Preparing your body for birth
Its February, the love month… it’s not uncommon for people to turn up pregnant during this time. After baking that baby for 9-10 months, eventually you have to give birth to the baby. From my own pregnancy experiences, to clients, and friends, I’m realizing that I’ve never met a first time mom (sometimes 2nd or 3rd times mom) who hasn’t been afraid of the birthing process, afraid of the unknown. What to expect? Will it hurt? Will I tear? Will I poop? Will I progress in the arbitrary amount of time the hospital gives me, before they deem me a failure to progress and recommend I have a cesarean? Will I have an emergency during my home birth that requires I go to the hospital? Will my baby be ok? Will I be ok?
That is a lot to put on one person. A lot of stress during a time that you should be nesting and basking in the fact that you are growing a life inside of you. Which is why preparation for birth and beyond are so important.
Preparation in my mind begins with education. How do I get this baby out through my vagina?
The first thing to know, your vagina and/ or pelvic floor muscles DO NOT push out your baby!
Your uterus is a muscle and it squeezes or contracts in order to push your baby out. Braxton Hicks contractions are like practice contractions. Your uterus is like, hey what happens when I tense up all at once? Oh, that was interesting, I think I’ll try that again tomorrow or next week. Once early labor starts, your uterus is like hey, lets do these more frequently and start to develop a pattern with them. As your uterus is developing a pattern with contractions it is helping your baby make their way down the birth canal. So imagine your baby inside of your uterus is up above your pelvis, as you get closer to delivery, baby makes their way down to engage in your pelvis, or the top of your pelvic bowl (the pelvic inlet).
While baby is in the pelvic inlet, or making their way to the pelvic inlet, we want to help open that space, as your uterus is contracting. So during this time, our goal is to perform hip external rotation. This can look like deep squats, wide child’s pose (supported or not); or asymmetric activities like lunges or climbing the stairs, curb walking. Once baby’s head reaches the tail bone, they’re considered to be at station 0. This means we want to open the mid pelvis, and we do this with asymmetrical hip internal and external rotation. This can be seated windshield wipers, sidelying on a peanut birthing ball, or supported kneeling lunges. As baby makes their way towards the bottom of the pelvic bowl, or the pelvic outlet, we want to focus on hip internal rotation- so as you are pushing, we want positions that support at least one knee being turned inwards to face the other knee; i.e. hands and knees with knees in and feet out, or sidelying with top leg (knee) turned in.
Due to needing our pelvic floor muscles to relax and GET OUT of the WAY while pushing, and the various hip movements and available hip mobility you need during labor, it can be helpful to have some guidance or training BEFORE labor to help you prepare. Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist do just this! We teach you how to coordinate your breath with your belly, your thoracic spine/ ribcage, your pelvic floor- to create space and relaxation of the muscles, so that while your uterus is pushing out your baby, your pelvic floor is not tensing up and creating restriction to allow baby to descend down. To help your abdominals muscles squeeze around your uterus to create a bit of extra pressure as your uterus contracts to squeeze your baby out. To help you increase stability and flexibility around your pelvis and hips to move throughout your labor, helping to progress and decrease pain in the process. To create muscle memory, that will help you recover in the postpartum period.
Birth is a beautiful thing, to watch a life be born, while another life is transformed. There is something special about watching a woman harness her power through knowledge of how her body is moving to bring forth life, and the confidence that she has as she witnesses her own transition. Because the great Too Short said, “if you stay ready, you ain’t gotta get ready”.
