I know what you’re thinking. She means the Birth canal, right?
Nope!
While I could wax poetical about the different aspects, twists and turns, and unique properties of the pathway through the pelvic, not to mention a whole discussion of why we refer to this part of the body by a structure that involves high concrete walls (Um, not a good image here!) The tunnel I’m referring to is the mental one we all have to move into and through during the process of welcoming our babies. And how we engage with this mental space is the 3rd cornerstone in working with our labor.
Think of it this way, in any labor there is a point when things start to get “real.” This might be the place where you have to truly focus, or where your body begins to move from the first to the second phase of labor, or where you have to decide exactly how you are going to meet the specific circumstances of your laboring day. No matter how each labor unfolds every one (yes, even the planned Cesarean) has a point when you have to fully engage with labor and the process of birthing your baby. I refer to this point as “the tunnel.”
Inside the tunnel it is as you would expect a tunnel to be. It is usually dark, with all the uncertainty that can bring with it. It is also hot, and maybe a little claustrophobic. In the tunnel we often feel alone, as though we are walking this path without many people around us (because they don’t fit in the tunnel). And at the other end of the tunnel is your baby. We all have to go through this mental tunnel to meet our children. It is the moment we fully step into the role of parent, and it can be terrifying, exhilarating, and exhausting all in the same moment.
Here’s where this becomes the 3rd cornerstone in working with labor. Your mental tunnel started at a certain length. We don’t know what that was to begin with, but we can imagine there is some amount of time of being in the tunnel- and then when we come out the other side we meet our baby. We know the end point, but where we meet the starting point is actually affected by the choices we make earlier in and even before labor.
Let’s say labor begins, and we immediately drop into all those yoga labor coping techniques we’ve been practicing. We start rocking, deep breathing, We focus our mental attention on the moment we will welcome baby into our arms (or start listening to every guided birth meditation we have). The thing is, in doing all this effort at the start, we are bringing the moment when labor feels harder closer to us. We are doing this because the more energy we use early in labor, the more fatigued we will feel when labor begins to pick up- and fatigue makes almost any effort far more challenging. We brought the start of the tunnel closer, but the end of the tunnel didn’t move, so we ended up with a tunnel that is longer than it was originally. Ooops! This isn’t to say that if your labor is 15 hrs of hard work that you didn’t work with it well. You may have started with a 15hr “tunnel”, but as a doula I can definitely say that the labors where the birthing person started engaging with the labor right away, nearly always ended with a long, drawn out, period of intense focus and exhaustion.
So what does this mean for working with our labor? Delay the tunnel as long as possible! This means do anything and everything you can to distract yourself from the possibility that this might actually be the start of labor. Do a couple of yoga stretches (Spinning Babies 3 balances?), but then go do something else. Continue with your regular day until you have no choice but to engage with the labor process. Or as a good friend of mine says in her childbirth education classes “Live life, until all you can do is Labor.” This means initially treating labor as a warm-up run and making sure we get ample rest, food, hydration, and mental entertainment and distraction as the process kicks into gear. As I described in my own labor story, this meant that I spent early labor having a birthday brunch with my whole family, then went home and took a nap, then watched a funny movie (Princess Bride), and even after all that- when contractions were definitely beginning to become stronger and more noticeable- I still tried to ignore where this might be going until the moment when I felt myself being pulled into a mental focus that I didn’t feel I wanted to, or could, come out of easily. This was the start of my tunnel, and as it turned out, it was a good thing I had waited, because I had a major journey ahead of me.
So the bottom line: Push back the start of the tunnel as long as you possibly can. Plan out all the best distractions and activities you can give yourself in early labor. Have your favorite comfort foods (they increase Oxytocin) on hand, and lots of options for fluids. Stay in the space you feel the most comfortable and disinhibited, but don’t let that mean you can’t go to the movies if that’s your jam (just be open to the possibility you might not get through the whole film.
And then when you do feel yourself going into the tunnel, go in and don’t look back. In some ways entering the tunnel isn’t something you choose to do, it’s something you realize has happened, and then at that moment you turn fully to whatever your coping mechanisms might be. Turn off the distractions, and begin focusing on the work your body and baby are needing in the moment.
Key takeaways:
Labor has a point when things become intense- both mentally and physically. We call this point the Tunnel.
The tunnel in labor has a certain length to begin with, but what we do early in labor can extend or shift the start of the tunnel which thereby changes the overall length.
Engaging with labor through coping strategies and other active coping mechanisms early on make the tunnel longer because they use up energy before it is needed.
The best way to work with your own labor “tunnel” is to push the start back as far as you can by distracting and almost ignoring the early stages of labor, so that when you do begin using coping mechanisms they are truly necessary.