One of the big reasons that women seek out antenatal classes is to make friends with other like-minded people in a similar situation to them, and a key role for the antenatal teacher is to help facilitate friendships within the groups they teach. Having a support network of people going through similar experiences will help de-mystify their journey and ease many worries of each woman.

Classes where a woman can take some time to focus and centre herself will be beneficial to those who are dealing with pregnancy difficulties bigger than those ‘normal’ feelings and worries. Helping mothers to use techniques to have control of their own labour can help to counteract the negative impacts of health concerns that the mother may have about her own body or that of the baby. Antenatal classes help to empower women to make genuine change over their pregnancy and to benefit from the confidence this gives them. Antenatal teachers help a woman take charge of her body, filling her with self-belief by empowering her with knowledge and therefore control of her pregnancy and birth, the definition of antenatal classes according to Dick-Read who champion antenatal education to remove anxiety and dread, inhibiting fear and replacing it with confidence and increase normal labours and pregnancies[2].

There have been studies which link the level of a mother’s bonding with her child after birth to the amount of engagement with her pregnancy and the thoughts she has around it and what the baby will be like once born[3]. Benoit, Parker and Zeanah[4] linked this to the security of attachment the baby has to its parents in the first year of life. Antenatal classes encourage the mother to focus on her baby, creating a peaceful bond between them and soothing anxieties that they may not develop a strong bond. Antenatal teachers aim to anchor these bonding moments through techniques used in pregnancy which baby will recognise and be soothed by once born. Classes are spaces within which mothers can reflect on their pregnancy and learn to prepare for the future; this has substantial benefits for her emotional balance.

It is not unusual for a pregnant woman to experience feelings of stress, anxiety or depression; often this is from the usual worries and concerns a woman has when embarking on a pregnancy as seen previously, and it is important that we encourage women to let these worries go. Creating balance and harmony in her mind has a knock-on effect on her body; there are a number of studies which show various physical responses to anxiety and stress hormones in the pregnant body including reducing oxygen and calorie intake to the baby, maternal cortisol crossing the placenta and restricting foetal brain growth, growth delays, reduced levels of serotonin, reduced ‘quiet and active alert states’ when born and increased risk of hyperactivity in the long-term[7]. As Gaskin alludes to, when the mind is steadied the body can open for birth[8] and it is our aim to equip each mother with the tools to help balance her mind as well as her body.

[1] Cowan, C.P.P. and Cowan, P.A. (1993) When partners become parents: The big life change for couples. New York: Basic Books.

[2] Grantly, D.-R. (2006) Childbirth without fear the principles and practice of natural childbirth. London: Pollinger in Print, United Kingdom.

[3] http://www.refuge.org.uk/get-help-now/what-is-domestic-violence/domestic-violence-and-pregnancy/

[4] Dex, S and Joshi, H (2005) Children of the 21st Century: From Birth to Nine Months. Bristol: Policy Press

[5] Stern D (1985) The Interpersonal World of the Infant. London: Karnac Books

[6] Benoit D, Parker K and Zeanah C (1997) Mother’s representations of their infants assessed pre-natally: Stability and association with infants’ attachment classifications. Journal of Child Psychology, Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines

[7]https://www.rc.org.uk/sites/default/files/Emotional%Wellbeng_Guide_WEB.pdf

[8] Gaskin, I.M. (2003) Ina May’s guide to childbirth. New York: Random House Publishing Group.