(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 bum 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 another episode of the HGIC hotline, where we're taking your birth prep questions, cutting through the fluff and handing you the mic dropping truth about what it really takes to pull off an unmedicated birth inside the hospital.
Today, we're talking pain, power, and partners who need a little wake up call. So let's get into it. The first question today is from Mackenzie and she said, I'm scared of the pain.
How do I make it as pain-free as possible? Oh, Mackenzie girl, you are not alone in this one. Every mama has this moment where they think how in the world am I going to do this without the drugs? And let me tell you, fear of the pain is often way worse than the pain itself. Here's the deal.
Pain and labor is not like pain from a broken bone or an injury. It's purposeful pain. It comes and goes, your body is built for it.
And when you know how to support your body and your hormones, it doesn't have to feel like torture, which is quite literally the image of birth that we are sold from such a young age. And like everyone around us has had these, you know, terrible, painful birth experiences and we're told it's going to suck. And like, stop complaining about your pregnancy aches and pains because just wait, just wait for birth.
It's going to be so much worse. If you can't handle this, you definitely can't handle that. It's like, that's the narrative that we're taught.
That's the narrative that we believe because that's what we've been taught. And whatever you believe about birth, your body believes you. That's why so many women go into the birth experience.
And obviously the system has something to do with it because it's a conveyor belt, but that's why so many women go in and create that exact experience. It's like, we see the woman panic on TV as soon as their water breaks in their first contraction. So we panic as soon as our water breaks or we get the first contraction.
First and foremost, is pain-free birth even possible? There's some debate about this in some of the birth education spaces. And I'm not going to lie. When I first heard somebody say like they had a pain-free birth, I was like, no way.
Like that's not real. That's definitely not real. Cause I already had kids.
And I grew up believing in the Bible. We were cursed to have painful child births and and labors and all that. And we were supposed to have a bad time.
Like that's how it was designed. It was supposed to be bad. So when I heard this and it challenged that belief of mine, I got obviously very curious and was like, okay, is that true? I went and found evidence of women who were pulling off pain-free or nearly pain-free birth experiences.
The more I consumed, the more I was like, okay, I can get behind this. I like, obviously these people seem like they are pulling this off. So like, what, what is making that happen? Then I learned about the fear tension pain cycle or FTP cycle.
So when fear creates tension in your body and that tension creates the pain, and then that pain usually creates more fear. And it goes around and around and around until you're opting for something that you swore you'd never do. Also, my kids are being feral right now.
So if you can hear them in the background, after I did a little noise work on this, I'm sorry, I have five of them. I don't know what you want from me. Anyhow, that led me into just getting really curious about what fears I carried into my birth spaces in the past and what fears I was still carrying with me, which ones I literally was just like, yeah, these are great.
Let's take them to the next one. You know, like the ones that have always been there kind of deal and just get really curious with myself of like, okay, what's actually going on here? What do I believe about birth? What do I believe about myself and my body's capabilities? What do I believe about my postpartum experiences? What do I believe about all of the things, right? My provider, my birth team, my everything, what do I believe about all of it? And then I started challenging those beliefs, right? So I looked at them and said, okay, is this true or is this not true? Like, can I take this to the court of law? This was work I was already doing, like with a mindset coach in my business. And it was very helpful to be going through that and being able to apply it to birth.
This stuff can be applied to anything guys. Okay. This is life so get your little notes out.
So I decided which things were true in which things were not true. And then I said, okay, how can I shift the not true beliefs into something that actually serves me? And then if that is a true belief and I don't like the result that it's getting, or I don't like, you know, whatever it's creating, can I shift that to create a different result? Can I, can I exchange that one basically? And in a nutshell, that's the work getting real curious on what you believe about birth and your thoughts and the what ifs and all of that, and just dissecting them and be like, who sent you? It's like, and the Bible, I don't know if you're a Bible person, like I am, but it's like, take all your thoughts captive. And I just imagine like the, you know, the interrogation table and the bright light and like, who sent you? Where'd you come from? Why are you here? What are you doing here? This is holy work.
Anywho, I believed that pain-free birth was possible at the end of all that process. And not that I did the whole process to believe that, but it's like, I believed that it was possible. I saw evidence that it was possible.
And, but a little part of me, a little shred of me believed that that wasn't possible for me. My old belief of it's either going to suck or you're God's favorite, and it's going to be easy and fun and nice. That was my belief going into my first birth.
