home birth queries

[dappymoo]

Just wondered if there are any experienced home-birthers who can ease my first-time fears!

I am REALLY nervous. I think less nervous than if I had to go to hospital but then sometimes I wonder if going into hospital would mean "handing over" the responsibility/fear/pain etc in a way..? Does that make sense? Although I really want as little intervention as possible, but am wondering if the pain will all get too much...

We have a birth pool, TENS, aromatherapy and massage stuff, hypnotherapy CD (although I feel a total novice at this but it makes me fall asleep...) Ummm basically all the gear but no idea.... I have a very supportive husband to be with me throughout and lovely experienced midwives, gas and air, pethidine if I want it...

I think apart from concern for the little one (I'm assured that there is no more risk than in hospital) I am starting to panic that I won't cope with the pain. This last week I have had tons of pain since baby engaged ( I swear I would not have been surprised if someone said it was the start of labour!) and it has not been the type of pain I imagined, ie. lots of back pain and IBS type cramps rather than squeezing / cervical pain... and I was thinking if I have contractions all around the back and stuff, then I might find it less bearable... Had a few Braxtons at around 20 weeks and I thought they were amazing as my body just did it and it almost felt good (??) I imagined contractions to be like that but painful... maybe it has just occurred to me that the pain could be entirely different...

OK I don't know what I'm blabbing on about, think I'm just panicking as 38 weeks now.

Maybe my question for home birthers is, was the pain hugely different to what you expected? And did you beg to go to hospital, or end up being transferred?

It's quite hard to remember the pain! Although it has been coming back to me as I have to go through it all again in a few weeks. I don't remember being 'surprised' by the pain, so I guess it was what I expected. I had pethidine available but didn't use it, though hung on to the gas and air for dear life at times :)

Don't panic, see how you go at home, if you need more pain relief you can transfer to the hospital. I'd say keeping an open mind about that possibility is quite important.

Hi Dappymoo! Apologies as I'm not an experienced home birther as of yet (planning one this time, I am 32 weeks) but have given birth in hospital 3 times, twice with no pain relief and once with gas and air. When I was pregnant with my third baby, I had a horrible kidney infection and was up during the night in pain with it and it got me panicked about giving birth again because I felt so overwhelmed by the pain of the infection. The funny thing is, labour pain is different than any other pain I've experienced, and maybe because the contractions have a beginning, a peak and an end, they are much easier to cope with than a constant pain. Having said that, I haven't suffered with back labour as some women have described it being really very painful, so I'm grateful for that. BUT, I do think that a huge part of pain management is how you are feeling i.e. don't stress and overwhelm yourself beforehand if possible, because in my opinion feeling anxious will make the pain feel worse. Your brain naturally gives a response to the pain of the contractions and releases pain relieving hormones which help you cope with the contractions, and my understanding is that that mechanism works best when you aren't fighting against the contraction i.e. panicking. All easier said than done, I realise, but if you can find one or a few things to do during a contraction to help you focus on letting the pain do it's work (opening your cervix), all the better. I found (and many women have also said this) that nothing was worse than sitting or lying down during a contraction, and the pain felt far worse if I was (plus baby will descend quicker if you are upright thanks to gravity). I spent the entire labour with my third child on my feet, walking a steady pace in a big circle during each contraction, until the moment he was coming out, and his labour was remarkably low in pain and very fast. (no pain relief, 45 minutes established labour, barely had to push to get him out). I would suggest that you try to keep your mind off what the pain will feel like because speculating about it now won't help. =) Hope that was a in some way helpful, and good luck with your birth!

You're so right! What am I up to?
Ok I need to chill. Yeah I am pretty open minded about plans changing and perhaps going to hospital, after all it might not be within my power as there may be complications etc...

Thanks for the tips re: standing etc, I must remember all this! You're right though, I need to relax as much as possible and chill for the next couple of weeks! After all, it should be better if I am rested and relaxed beforehand... I need to get into a positive frame of mind!!

Do you have a birthing ball? They are very good for sitting on, or lying over, to help get the baby into a good position.

