(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
Welcome to the birth prep podcast. I'm Taylor, your birth bestie, who's here to support you as you plan and prepare for the unmedicated birth of your dreams. If you're ready to ditch the fear, conquer the hospital hustle, support that bump and bod, and walk into the delivery room like the HGIC you were born to be, then buckle up, babe.
This is where it all goes down. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the birth prep podcast. It's time for another HGIC hotline, where you send in the questions and I dish out the real talk, the hot takes, and the practical advice to help you own your birth experience.
Today, we have some wonderful questions. As per usual, you guys ask great questions. One of the questions I get a lot, okay, this question gets asked a lot.
And honestly, you probably have the same question. So we're going to dive into that one first. Elizabeth said, I am so nervous about tearing.
How do I prevent it? I can't promise that these tips are going to prevent tearing. But these tips are evidence-based and minimizing tearing, at the very least. Tearing is one of the top fears that I hear from moms.
And I get it, girl, you know, like that's a sensitive area. We do not want to be tearing. We do not want to have super bad wounds down there.
We definitely don't want to get stitches down there. Like it is not a fun experience. But the good news is your body was designed for this experience.
Your body is designed to stretch and move. And there are actually proven ways to reduce your risk of which I'm going to share with you right now. I have five things that I have personally done.
I have not torn during my last two birth experiences. I had like a very tiny superficial tear with one of them and I opted out of stitches and everything was fine. I was like, Oh, you know what? I was going to say TMI, but it's not TMI around here.
I was wiping completely fine. Like a couple of days after birth, like I didn't need the Perry bottle. I was just a dab and go kind of girl for a little bit there, but I was feeling fine.
A couple of days later now compared to my first couple of birth experiences night and day, because that crap was awful. Let me tell you how I pulled it off. The biggest thing and evidence tells us that this is the biggest thing is get off your back, girl.
Do not be pushing on your back, push an upright position, lying on your back, literally closes your pelvis and puts more pressure on your perineum. And that leads to tearing pretty massive tears for some women positions like hands and knees, squatting, standing, even like getting in like a throne position on your hospital bed, where you're kind of sitting on the bed, but your butt's off a little bit. So they have access to the, to the exit of your baby lying on your back.
There's not much movement that's happening. So when you are in those hands and knees positions, squatting, standing, you're able to move a little bit as you listen to your body and what it needs in that moment. Plus you've got gravity on your side and your pelvis is a lot more open in those positions as well.
Your pelvis literally shifts and moves. It is not a stationary object. So work with your body, not against it.
Get off your back. Number two, let your body do the pushing. Coached pushing is what we typically see in a hospital setting where they're counting.
They're telling you to push. They're telling you to hold your breath. This actually increases your tearing risk.
Instead, try breathing your baby down or pushing only when you feel your body give you the urge to push. Now with my fourth baby, I was trying to let my body do all the work on its own. And I, a girl was getting tired.
Okay. It was like 24 hours. I had been in labor.
I had slept throughout the night. Like I, I laid down, rested my body, paused the experience. I'd started right back up in the morning, right where we were.
And I was just tired at that point. And I was ready to just be done. And I'm like, I know if I push with my body, I could have this baby out in, in like minutes, not even.
And I was right. I did like two or three pushes and he was in my arms and that was, but I was waiting for my body's urge to push. And I didn't tear.
And with my fifth baby, I was able to actually, I was totally fine. I wasn't tired at all. I was just enjoying myself.
I had just woken up from a nap, like maybe 30 minutes before I started pushing. And I just let my body do all the work. I breathed through it.
I let my body handle all of it. And it was, um, it was really nice. It didn't feel like I was pushing the baby out.
And the result for that was no tearing. When you are holding your breath during your pushing experience, and you are not giving your body the oxygen that it needs, it's called purple pushing. So if you want to look up these terms like coached, pushing, purple, pushing, intuitive, pushing, breathing baby down, breathing baby out.
These are some things you can start to educate yourself on. That way you can understand what the difference is and what you would like to do for your experience while we're on this topic. And honestly, in hindsight, this probably should have been number two.
And that last one should have been number three. But we're gonna just do it anyways. I strongly recommend that you wait for your body to tell you when to push not somebody in a coat.