And when it absolutely sucked, that solidified that belief of like, oh, birth will always be this way for me. But psych, the Lord had other plans. With my last baby, it was not my intention by any stretch of imagination, because again, there was a part of me that didn't believe that it was possible for me.
It was like, okay, that's nice for them. And I believe it was possible for them. And obviously like they had a great experience and that's great for them, but like not for me, but I had a pain-free birth last time.
And honestly, it was freaking awesome. I woke up from my nap, just like a little quick story time. I took a nap because I was like, oh my gosh, wait, I'm going to have a baby tonight.
Cause my waters had been broken for like almost like, I don't know, it was like nine hours at that point. And I was like, okay, wait, I'm going to take a nap. So after I ate my little chicken wings for dinner, um, I had one contraction on the toilet and I was like, okay, wow, that felt like an actual labor contraction.
Like I had not been feeling anything. And I was like getting a little nervous. Like, okay, I have a licensed midwife.
She has to follow protocols and stuff per the state, or she could get in trouble. And it's like, I chose that route. Right.
I knew what that looked like. And I was like, okay, this is like, but I just kept feeling the tug to just surrender it. It's like, okay, I could have started pumping.
I could have done something. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to let my body do its thing. I trust the work that the Lord is doing with me.
And I trust my body and its design. Anyways, had a labor contraction while I was peeing after we had dinner. And I told my husband, I was like, you need to call the midwives.
He's like, wait, what are you sure? I was like, yeah, I'm sure. I said, I, it doesn't feel sure. I feel a little to Lulu, but like it's fine.
Um, and I had him call them anyways. And, and I was like, okay, I'm going to need a nap. If I'm having a baby tonight, I'm going to go take a nap.
So I got all cozy on the couch again, not having contractions, like just my waters were broken. They weren't like gushing or anything. It was just like little trickle and just went and sat on the couch.
And my husband put lullabies on for me, which oxytocin central, they're the lullabies that I always rocked my babies to since like my first was a baby that I really loved. I didn't ask for that or a planet, but he chose to do that. And, uh, in hindsight, it was really nice.
And I think it was really beneficial to me too. Um, but anyways, I took a little nap and I woke up a while later. It was probably like two, maybe three hours later almost.
And my, cause I told him to take the time, like, I don't have contractions, like, but I just like, it's feeling like it's going to be tonight. Like, so let's just make our way over. It was like nine o'clock at night and they started arriving and they were coming in one by one.
And like, I was like in and out of sleep a little bit, but I was just chilling there. And I remember sitting there with my eyes closed and be like, Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to send these ladies home. Like, it's going to be so long still.
I called them here for nothing away from their families. Some of them drove 45 minutes, like, Oh my gosh, like I felt awful. And I was like, Taylor, you just need to open your eyes and face the music and tell them what you're experiencing right now.
So I woke up and I was like, I think I'm going to have to send you guys home. I'm like, okay. Interesting.
And so basically they asked, like, do you want us to check you before we choose to do that or not? And I said, yes. I said that I don't want to know the number. So we, I went to the bathroom cause I had to go pee and then got a little check.
And then they, I knew that I was at least like five or six centimeters, like active labor if they were staying right. Like that was my mindset. I was like, okay, cool.
That's awesome. Like five or six centimeters that I've barely felt anything. That's insane.
Um, but then I was like, okay, wait, like, like they're like hustling around to get stuff ready. Like the birth pool was cold still. So like they're boiling water to put water in the pool.
And, um, you know, I was having a little snack. I sat and had some watermelon on the yoga ball. Uh, my mom came over and brought some ice for me and she was going to go back home and tuck the kids in and stuff, my kids, and then come back.
And I was like, no, you can stay. And then, um, anyways, 20 minutes after that little conversation, there was a baby in my arms. So it was, it was great.
I had one more contraction that felt like an actual labor contraction. And I looked up at my husband. I said, Matt, this baby is coming.
And he scooped me up off the ground. Cause I'm like, I was not prepared to give birth on the carpet. Like there is nothing here.
I didn't have anything set up and I was like, this baby is coming. So he scooped me up, got me in the very lukewarm tub and, um, breathed until my baby was, uh, caught by him. And, um, it was great.
We had our first little feeding session in the tub. She was so hungry. She was 41 weeks, three days.