Being at home does help with the pain (I've had 1 hospital birth, 3 home) - you are able to do whatever you want to to manage it. That said, it does hurt. No two ways about it. But it is not like breaking an arm or anything like that, because that is constant. The worst bit is just before you start to push, when the contractions do come on top of each other, so if that happens, just remember you don't have long to go!

Things that helped me;
Find a comfortable position - for me the best was kneeling against the bed.
Breathe through the contractions - don't fight them, go with them. With ds1 (hospital) I ABSOLUTELY needed an epidural, NO WAY could I manage without one. Dd, Ds2 and Ds3 were all born without anything at all (with the exception of ds3 when I had about 3 puffs of G&A) - and they were all 10lb+. Part of that is that I went with it more, didn't worry if it was really painful, as I knew it would wear off in a few seconds, and breathing through really helped.
Lower back massage - my mw was FAB at this, right at the base of your spine, get your mw or your dh to do quite hard circular massage. REALLY helped!

Dappymoo, congratulations on your decision. Home really is a great place to give birth if you and baby are healthy and your pregnancy is straightforward. Having said that, keep talking to your mws - half the battle is having a positive frame of mind and a complete self-belief that you will can do this. That will carry you a long way. There are some hypnotherapy CDs for pre-birth which you might find useful.

You are doing the right thing to get as many pain relief options in place as possible. IME, you won't know which ones will actually work for you until you go into labour so the more options the better.

OOoh this is an interesting thread. I am 38+2 and also planning a homebirth. I have a birth pool, and hoping that and g&a get me through it.

I have a full back tattoo of cherry blossom and lilies, and I was in absolute agony. The only way I could get through it, was read the posters on the wall over and over to keep my mind off the pain. My pool is going in the living room, so I'm gonna try having the tv on and just try and really focus on that as opposed to the pain.

I'm glad the pain is so different, as i stubbed my toe last week and it brought tears to my eyes. I hhave been thinking for the last week 'If I shed tears for stubbing my toe, am I gonna really cope with childbirth'

Feel a bit better again now after reading this thread. And good luck to all of you for impending daunting childbirth :)

:)
I've been the same, having a bad belly and walking into a doorframe (clumsy? moi?)and now getting carpal tunnel have killed and left me thinking "if this hurts, how the hell am I going to find labour??"
But I guess you should go into labour quite prepared...riiiiiight...? And yes lots of distractions are good I think, I'm thinking things like listening to the hypnosis CD/ music, focusing on TV/ candle flames/ a speck on the wall... my OH... maybe a scan pic?

Got to remember too that it's a day (hopefully) out of my whole life to be in pain, then many many years of a gorgeous child. (who am I trying to convince here?!)

I know this is the best decision for me... I think maybe you just doubt yourself sometimes when it all starts getting real!!

lol Just this morning I opened the curtains then fell backwards over sofa. At least it was a soft landing haha. Yeah I suppose when you look at it as 1 day, and hopefully the really painful bit will only be like, a quarter of the day ? Or is that me being too hopeful? haha

Dappymoo - I've had a hospital birth and a hb, and felt that there was not that much difference in terms of pain tbh. I was fortunate to have a complication free hosp birth with only gas and air so I knew I could cope with the pain again at home. What did really help at home (apart from being much more calm at relaxed in my own environment) was using the principles of hypnobirthing. I didn't read the book or start listening to the cd until I was about 37 week pg, but I really feel that the breathing techniques helped me to stay in control of the pain much better. Good Luck

You can have pethidine at a HB so maybe get some in advance just in case. They wont bring it with the standard HB pack unless you ask in advance.

I had a home birth with dc3. Obviously, being my third I had some idea of what the pain would be like (although each birth was very different).

Just to repeat what detox said, being at home in my own bed, knowing the loo was just next door, that I could have the curtains closed, with no bright lights was enough to calm me down. And also knowing that I could go to the hospital if it got too much. Breathing through the pain also really helped.

I was very lucky in that I had 2 midwives (one was a student) from start to finish!

I had a homebirth which went well. Here's a few observations from my experience which I hope you will find helpful.

