Tips for Early Labor

Early labor is a very exciting time. After 9+ months of waiting to meet your baby, not to mention the discomforts of late pregnancy, most mommies are ready to get their babies OUT! So when you start feeling those first twinges of early contractions, it is hard not to get out your Contraction Master and focus all your attention on them. Here are a few tips for early labor that have worked well with my clients.

(photo source)

1. If you think you're in labor, ignore it for a while.
As long as your water hasn't broken, if you are feeling a contraction every now and then, it's best to just ignore it. Why? For a few reasons. First of all, you may be in verrry early labor. You could have sporadic contractions on and off for days. Secondly, when you are thinking about contracting and wondering how far apart they are and how they feel, you are not letting your primal brain take over. When you overanalyze everything your body is doing in labor, it tends to slow down, if not stop all together. Hackney Doula had a great post about this on her blog. Also, paying too much attention to it makes it more intense than it needs to be. Say you bump your leg and get a bruise. If you keep poking at it and looking at it and focusing on it, it is going to hurt a lot worse than if you were to just leave it alone and go about your business. The more you focus on contractions in early labor, the more intense they feel. On that note...

2. Go about your normal business.
This piggy backs after #1. Just ignore things and do what you would normally do. Go ahead and do your grocery shopping. Take your older child to the park. Do some work in the garden. Not only will going about your normal routine keep your mind from focusing too much on labor, it will also help labor progress more easily and quickly by being active and relaxed.

3. Watch a funny and or romantic movie.
Laughter and romantic feelings enhance good labor hormones. Same goes for kissing and cuddling with your partner. According to this article, "laughter helps control pain, lower blood pressure, relieve stress, and increase muscle flexion. It also shuts off the flow of stress hormones, increases the body's ability to utilize oxygen, and triggers a flood of beta endorphins, the brain's natural morphine-like compounds that can induce a sense of euphoria." Romantic feelings enhance the flow of oxytocin, which helps contractions get into a good pattern and effectively open your cervix.

4. If you feel like it, go for a walk.
Walking will help your labor progress nicely. Plus it just feels good to get fresh air and a little easy exercise.

5. If it's night time, go to sleep!!! 
I can't tell you how many times someone has thought they were in labor only to stay up all night and then be exhausted the next day for the "real deal". You are going to need all the strength and stamina you can get for active labor. You don't want to be exhausted in active labor and pushing. Listen to a relaxing cd. Take a bath. Go.to.sleep!

When labor goes to the next level (more active stage), you will know. Contractions will get harder to ignore. You may have to stop and breathe through them. You may start to feel more serious and less into the distractions. You may notice.. "hey, these are starting to feel like they are coming close together"... then have your husband/partner discreetly time a few of them. Call your doula. And then go back to what you were doing before. The less you focus on it, the more relaxed you will be and the faster it will go by.

Happy early laboring :)

How "Effective" is Your Contraction? - An L&D Nurse Trick

In the hospital with one of my clients, an L&D nurse shared a little trick for her to use to determine if her contraction was a really "effective" one. She told her to tap her forehead, and notice how hard it was. Then she said to tap her nose, which feels softer. Finally she told her to tap her chin, which is somewhere in between the forehead and the nose in firmness.

She explained that when a mom is having a contraction, she can tap her stomach and compare it to the forehead, nose, and chin. If it feels hard like the forehead when tapped, it is a very strong and effective contraction. If it is soft like the nose, it is not a very strong one. If it is somewhere in between, like the chin, it is not as effective but still getting work done. I had never heard this before and thought it was a neat little trick.

How else does a mom know when a contraction is strong and effective?
 - It is 45 seconds or longer. 1 minute contractions are especially effective at opening and thinning the cervix.
 - Mom can't talk through them and needs to use her relaxation techniques

That all being said - this was told to the mama in order to help her to know if she was in active labor or not and whether or not she should come back to the hospital. I share this with a grain of salt as well, because a woman can be having contractions that don't seem effective to textbook standards, but is progressing very nicely. Therefore, this is not something that I think a laboring woman should be dwelling on. She doesn't need to be tapping her stomach and forehead through every contraction to see if it is "strong enough" ;-).

In fact, The Midwife Thinking's Blog wrote a post about "the effective contraction". It is very well done and worth a read.

So mamas... no obsessive tapping of the bellies, but maybe once or twice just for kicks :)