So she was just like, all right, give me some real food. I'm, I'm very ready for real food. So she was, uh, just, it was great.
It was, everything was wonderful about it. It was so fantastic. And then I was just like, wait, did that really just happen? And it took a little bit for me to actually process that.
That was like really what I experienced. Cause I was so like, your girl was prepared, right? I was so ready to use all the pain management techniques and the mindset tricks and all the things like I was so prepared and I didn't need any of it. And as someone who has had a pain-free birth and someone who plans on having more children in the future, I will not be aiming for a pain-free birth.
Like that will not be my plan. My plan will be unmedicated, physiological home birth, free birth probably. Um, and that will be my plan, but my plan will not be pain-free because the fact of the matter is pain and child birth very often go hand in hand, like almost always.
Right. And I think putting that expectation on that experience can actually do more harm than good. Can we do all the things that would up our chances of experiencing that? Absolutely.
We're going to talk about that in just a second, but I think that mindset of like, oh, I really want to pull this off. And this is my goal. And then it's like, you get there and you start feeling pain.
That's going to wreck your mindset. Like truly, honestly, I say it in the birth prep course, I have a training in there called all aboard the pain train, because even if you're preparing for a pain-free birth, and even if you're doing all the things, even if you've done it in the past, I am going to prepare you for the possibility of pain because there is always a possibility. And I know that things can get real bad.
If you start experiencing something that you are not prepared for in the birth space, but let's talk about how we can set yourself up for success. If you will first and foremost, oxytocin and endorphins are your best friends. So keep the lights low, keep the noise soft.
The interruption's very minimal. We're creating home birth vibes at the hospital, right? Very comfortable. It's like, if you can't fall asleep there, like comfortably, like if people are watching you, if there's bright lights on, if there's lots of noises, beepings, all the things, it's like birth is a physiological process.
If you don't feel safe and comfortable, which is hard to do in the hospital, but it is possible. But if you don't feel comfortable, your body's not going to be feeling comfortable enough to allow your body to do that process physiologically. If you are experiencing pain already, lying on your back is a fast track to ouch.
So get up, get moving, rock, sway, dance. If you have to let gravity do her little thing, just stay out of the bed. If you're at that point where it's like, oh gosh, this is not feeling great.
It changed the position up. Now there's a time for rest. Don't hear me wrong.
If you need to rest, take a rest. That's what I did. I laid down on my back and everything was great and wonderful and fine.
I took a little nap. You can get in a sideline position. It's a better option for the most part, but if you're most comfortable on your back, don't hear me wrong and think you can't be on your back at all during your whole labor experience.
That's not what I'm getting at. Next, don't wait until it's too late to start learning your coping skills. All right.
Breathing, counterpressure, hydrotherapy, your affirmations, mindset work, like even moaning, things like that. These are all tools. Don't show up to the job site with no hammer, girl.
Okay. Pack your tools. I'm like, learn the tools in advance, practice the tools in advance.
You would not get a great job done if you pulled up with half your tools missing and no knowledge of the ones that you actually brought. Right. And then finally, you're going to train your brain.
I've already talked a lot about mindset and how we can start doing that, but pain is perceived. If your brain screams danger, every time you feel a surge, your body's going to freak out. It's what your body was meant to do, your brain's job every single day of your life is to keep you safe and alive.
And when it starts feeling threatened, your comfort zone, you're coming out of it, right? There's pain happening. We need to stop that. We need to stop it immediately.
Your brain's smart, but it's not that smart to understand like, okay, this baby has to come out in some way or another, and it's probably going to involve pain. And then if you could just tell your brain to sit down and shut up like a little toddler, like here's your little cookies. Here's a little mindset trick.
Go sit down, strap you in a little five point harness, sit in the back seat. The body's running the show today. So do your little rewiring, get yourself a little mindset workbook.
I have three of my favorite mindset tips in there. They're ones I teach to my students inside the birth prep course. They're ones I actively walk through with my coaching clients.
They are golden. They're the same ones I used to get my pain-free birth. Okay.
And again, there's no guarantee of the pain-free birth, but if you do the work, you could set yourself up for that possibility. So I'll put that in the show notes for you. It's totally free.
Grab it. You have nothing to lose. It'll sound like a commercial every time I talk about my freebies.