Okay, this is something that I've done with four out of five of my birth experiences minus the first one when somebody told me like, hey, let's do some practice pushes. I, I told people when I was ready to push, I got to the point where it was like, okay, it's time I feel the pressure my body is wanting to bear down my body is wanting to do this process. It is time I'm telling you it's it's time.
With my second baby, I was like just six centimeters at the last time they checked me. And they didn't believe me. And they were like, we need to do another cervical check.
We need to blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I it's time. I've done this before.
I know that it's time. And I didn't advocate for myself. I didn't know I had an option to say no to the circle check.
So they did it anyways. And it was honestly excruciating and awful. And then they were like, okay, well, we'll get the doctor.
I'm like, okay, well, I you should have already probably ordered that. But okay, I guess we didn't want to believe the woman that's actually birthing but whatever. But really, when somebody is telling you when it's time to push when your body already has that ability to do it for you.
We shouldn't be trusting somebody who shoved their fingers up there and was like, okay, yep, you're definitely ready when you don't feel ready. Okay, because that leads to way longer pushing times, way more stress on your body, less energy for you and for your baby. And it just will lead to tearing more often than not.
So we're going to skip that. We're going to just wait till we feel ready. Okay, the time will come.
I promise. Number four is keeping your pelvic floor flexible. We are not aiming for a strong pelvic floor, we are aiming for one that can relax and not just be always tense.
So you can look into different pelvic floor exercises. I know kegels are great. That's what I always did.
And there's mixed opinions about that. But like they work. They they teach you how to to flex and release and it like it's helpful to do.
But you can try some deep squats, some hip openers. You can even pursue pelvic floor therapy if that's something you're able to do just to make sure that your muscles can stretch when it's needed. And finally, another thing that I did in preparation for not tearing was to go and find evidence that it was possible.
I worked on my mindset about it. I mentally prepared myself for that experience. I have always only heard people tearing and that had always been my experience.
And my brain wanted to tell me Taylor, you've always torn that's not an option for you. And I went and found other people who had always torn and then did the work and then pulled off a different experience. So that my brain could see that hey, they did it, I can do it too.
Okay. And same thing for you. I did it, you can do it too.
So let me be evidence for you today that your desire makes sense. And it's also possible. And doing these things are evidence based ways that you can minimize or completely avoid tearing.
Okay, I'm done yelling at you. Thank you, Elizabeth for that beautiful question. Next we have crystal crystals getting real here, y'all.
She said, I know I should trust my body, but I honestly don't. How would I change this? Crystal, you make sense to feel this way. Trust isn't automatic.
It's built through education, preparation and mindset shifts. I hear this all the time. I love the idea of trusting my body.
But like what if I don't? And let me tell you, you are not alone. Society has conditioned us to doubt our bodies. We are taught that from a very young age that our bodies are broken.
They need all this help. It's an emergency when our body goes into labor. We see it all the time portrayed in media.
We see it from our past down from generation to generation of women experiencing birth the same way, being told that their bodies are broken and they need all this help. It makes sense. So you are totally correct in feeling this way.
But here is the truth. Your body was made for this. God designed birth to work, not to fail.
The more you learn, the more your trust grows. So here are three ways where you can start building that relationship of trust with your body's ability to birth. Number one, learn how birth actually works.
The amount of educated medical professionals that literally truly do not understand how birth actually works blows my mind. Birth isn't just random chaos. Your body has a built-in hormonal blueprint that guides it.
When you understand things like oxytocin and the fear-tension-pain cycle and how contractions work and endorphins and adrenaline and all the ways that they work together, you stop feeling like birth is happening to you and you start realizing that you're designed for this and your body knows what it's doing. I'm sorry, you can't convince me that your body that built that tiny little human being from literal scratch with zero instructions, including a disposable organ, mind you, that's crazy. But your body doesn't know how to birth it.
It doesn't know that. It's just broken all of a sudden. No, I'm sorry.
I can't be convinced. I'm unsubscribing to that belief. And honestly, you should too.
Number two, flood your mind with positive birth stories. What you feed your mind matters. We've talked about this a lot over here on this podcast.
Your mindset matters. It's so important. It can shift so much for you.
Again, that fear-tension-pain cycle. If you are constantly hearing traumatic birth stories, you will believe that birth is dangerous. Your brain is going to be like, okay, well, that's what birth is, so that's how it's going to be for us.
