Fear in labour- and what we can do to reduce it!

Most of us now in our 20’s, 30’s and 40’s grew up hearing ‘horror’ birth stories from our mothers, her friends and perhaps an estranged aunt, and unfortunately this has a lot to be said about how we prepare and enter labour in the modern day.

Do you remember Eastenders and Coronation Street episodes where girls would scream and shout in pain whilst they gave birth on the sofa, surrounded by panic and desperation? Perhaps you have watched the show ‘One Born Every Minute’, if you haven’t then it was a ‘real life’ series of women giving birth on the labour ward. Women tend to watch this to prepare themselves for labour and what to expect when it happens to them, but what they tend to be missing here is that the show is extremely dramatized with suspenseful music, ‘complicated’ births and cliff hangers. Having a straight forward spontaneous vaginal birth with minimal intervention would not make good television, there is no wonder that when we fall pregnant ourselves, we are terrified of giving birth!

So, fear unfortunately plays a HUGE role in this generation of women having babies. FEAR=TENSION=PAIN is a mantra that I use frequently in my teaching to explain how fear can affect the uterus in labour. Scientifically, (without going into too much detail) fear triggers a chemical response of adrenaline in the body, and adrenaline is NOT a friend of labour. When adrenaline is released into the blood stream, the lovely oxygenated blood that we need to make the uterus muscle work and contract smoothly and efficiently, is directed to our arms and our legs in a ‘fight or flight’ response. Our body thinks that there is real threat or danger, and our brain reacts to this as it would do encountering a lion on the high street- to either fight for our lives, or run away from said danger! Therefore, reducing the fear in labour and birth is SUPER important when aiming for a calm and positive birth experience.

How do we do this you ask? We need to essentially re-train the subconscious part of our brain to expect a more positive outcome when we enter labour ourselves. We cannot practice giving birth, so we use the next best thing. By watching positive birth videos, reading lots of positive birth stories, and listening to hypnobirthing scripts, we are teaching our brain that labour is a safe event!

Giving birth is something that women’s bodies were literally designed to do! And historically we have done a pretty good job at evolving the human race right? So, by giving yourself a good antenatal education, understanding the anatomy and physiology of the body during pregnancy and labour, surrounding yourself with positivity using various hypnobirthing techniques, you can and WILL have a positive birth experience, however your baby makes its entrance into the world!

If this sounds like something you would like to know more about then please get in touch. I have supported many couples antenatally to prepare for their birth and would love to support you on one of life’s most precious journey’s. Remember, you only get to birth this baby once!