How to prepare yourself for childbirth

Your physician offer you more detailed information about labor and birth, along with suggestions for handling the challenges of each stage. To reinforce what you learn in childbirth from your OB, here are some tips on coping with labor and preparing to birth your baby with joy and confidence.

Learn to Trust your body

Be confident in your body's ability to give birth to a baby. For the majority of mothers, birth is a normal physiological process. A women's reproductive system works well as long as she takes care of it and no one interferes with it. Trust that your body is made to give birth. Be confident that birth will go well for you.

Women who lack confidence in their bodies are at risk for having a less than satisfying birth experience. They are more likely to hand over responsibility for the birthing decisions to someone else. They are then set up for a medical and technological childbirth, even a cesarean section. This type of birth can further weaken an already shaky self-image. A women with this experience is often left with the feeling "My body could not do it". This can cause a woman to be full of doubt about her mothering abilities, which can interfere with the unfolding of the mother - baby relationship.

In contrast, a woman with confidence can take primary responsibility for her birthing decisions, and the couple can direct the birth she wants. For many women, birth becomes the high point of their sexuality and femininity. When a woman masters the task of giving birth, whether it be a completely positive experience or one that is incredibly challenging, she has bragging rights.

Explore the Best Positions for Your Labor and Birth

Most people's preconceptions about labor start with the picture of a mother laying on her back in bed. But back birthing is neither comfortable for the mother nor healthy for the baby. The more you can stay off your back during labor, the faster your labor will progress and the less it will hurt. Because, lying on your back tenses your pelvic muscles, which need to relax as the baby descends and tense muscles hurt more. Laying on your back also, allows your heavy uterus to press on the major blood vessels running alongside your spine, lessening the blood supply to the uterus and to your baby. And in this position you will be pushing your baby upward. The more time you can spend out of bed and moving around during labor, the better birth you are likely to experience.

There is no one right position for laboring or giving birth, only the ones that work for you. Stand, walk, kneel, squat, as you explore what positions ease your discomfort and speed the progress of labor.

Moving a response to signals from your body helps the baby to twist and turn to find it's path of least resistance through the birth passage. And being upright, gravity will help to bring down your little one from your womb.

Use the Technology Wisely

It is a wise couple who remembers that there are appropriate and inappropriate uses for technology. The laboring woman must be wary of medical interference in natural process designed for the birthing. While tests and technology can be lifesaving in some circumstances, and can also contribute to a safe and satisfying birth, some hospital routines and interventions can lead to a spiral of interventions, each leading to another until finally the obstetrician determines that a cesarean is necessary.

Learn Self-help Techniques to Relax and Ease the Discomforts of Labor

Women do not have to suffer or be drugged to give birth. It is not wise for a woman or her baby to be heavily anesthetized that she is disconnected from her sensations during labor. Pain in childbirth has a purpose, compelling a woman to make changes, to do something to relieve it, and in making these adjustments in her body, she often increases the progress of labor and helps her baby's well being. The truth about pain in childbirth is an unmanageable pain which is not normal during labor, rather, it is your body's signal that you need to make change. And the most important thing you can learn is preparing for childbirth is how to relax.