I had heard the stories of the positive home birth experiences. We had a family friend that had a couple home births. I knew that there were women experiencing these nice, lovely births, but I didn't know that that was available to everybody.
I thought that's just how they birthed. And for most people, it sucked. For some people, I don't know, God's favorites, the select few, whatever you want to call them, they got to experience birth in a nice, wonderful way.
But that probably wasn't going to be me because 99% of the time, birth sucks, and that just is what it is. But that's not true. That's just because that was my view of birth.
Those were my beliefs about birth. And guess what? When I went in and created a very, very accurate depiction of my beliefs, that solidified my beliefs that day. And I carried those same beliefs right into the next birth and did the whole thing all over again, created a very, very similar result.
Whatever you believe about birth, your body will believe you. And I never used to believe that little statement. Oh, that's so silly.
That's so dumb. That is the truth. So seek out some positive, powerful, unmedicated birth stories to remind yourself what is possible.
If it is possible for them, it is possible for you. And on that note, ties in right with number three, start speaking life over your birth. Start speaking birth affirmations, scriptures, whatever you need to do to get on board with those beliefs, even if it feels silly at first, okay? Like the way you talk about birth shapes your beliefs about birth.
So start speaking things like my body was made for this. God designed my body to birth. God designed birth to work.
Like he didn't mess this up. I trust my body and my baby. Speak it until you believe it.
And if you're not quite there, like I trust my body because you're telling me you don't trust your body. How can we get there? I am willing to keep educating myself until I trust my body. I am willing to keep looking into the process until I feel that trust in my body.
Call those little bridge thoughts, get you to the actual thought you want to think. So if the thought you want to think feels so out of reach, what are some little steps that you can take to get closer and closer to that thought until you're there? So final thoughts on this, trusting your body isn't about blind faith. It's about learning how birth works, training your mindset, and surrounding yourself with the right stories so that you feel confident and trusting in your body, okay? Educate yourself.
There's so, there's so much trust and confidence that can come just from educating yourself. Okay. So do the work.
I'm here to help you. And we're moving on. Sarah said, I absolutely hated cervical checks last time.
Can I refuse those? And if so, how can I do this? Short answer? Yes, you absolutely can refuse cervical checks at any point in time before your labor, during your pregnancy experience, during your labor, all of the things you can refuse any cervical checks you want. They are not mandatory and they do not determine how your birth will go. First and foremost, there's not really a lot of great information from somebody shoving their hand up your vagina.
So like why even opt for it? You know, but cervical checks are often treated like a routine part of labor. You don't have to consent to them though. Cervical checks are not going to tell you how soon your baby is coming, whether your labor is progressing normally or not, whether you can birth vaginally or not.
All those reasons that your provider will give you for wanting to do a cervical check. Yeah. All of them don't exist.
There should cervical checks. Don't tell you those things. All the information that they're hoping to get from that cervical check is actually bull crap.
It does. That's not what you get from a cervical check. Here's what, what optic for cervical checks often does.
Okay. Introduce unnecessary stress. If you hear a number that you don't like, or maybe you you've been laboring for so long and, and you were just at a four and then they come in three hours later and you're still at a four.
Okay. That's, that's going to hurt your mindset that day. They can increase the risk of infection, especially if your water's already broken.
They can also lead to unnecessary interventions. Um, I have had, uh, my water's broken during a cervical check. Oh, oops.
Oops. No, you literally had a hook and you broke my waters, but cute story. I have had membrane sweeps done without my consent during cervical checks.
And this kind of stuff happens all the time. I had someone in my DMS lot like earlier this week about having, um, she, she suspected that she got a membrane sweep without consent and she hadn't even consented for the cervical check. Her doctor was down there for a swap for a GBS swap.
And she had asked the questions about the swab and, um, all of that. Like she was made sure that she was informed about the swab. And then the doctor helped herself to a cervical check and then also helped herself to a membrane sweep, which is a medical procedure that requires your consent.
And by the way, so does the cervical check. So there's no reason to be opening our legs because we don't get any information from that experience, but there's so many things that can happen when we do. Um, why are we even saying, yes, it makes sense for you to not want to.