I'm like, just get it. You can download it straight to your phone for free. You can have all the information right at your fingertips, but it really is good.
It's got some good stuff in there and some journal prompts and stuff. So grab it and do the work, please. Okay.
My little story time took up half the podcast, but that's okay. We're going to move on to question number two. What can I do to mentally prepare for an unmedicated birth from Riley? Well, I think I've already just answered your question.
So we're done here. No, I'm just kidding. Here is a little mental prep plan.
I was just talking about how our brain is like a toddler, right? And then we give them cookies. I'm like, okay, sit down, shut up. Leave us alone for a minute.
The cookies are your birth affirmations or your practiced positive thoughts. If you don't practice them, you're not going to have them ready to go when your brain's like freaking out. Okay.
So do not wait for labor to try out your affirmations. Okay. So pick like three to five thoughts that actually hit ones that you can get behind ones that you actually believe like once for me is like, I can do anything for a minute.
I was born with like the, how hard could it be, Jean? Like I can do anything for a minute. Like there's no way I couldn't, right. That one's a really easy one for me to get behind.
And another one really easy for me to get behind is my body was designed for this work because I know that God who made my body and he doesn't mess up. You can do each wave brings me closer to my baby. I was made for this.
This is something we've prepared for whatever thoughts that you want to feed your little toddler brain, your little cookies. Here you go. Here's your little cookies.
That's what we're doing here. We are using practice positive thoughts to combat the negative thoughts that our brain feeds us to keep us safe, right? It's not bad. It's just our brain doing its job, but it's like, okay, we need you to clock out for today because we have work to do that you're just keep messing up.
So that's kind of how we do that right in the moment. I see a lot of people talk about like visualizing your birth. I'm like, that's something I've never really been able to get behind until I kind of looked at it.
Like not just the perfect version of your birth. Like visualize what a contraction might feel like. See yourself how you would handle it in the moment.
Visualize someone doubting you and then you standing your ground with a smile and a no thank you. Like visualize doing the things that you are preparing to do instead of just, or even practice it. Put yourself in a mirror, have somebody role play with you.
I don't know, do whatever you need to do to get it in your head. Like this is what we're preparing for. This is what we're going to do in the moment when this arises and we're having a really hard time keeping our brain on track.
We're going to remember, hey, we already know the answer to this. It's no thank you. Hey, we already practiced what we're going to do during a contraction.
Here's what we're going to try first. We got lots of tools in the toolbox. Praise the Lord.
If this one doesn't work, we try the next one. Next, I want you to journal like it's your job. This doesn't have to be like three, four hours of journaling every day.
It's like five minutes. You're going to dump out how you're feeling that day about your birth experience and your prep and all of that. You're going to notice the thoughts and you're going to be like, oh, that's an interesting thought, right? Then we're going to bring it into the interrogation room.
This is where we're really thinking about what we're scared of. What are we believing that doesn't serve us? What does the best version of your birth look and feel like? Start unraveling and replacing the lies and start really amplifying the truth. And that brings me to my last little point is surround yourself with the truth.
What I believe to be true and have experienced to be true is God designed this process and he didn't make a mistake. So I put Christ at the center, not my fears, not the statistics, not my auntie's horror stories. As your body grew an entire human being plus a disposable organ from scratch with zero instruction, I no longer subscribe to the belief that our bodies just don't know the last step of that.
Like, oh, they know everything else, but the last step, no, I'm not buying it anymore. And you shouldn't either. Your body knows what to do.
It was beautifully designed for this work. And if you need to go get evidence for that, absolutely do that. I gave you some evidence today, sharing my story.
You can listen to other people's stories. You can look into how your body works and start to really understand, oh my gosh, that is true. She is right.
It does work so beautifully by design and works with our baby and all the things. You can do that work because guess what? Your brain loves evidence. It's like, oh, okay, well, I don't have any runaround room because you just proved me wrong.
So I guess we'll not try that one again because that one's not true. That's another thing that your brain does. I'm just giving you all the mindset stuff today.
It's another thing that your brain does is it wants to prove itself right. So if you believe that you're going to have a crappy birth experience, like I said earlier, your body believes you. Your brain is going to look for ways to create exactly that.
Because if there's anything more that your brain loves than keeping you safe, it's being right. Okay? So get some evidence of what is true and what is good and what is serving you and stomp out the stuff that is not serving you and is not effective for what you are trying to pull off. Give back the horror stories.
