I mentioned in an earlier post the 4 principles I call the 4 cornerstones to working with your labor, but I wanted to take a moment to expand a bit on each one since they all can be key in how we focus our efforts in preparing for the labor process.
Ask someone the first thought they associate with childbirth, and they usually say pain. This idea has been reinforced for years. Story after story mentions the pain, sometimes focusing on it almost exclusively. Certainly there can be pain during the labor process, but the key to this cornerstone of working with your labor is this: Your experience isn’t about the pain. It's about your mental attitude towards it.
How we conceive of sensations dramatically changes how we experience them. Imagine going to the doctor for a shot. You could spend the hours leading up to the visit worrying about how big the needle will be, trying to remember the sensation of being pricked, even pinching yourself where the needle will go to anticipate feeling the stick. In fact, this was my strategy as a child facing vaccinations. But 99% of the time, the sensation of being stuck is not as bad as you expected. In fact, your fear of the sensation was worse than the actual experience.
Now apply this same thought process to the sensations of labor. For first-time moms, the added challenge is that you don’t know exactly what labor will feel like, so you don’t have a sensation to compare it to. Which seems more productive: spending months: worrying about how to manage the supposedly excruciating sensations or dealing with the anxiety so you can simply experience what you are experiencing when the time comes?
Working through and addressing your fear takes some stamina. As Pema Chodron- Buddhist nun and mother has often said, never under estimate our tendency to try and run when things become uncomfortable. Practicing staying with strong emotions, is a challenging task, but one which is well worth the effort. For if we are always running away (physcially or metaphorically) from painful situations, then eventually we become more and more resistant, and less able to adapt when something intense inevitably comes our way. This is even more true when it comes to the process of labor, and inflexibility there can often lead to more challenging circumstances. In contrast, learning to stay with the moment we are in, can actually help make the sensations of labor more manageable.
I should be clear here, I’m not suggesting we should start learning to sit with extreme physical discomfort during pregnancy. Physical pain is normally one way the body alerts us to danger or injury. If we encounter a situation where we are feeling strong and consistent pain in our body- especially without any context for why it might be happening, it makes total sense that we would try and find any way we could out of this situation. But along with the physical pain also comes the emotional reaction to it, and that is what can get in the way of our ability to work with the situation, and make things feel potentially worse.
I mentioned the impact of the nervous system in an earlier post on the Fear-Tension-Pain cycle? We want to remain in the parasympathetic nervous system as much as possible, so we avoid creating excessive tension which can impede the normal function of the uterine muscles. What triggers one side of the autonomic nervous system over the other is the thoughts and attitude towards the situation. How someone focuses on sensation has a dramatic impact on how the body then responds. This is why mental preparation is so key! I’m not going to be so extreme as to claim that labor doesn’t hurt (though there are women who say it didn’t). Mom will certainly feel something strong during the birth process, but how we frame our attitude towards this sensation can impact whether we activate fight or flight or rest and digest.
When I teach childbirth education classes I talk about the Fear-Tension-Pain cycle and suggest to my students that if they are feeling strong, painful sensations during labor that they shouldn’t simply ignore them. That if they experience something they would genuinely define as physical pain (grinding, burning, tearing) they should not ignore or just accept it, they should get up and move, or change locations, or hydrate, but DO something!
But beyond the physical sensations there is the mental aspect, and being able to sit with the discomfort of uncertainty while continuing to hold faith in the body’s ability is what ultimately helps make the situation workable. But we can’t keep working with it, if we are completely panicked about how much this contraction hurts and whether we can survive this experience.
The process of birth is a huge physical endeavor, one which the body does not accomplish via brute force. No matter how strong the uterine muscles are, they must still work in tandem with one another, and the baby must still rotate through the pelvis. The process of working with these conditions requires mental focus. It is crucial to become familiar with your thoughts about the labor and birth process and everything that surrounds bringing a baby into the world. What we focus on is what increases. The same experience could be hell to one person or heaven to another, depending on where we allow, or even direct, our thoughts.
Meditation and relaxation practices offer the mind and body time to rest in the healing space of the parasympathetic nervous system. Examining habitual thoughts allows us to release doubts and fears that do not help us feel empowered and able to work with our situation. You have to find what works for you personally. There is not one right way to birth, except for the way that is right for you on the day your baby is born. But at the end of the day, getting to know your mind has a dramatic impact on the experience of birth.
Simple meditation instructions:
(For further meditation instructions check out this article by my meditation instructor David Nichtern.)
Take your seat- Sit in a way that is dignified
Place your attention- Feel the sensation of your breath
If your mind wanders, acknowledge it wandered and come back to the breath
That’s it. Just be with whatever is arising, just for this moment. You don’t have to like it, or dislike it, just allow yourself to actually feel it. Practicing this way even for just a few minutes helps cut through the discursive thought patterns we often have coursing through our minds. And when that happens, we have a moment of clarity, and possibly a moment of insight. And that insight may be what helps us work with whatever the sensations of labor are at this moment.
Key takeaways:
The experience of labor is affected by our mental attitude towards it
Anxiety and fear can increase the pain and suffering of the labor process
Spending time sitting with uncomfortable emotions makes us more willing and able to stay with intense emotions in other scenarios
Labor isn’t achieved by brute force alone. Our mind is intertwined in the process and getting to know our mind helps unwind the labor process too.