Okay. I can't think of many reasons to want to do a cervical check. I have had one cervical check total in my last two birth experiences.
Okay. One cervical check each time. And I asked for them.
I wanted the information and it was just because I wanted to know, I wanted to know how far along I was with my first experience. And then I wanted to know, I didn't want to know the number of the second time. I knew what that number could do.
I knew that the weight that it could have in my mindset, and I didn't want to know the number. I just wanted to know if my midwives were staying or not. So I knew that I was in active labor or not.
And honestly, if they would have told me the number I would have, I would have gone, my mindset would have been messed up. I was nine centimeters and I had just woken up from a nap and I was straight up chilling. And if they would have said, oh, you're at nine centimeters, we're going to start pushing soon.
That would have created a little bit of panic and worry in my, in my head. And that probably would have introduced pain to the experience. I'm not joking.
I honestly believe that that's how impactful, just a number can be being said out loud in your birth space. At the end of the day, you get to decide if you want the cervical check or not. They don't tell you when your labor experience is coming.
They don't tell you if your labor is progressing normally during your labor. They don't tell you whether you're going to be able to birth vaginally or not. They don't tell you any of that stuff.
Okay. They just don't. So really truly understand, okay, what am I actually benefiting this? And are these benefits actually worth the risks that I'm signing myself and my baby up for? If you have decided that you want to say no, I don't blame you.
Here's what you're going to do before labor. If you're declining cervical checks during your prenatal appointments at your very next appointment, you're going to practice saying, I'm not interested in routine cervical checks. I will be declining cervical checks at all of my prenatal appointments.
And I will be declining cervical checks during my labor experience. Unless I explicitly ask for one, if you encounter a situation where a nurse or a doctor says, let me check you, or we're going to do a cervical check real quick. You get to respond however you want really truly honestly, but here's some ideas for you.
No, thank you. I prefer to wait. No, I'll let you know if I feel like I need one.
I don't find cervical checks helpful. So I'm declining. Dilation is not a prediction of how much longer labor will take.
Dilation is not a prediction of when your labor will begin. If you are pregnant and your labor has not yet begun, you do not need to know a number to have your baby. Your body knows what it's doing.
Okay. We don't need someone to tell us, oh, here's what your body is doing. No, your body doesn't need a play-by-play to continue functioning.
It just doesn't. And let me tell you, I have seen women go from five to 10 in less than an hour. I have seen women go from zero to 10 in less than an hour.
So this is just, it's just silly. We're not doing this anymore. So if you decide that you don't want to do it, stand your ground and advocate for the experience that you want.
You are in charge of your body and your birth, whether it's preventing tearing, building trust in yourself or setting boundaries around cervical checks, you get to call the shots. Okay. If you want to go all in on this preparation work and learn how birth works, how to best support yourself, how to advocate for yourself, how to be the head girly in charge, how to prepare your team to best support you, all of the things, how to handle pain, how to handle the hospital hustle, how to navigate the unplanned, all of that stuff.
It's all inside the birth prep course for you. I will put the information for that in the show notes for you. You can check it out.
I'm always available for questions. If you have any, the best way to get in touch with me is on Instagram slide into my DMS. Let me know what you're thinking.
Let me know what you want to know. And we'll have an honest girl to girl. Talk about it.
Okay. If it's not for you, I'm going to be honest with you. I am not here to fill this course up.
I am here to get women results. Tomorrow. I am hosting birth prep power hour again for the first time in a long time.
It's been probably like almost six months or more. Maybe I don't even know, but I am revamping the Facebook group, the birth prep lounge. It's a free group for you guys to come ask your questions, to be in community, to hang out with me every week, every single Friday, I go live for an hour and answer your questions.
And we'll chat things out. I, um, I love doing that and I miss it and we're bringing it back. Okay.
I will put the link to join there in the show notes as well. And I think that's all that I have for you today. Thank you for hanging out with me.
It's always a pleasure. I am so glad that you're here in doing this work. I am so proud of you for doing this work.
This is huge. Not a lot of women are doing this work, but you are. And that is worth celebrating.
If you have questions that you would love to see answered right here on the podcast, feel free to submit yours at the link in the show notes. And I will chat with y'all again next week or tomorrow. Come see me tomorrow.
I'd love to hang out with you as always happy prepping.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