• Most of labour was manageable but hard work. I had unexpected back labour even though DD had been in a good position. Without the back labour, it would have been much easier.

• I went into labour with an open mind on pain relief options but the only time I asked for even gas and air was during transition and it was over too fast to get any...

• Transition is definitely hard but it doesn't last very long (only 10-15 mins in my case).

• Being upright and moving around makes a big difference to how manageable contractions are. Being in warm water also helps hugely. A contraction while lying on your back (e.g. for a quick examination) might be pure hell but another of the same intensity but while stomping up the stairs or kneeling in a birth pool is just hard work.

• There was no part of labour where I wanted to go to hospital and have an epdidural.

• My mother had 4 children and 4 epidurals, none of which worked. So, she was not only in pain each time but in pain and stuck on her back in a bed. Many people think of it as a guaranteed relief from pain but it doesn't work for everyone.

• There's some research you might be interested in which suggests that women who give birth at home experience less pain than women in a hospital setting. You can probably find a summary on one of the homebirth websites - let me know if not and I'll dig it out.

Hope this is useful

My ideas:

Hopefully you will have more-or-less distinct contractions with no pain in between. Try turning it around in your head - the contractions are your normality, the space in between becomes bliss - make the most of that time.

Have some kind of mantra like "the more it hurts, the more I relax and surrender".

Try never to anticipate pain - i.e. don't start thinking "if it's this bad now how am I going to cope in an hour", because it may not get any worse IYSWIM, it might be as bad as it's going to get.

Pain on-and-off for 6 hours is a lot less wearing than pain on-and-off for 24 or 36 hours. Have a battle plan for a long labour - food, drink, baths, showers, different positions, massage, shaking the apples, G&A, get people to make you laugh, homeopathy (if you believe in it). Hopefully your midwives will help a lot with that.

Absolutely no shame in decamping to hospital if you are having a really horrible time!

Also if you are wanting little intervention, then handing responsibility over to hospital midwives/doctors can in my experience be a really stupid thing to do.

Just reread my dd2's birth story, and it reminded me that something I found unnerving about contractions was my heart rate. At the start of a contraction it would begin to accelerate, and at the height of the contraction it would be pounding away like a mad thing! Does anyone else remember that? I suppose it's just because you have muscles working really hard (though it doesn't necessarily feel like that as they are are working involuntarily) and needing a lot of oxygenating.

hiya dappy

if you are falling asleep during the hynotherapy cd, then it's working . have you tried burning your aromatherapy oils when you're doing the cd? i did that and during the birth put same oil on a flannel and breathed it in during every contraction. i used the same premixed blend every time. i think the smell association is more important than the specifics of what each oil may be useful for.

re wondering what the pain would be like - i non-stop tooth and ear infections during my 2nd pregnancy. the pain was so bad and it really made me doubt my ability to have a drug free HB. as it was, the toothache was far worse. largely because of the success of the hypnotherapy, but also cause labour pain was functional, healthy pain.

have you read ina may gaskin's guide to childbirth? if not, then google it now. that book was really important to me, lots of positive birth stories. i used to read it with same oils in bath.

good luck

Thank you guys, this is really helping, and really interesting.
I read the Ina May book back when I discovered I was pregnant, perhaps I need a refresher!! Good idea with the oils too.
I think I need to believe in myself a bit more, which I find hard at the best of times.
Right I'm going to leave it there for now as I've had no sleep thanks to my carpal tunnel hands (owowowow) so I probably won't make much sense! (good practice though..?)
Thanks again

Am due to have a HWB any day now, after 1 hospital labour.

I'm a bit scared but to be honest the pain relief thing hasn't worried me at all. I had a tens and G&A last time. TBH I found the tens just a distraction and in the way, and the G&A didn't make a difference (as I discovered when I used it later for when I had stitches, and really took it properly!).

Last time I remember saying to DH that the pain wasn't the worst bit, it was painful, but it was tiring more than anything, and I found the not knowing what was going on or how long for harder to manage than the pain.

Best wishes for a happy homebirth to you and Bumperlicious - do let us know how it goes!