Pain in Childbirth
- mydoulahannah
- May 30, 2023
- 3 min read
Pain comes from a response that is happening in our bodies.
One of those is from injury. I have pain in my sciatica from when I was in high school track. I should go get an MRI so I can get it fixed, I probably need surgery. It is painful and I am reminded that something is wrong almost daily.
There are growing pains. Do you remember these as a kid? THEY WERE THE WORST. They would keep me up at night. I would get them in my ankles and knees mostly. Growth in babies can be teething.
The last kind of pain is transformative pain. This is the kind of pain that you will feel in childbirth. Some people call birth a portal because you are bringing new life into this world from the last world.
Your uterus has been transforming for the last nine months to grow and develop the human being inside of you. There are lots of hormones that are running through your body to help bring your baby into this world, most of those hormones will also help you connect with your baby once they are born. When you are in labor, your uterus is contracting to get your baby to come out. Different pains besides the contractions might be telling you to change positions, be quiet or loud, or breathe differently.
Your body knows how to give birth. You have to surrender and trust it. Mindset has a huge effect on labor. If you are in fear, it will block those hormones because you don't feel safe, why would your body bring a baby into that setting?
If you have watched ANY movie from Hollywood, I would bet that you have seen the classic mom in pain and scared of dying. Unexpected scary things happening. Yelling at the husband that it's all their fault for getting her pregnant and all this pain. It's kind of funny... until it isn't. It is an uncontrollable and fearful based birth, which is not what God intended it to be.
God designed women to give birth. He has a plan for birth and that plan requires work on your part. You have to prepare. Besides the goal of having a healthy baby and healthy mom, your biggest fear is probably what pain you will experience in labor. But going to God and researching those fears is what will help you work through them. Man is the reason why there is so much fear in childbirth because they were and are trying to control it. You can't control what your birth will look like, but you can trust God and his plan for bringing his children into this world. A lot of your walks with God and callings from God look different from others, but childbirth and motherhood are a setting where we can bond, learn from and teach others, to grow with each other.
A tool that you can use during birth is called the Gate Pain Control. Basically, your body can only receive one message through the nerves and spine at once. Whether is it good or bad. So when you feel pain during childbirth you can do something positive to "block" the negative signal from going through. This can look like counterpressure, mindfulness, massage, TENs unit, hot and cold therapy, movement, and changing positions.
What questions do you have about childbirth pain?
Resources:
Mindful Childbirth by Nancy Bardacke
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