Give back your previous birth experiences. You're writing a new story here and you get to decide how you go into it. Okay, last question from Amber.
How to get your partner on board with questioning doctors and not just trusting every word they say. Ooh, we're going to go there. Let's talk about this man real quick.
Most of us were raised in a world where doctors equal authority. White coat walks in and they're like, oh yes sir, whatever you say sir. But you know better now.
You know that this is your birth, not their protocol. And if your partner is still playing don't rock the boat, it's time to help him realize that you're not on a cruise. You're going to war for your birth experience.
So here are some ways where you can flip the script. First and foremost, education over confrontation any day. Okay? Watch a documentary together, have him sit on a birth prep lesson, show him why it's important to question things.
When he sees how hospital policies are often about liability, not safety, he'll probably start side-eyeing too a little bit, right? Like, oh that's interesting. Let me get a little bit curious about this. It's like, it's like the wizard of Oz when it's like, oh, get a little peek behind the curtain.
You're going to want to rip the whole curtain down and see what's going on. If you want to test the waters here, I have some podcast episodes that I think will be helpful back from season one. I will link them in the show notes for you.
But I did one with my husband where we just talked about what our experience looks like and how it's shifted over the years. I did another one about what your partner's role is in the birth space. So education over confrontation.
And I get that you probably want to be a little confrontational and we'll get to that in a second. I'm going to tell you why you probably feel that way. Why maybe that's been your approach in the past.
Because I know what your brain is doing and there's evidence to back it up. And it's like, it's valid, but also it's not very productive. So the second tip I have for you is give him a job.
Tell him like, babe, I need you to be my voice when I can't speak. I'm not asking you to be disrespectful. I'm asking you to have my back.
You know my plan, you know what I want, and I want you to just back me up on it. See if he agrees to do that. And then my next little tip, role play.
Yep, role play. Practice saying, okay, we're going to wait on that. Or can we have a minute? Make it normal for him to hear himself advocate.
Make it like second nature because it's so common for us to just say yes to everything, right? Or feel like we have to give an answer right in that moment. It's just like, can we have a minute? Like honestly, if you're not back on the operating table, it's not that big, like there's not that big of a rush. Like you can usually take a minute or two of your time and discuss it and talk about what the options are and really do a quick little, okay, well, what questions should we ask if we're not ready to make this decision, right? Use your little brains.
What are the benefits? What are the risks? What does my intuition say? What's the alternatives? I did that backwards. And then what if I do nothing or what if we do nothing yet? Put that in your toolbox, ladies. Get into a little game if you have to, a little date night game.
Let's see how many different ways we can say no today. And then last but not least, appeal to the protector that's in him because that's what this is, right? This isn't about being anti-doctor. This is about being pro-wife, pro-baby, pro-informed decision.
And I see this all the time. I see women coming to me about how do I get my husband on board? How did you get your husband on board with home birth and this, that, and the other? And how do I get him to ask questions and advocate and all that stuff? So sometimes we just have to hold the mirror up. Say what I'm hearing is that you trust the doctor more than you trust me.
That's why you want to get so confrontational, right? Because that's a really hard pill to swallow. And I'm sure he's not thinking about it like that, right? I'm just saying like it's his fears and his stuff that he's dealing with and that's what he's operating out of. But when you say, okay, so this is what I'm hearing you say, it can kind of just really start diving into like a nice conversation, right? Tell him the best way to protect me during birth is to be my shield.
That means asking questions, even when it's uncomfortable for you. And once he sees you own your power, he'll be way more comfortable stepping into his. So go have an uncomfortable conversation.
I know it's not fun, but it's part of the process and you're doing the work and I'm proud of you. And that's all that I have for today. So whether you're scared of the pain, reworking your mindset, or trying to turn your man into a little mini doula, remember this, you were made for this and you don't have to do it alone.
If you have a question that you'd love to submit for a future episode, check the show notes for how to do that. And before I go, I just want to invite you to the birth prep lounge. It's my free Facebook group where you can come get your questions answered every Friday, be in a community that is planning and preparing for their medicated births in the hospital.
I post like when I drop new podcast episodes and little tips and sometimes little Instagram posts, education, things like that. I would love to have you in there. I'll chat with you again on Tuesday until then as always happy prepping.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
