Trusting God’s Design for Birth: How to Labor
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
By: Christine Russell, CPM
How to Labor
Continuous or intermittent monitoring
In a hospital setting, you will have continuous monitoring, unless you ask for intermittent, and only if your provider is willing. Most continuous monitors involve wires from 2 electrodes on your abdomen hooked up to a machine next to your bed to monitor your contractions and your baby’s heart rate. This forces you to mostly stay in bed, or if the wires are long enough, possibly be standing or sitting on a birth ball next to the bed. Sometimes, a hospital might have a wireless monitor, which would give you much more flexibility to move around in labor, but it depends on the hospital and the availability of the wireless monitors. Studies show that continuous monitoring leads to more C-sections because it picks up idiosyncrasies in baby’s heart rate that aren’t problematic typically but worry the provider if they see them, leading to unnecessary interventions and most often C-sections.
Intermittent monitoring is listening to baby’s heart beat every so often as labor progresses to make sure that baby is tolerating the stress of labor. Some hospitals who will do this want to listen for 15-30 minutes at a time. In home births and birth centers, typically, it’s less than this. It’s good to listen to the heart rate for at least a minute or more and through a contraction to listen for variability and rate. How frequently and how long this is done is dependent on the midwife as well as client wishes, which are often honored in out of hospital settings and at home more frequently than birth centers.
Restricted Movement or Free to Move About
Because of continuous monitoring and IV fluids running, a mom in a hospital often has restricted movement and mostly is confined to bed. Laboring in bed increases the risk of needing medical intervention to augment labor because you aren’t moving enough to help baby navigate the pelvis and keep labor progressing. Laboring in bed is also very painful because you can’t get in good positions to give you relief from the contraction pain, increasing your risk of needing an epidural or other pain medication.
When you are free to move about as you please, you work with your baby and gravity to help get baby into and through the pelvis and help keep your labor progressing smoothly. You are able to experiment with positions to find ones that help decrease pain at various stages of labor. Walking, climbing stairs, doing lunges or squats, rocking on hands and knees over a birth ball, standing or sitting in the shower, resting in the tub, and sitting on the toilet are all great ways to help labor progress and help relieve pain.
In bed
When you want to rest, side lying in bed, with pillow or a peanut ball in between your legs can be soothing and restful. Some hospitals have peanut balls for you to use, if they are available. If you are confined to bed in a hospital setting, typically side lying or lying on your back are your only options. If you don’t have an epidural, you may be able to raise the head of your bed to be on your knees while leaning over the raise back of the bed.
In Water
Warm water can be a great source of pain relief in labor. Many women find sitting or standing in the shower with the warm water running over their backs or bellies to be very soothing. If you tub is comfortable enough for you to soak in it, tub soaks can be a great way to relieve labor pain and rest at the same time. Birth pools are also a good option, especially if your tub is too small or uncomfortable to soak in.
Able to eat/drink freely or food/drink restrictions
Labor is hard work. It’s like running a marathon. Hence, it is really important to nourish your body and uterus with fuel = food to give your body the energy it needs to complete labor. You also get dehydrated easily in labor from all of the heavy breathing and sweating, so it’s also important to drink plenty of water and electrolytes to keep you feeling your best.
Sadly, many hospitals restrict your ability to eat food and some restrict what you can drink. This clearly sets you up for medical intervention, because if your labor goes on for hours, your body is going to be too weak without food to finish the work of labor. Then medical intervention increases your risk of a C-section.
IV fluids
Hospitals will offer IV fluids in labor. IV fluids can be beneficial in long labors, especially if you aren’t allowed to eat, to give you a little more energy (some IV fluid has glucose in it). It also can be helpful if you are vomiting a lot during labor and unable to keep food or liquids down.
The drawback to IV fluids is that it overhydrates your body making you and your baby be extra puffy from the fluid overload. It causes your baby to be born heavier than he or she would have been, and then your baby will quickly lose that extra weight after birth when he or she urinates. As a result, it will cause more concern about baby’s weight and potentially hold you in the hospital longer because of the worries of how much weight your baby has lost and wanting to see a greater weight increase before being discharged. This can be problematic for breastfed babies since your milk doesn’t come in until around Day 3, and babies typically lose weight until the milk comes in. Babies can lose up to 10% of their birth weight, and that’s considered normal. IV bloated babies often lose more than that as a result, but hospitals don’t take that into account when looking at weight loss. The other aspect of weight concern, is if the extra fluid puts your baby at 9lbs or greater, the hospital staff will be doing frequent blood sugar checks assuming you had gestational diabetes, where the extra weight was just from fluid. This can be problematic for breastfed babies since your milk doesn’t come in until around Day 3, and babies typically lose weight until the milk comes in. Babies can lose up to 10% of their birth weight, and that’s considered normal. IV bloated babies often lose more than that as a result, but hospitals don’t take that into account when looking at weight loss.
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