Banish Your Birthing Fears
Pregnancy is a super magical time. When you think about what your body is doing - growing an entire human being - it's hard not to be in total awe of yourself. But at the same time, it's also bloody terrifying. Mainly because as you grow this entire human being, you start to realise that it also has to come out somehow… something that feels absolutely impossible. Rest assured, it is 100% possible. Here are the three most common fears I hear, and why you shouldn't lose too much sleep over them.
1. "My vagina is too small. There's no way a baby will get out"
You know it's a totally ridiculous thing to think, but you just can't help it. Yep, we've all been there. We all think we have teeny, tiny vaginas - with a hole the size of a pin's head in comparison to a baby's head. Don't focus on its size right now - focus on the fact that the female body has been designed specifically to birth babies, and has been doing so for millions of years. When your time comes, your body will also do the miraculous things that it is designed to do. It would be a very cruel trick of nature to give us a tool totally unfit for purpose.
Still feel nervous? What if I told you that contrary to what you might think, the vagina doesn't just stretch and tear to make way for the baby, it unfolds. A good visualisation is the Norwegian coastline (stay with me!!) - a straight line along Norway's sea borders is only 2,650km, however along the coast there are many fjords, islands and bays, meaning that if you were to unfold and stretch out the entire coast it would actually measure over 25,000km. Your vagina is just like Norway. The space already exists, and as surges dilate your cervix, you are simply opening this space up, unfolding the coastline. It's an amazing feat of engineering which has been working perfectly for millions of years. YOU GOT THIS.
There are also some things that you can do to help prepare your vagina for the task at hand - the best being learning how to relax, and practicing doing it. Being calm and in control will allow your body to do what it is designed to do. Feeling frightened and anxious will only cause you to tense up, hindering all of that beautiful unfolding. A good trick is to visualise your cervix opening like a flower - unfolding and blooming. Another good one is to relax your jaw. You hold a lot of tension in your jaw, which is also an area directly linked to your vagina. Try it now. Just relax it, let go. Breathe deeply. Feel the difference? Ask your birth partner to keep a close eye on your jaw during labour.
Useful affirmations:
My body is perfectly designed to birth my baby
I trust my body knows exactly what it is doing
2. "I won't be able to cope with the pain"
This is the one which causes the most anxiety, but the one which you can do the most to dispel. Turn off One Born Every Minute. Stop listening to your sister/mum/friend talk about their terrifying birth experience. Forget every birth scene you've ever watched on the TV. It's all rubbish, and it is all contributing to your subconscious fear about the pain of childbirth.
Believe it or not, pain in labour is actually unnatural. Birth is an instinctive bodily function designed over millions of years. We have the perfect system in place to birth babies - a body that is able to stretch and unfold, produce a cocktail of wonderful natural drugs (more powerful than morphine!), and teams of muscles designed to work in partnership with each other. Pain is usually caused by us getting in our own way and inhibiting this system. When we become fearful, our bodies tense up - sending us into fight or flight mode, which diverts the flow of oxygen away from our uterus and towards our arms and legs, and hinders our production of all the natural drugs.
Learning how to relax through labour with breathing exercises, visualisations, massage and affirmations is the best preparation you can invest in. Surround yourself with positive birth stories, photographs and videos. Repeat positive affirmations. Look forward to meeting your baby.
Useful affirmations:
Every surge brings me closer to my baby
I trust my body and my baby
I can do anything for a minute
3. "My vagina will be ruined forever. Will it ever go back to normal?"
Once you understand that your vagina is simply unfolding, rather than being forced open, it's much easier to understand that it will absolutely return to normal afterwards, and surprisingly quickly too. I'm not going to lie, it's never going to be exactly the same, but it's pretty damn close. You have heard it before, but doing your pelvic floor exercises is the best way to ensure you bounce back quickly. They are annoying. But your vagina deserves them, trust me.
Useful tips for pelvic floor exercises — to tighten and lift your pelvic floor muscles, imagine doing the following at the same time: squeezing your bottom as if stopping a poo, squeezing to stop the flow of wee, and squeezing as though you're gripping a tampon in your vagina. The easiest way to make sure you do them is to combine them with another daily activity - like brushing your teeth, waiting for the bus/train, or doing the washing up.
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