Hanging or Dangling to get that baby out!

In some cultures there is a birthing tree for women to hang from as contractions come and go. Any position that takes the weight off the feet and pelvic floor, allowing the cervix to open freely... in a house, good places are door frames, tops of doors although you may want to experiment in pregnancy to find places of a suitable height for you.

Our shed has a cross beam which was where I was for the majority of the first stage of baby number 2 and for number 3 I asked a friend to put me some hooks in the ceiling in our lounge. Tied some strong fabric around these to make a beam and heh presto a perfect birthing tool.

I believe this helped me to get the babies down down into the pelvis as I was doing some really inspired leg movements (almost like breast stroke one leg at a time) opening the hips but also such high circular movements as one might associate with the manoevre used with shoulder dystocia, freeing the foetus from being caught on bones  (not a technical term!)

Intuitively allowing my body to tell me what position i should be in, hanging allows all over body shaking, big stretches throughout to relieve tensions, and of course aides the pull of gravity by releasing any muscles that may stand in its way.

Lets get those hooks into maternity suites!! Just brilliant for pain relief - the best pain relief is to listen and act swiftly to what your body is telling you. This way, that way a bit, swaying, wiggling, swooning, rolling, hanging firm, and words I could not dream of to describe the skilled art in your muscle sequences, known only by you and probably for the most part unconscious.

Safe skills, safe birthing.

A 'Get that Baby Out!' approach to Pain Relief

I was blessed by having done an enormous amount of preparation work for my labours and births and pharmacological pain relief just didn't feel like an appropriate way to deal with the sensations for me. My overall feeling after three full term labours and one 3 month miscarriage is that the pain is there to get that baby out!

The best pain relief is to listen to the sensation and move accordingly. Jump up and down, rest on one side or another, wiggle, groove, lean, rest, circle, strectch, crawl, march, act on what you can feel. Take the attention away from the extraordinary power of uterine contraction if you can by using the body to respond to it.

I loved acupressure on the lower back and sacrum, using the voice almost as a vibrating tool to connect with the contraction, sing into it, deep and low. My god the memories are full on! I'm not pretending that its all plain sailing but I do know that we are Amazing! ! ! You can cope with it you know?! I have total faith in the incredible nature of our bodies and the symbiotic way that we can move with our babies to Let Go and to birth them into the world.

I have early memories of moving away from painkillers and what a breakthrough it was for me in dealing with illness. My family and I had a flu over Christmas ten years ago, we were all in various stages but all pretty bed bound. Instead of taking the familiar lemsips and beechams powders, I decided I had nothing to do but to get better and buried my pounding head in the pillow and gave in to the overwhelming surges of sensations in my body. I hallucinated a lot and slept a lot. I remember seeing images of seven pieces of thick leather type material and knew that my task was to sew them all together. I think the most intense and richest part of this flu experience was a day or two long, although, like labour, the hours and minutes of the outside world are very distant from the rhythm of the body and eventually I woke with an insatiable appetite, nearly fainting as I fixed myself some porridge and joyfully woke up to the world.

And so, after birth is the relief as those contractions finally give way to peace and rest. Get that baby out whichever way its going to come!