Qustion about pushing?

[jellyjelly]

Reading about pushing for a long time below on another thread and it got me thinking. I understand that it is instinktive but can you do anything to not ignore but stop pushing to conserver energy to keep it till the end or will your body just push to get the baby down.? Sorry if this sounds silly but reading alot at the moment to prepare.

ooh, Jellyjelly, IME pushing contractions are similar to being picked up and thrown around the room, they are so strong and impossible to resist.... AMAZING.

Good luck, btw!

I think the idea is to pant to avoid pushing. That is what you do at the end to avoid pushing the baby out too fast and tearing badly. But as dinny says it is a pretty primeval instinct!

I think i stopped pushing and kind of fell asleep. The reason i 'think' this is because i remember being in so much pain and high on gas and air that i just closed my eyes laid my head down and pretended i was somewhere else.
The midwife was urging me to push because she could see the babies head, she asked me if i was having a contraction and i cried out no and she laughed with my dp saying she's pretending so that she doesn't have to push. And i'm pretty certain she was right, i had taken myself to another world .

I could not have not pushed iyswim, a bit like having a poo that's long overdue! Or when you're being sick over and over but nothing comes out! Sorry for tmi but it's the only thing I could liken it to. Your body just takes over and convulses. I didn't find it took too much energy, if anything, fighting it would have taken more energy. I just let my body do what it wanted and it worked great for me. Good luck!

With DS I couldn't hAve stopped pushing if you paid me a million pounds....

With dd who was induced and I had a drip to help with contractions at pushihng stage I had to make a conscious effort to push - it took hours! Whereas ds was pretty quick.

I am reading so much so all thought welcome, i have a ds who was born by planned cs section so didnt have to do labour at all but next time (not pregant yet but will b trying in a while) wil hopefully be able to.

Didnt have any urge with dd or ds to pant or push,the contractions pushed both babies out along with help of midwifes hand

the second stage was the thing that amazed me most about childbirth. your body really does take over, your mind takes a back seat.

i read somewhere that a woman in a coma can give birth.

but if your second stage is very long, your uterus will get tired.

listen to your body and when you feel the contraction coming and the feeling to do a BIG POO is overwhelming and the mw says she can see the head then just take a bif massive deep breath through your nose as the contraction peaks and breathe out of you mouth nice and long and try to relax all of your muscles in your body to allow your body to let the baby move down and out into your arms.

Didn't come naturally for me. 4th Midwife of the day says "You're not pushing properly" I say "Oh really, how should I push"? M/W says "Like you're opening your bowels" DH says "No good telling her that, she shits sitting bolt upright" M/W flashes me a despairing look. There is a palpable silence in the room. Then I fart very loudly. I laugh (possibly a bit manically), dh looks at me (too knackered to do anything else) and M/W starts muttering under her breath about how "she" needs to start pushing properly or "we do section". Four hours of wrong pushing later, ds arrives 91b, 3oz and fit as a fiddle.

Forgot to mention that I was induced with drip so this may well affect contractions - also ds born by ventouse.

I alway thought that once you get to 10cm then you need to push. I did this and pushed before my body was ready and thus got tired. Next time I am going to wait until I feel my body starting the push IYGWIM.

I think calling it 'pushing' is misleading, as it suggests something that you have to do, consciously. I had absolutely no control over the 'pushing' - my uterus did it all - and I could no more have stopped it than I could have stopped breathing.

I think calling it 'pushing' is misleading, as it suggests something that you have to do, consciously. I had absolutely no control over the 'pushing' - my uterus did it all - and I could no more have stopped it than I could have stopped breathing.

If DD was my only experience I would agree with you RZ but with DS it was a lot more than just my uturus that got him out. It was really hard work from all my body.

well I had an epidural so only pushed when they told me to!
and they kepy telling me i was doing it wrong! that's the downside of epidurals though I guess

I didnt get the 'urge' to push with DS1 or DD at all. Didnt know what the hell people were on about. Just pushed when the midwife told me to. Admittedly DS1 was epidural so thats understandable but DD was normal delivery and the midwife looked perplexed when I said I had no urge at all!!!

Then I had DS2. OMG!!!!! Never in my life have I experienced an urge so strong! The midwife yelling 'Dont push yet I need to check that you are ready!!" DONT PUSH!!! YOU MUST BE KIDDING ME!!!! There was no way I could not push! I think dinny summed it up quite well.

jellyjelly - when you come to the pushing bit my first midwife gave me some excellent advice - push deep down to the pit of your stomach. If you feel like screaming, push that scream deep deep down and use the energy to push rather than scream. Hope that helps and doesnt scare you!

I started getting little urges to push when I was about 7/8cms dilated. My labour did not progress as I had read about in all the textbooks in that i didn't get 1st stage - transition - 2nd stage with pushing, it all sort of overlapped. I was therefore disappointed to find that I was still 'pushing' 3 hours later. In my mind I had been in 2nd stage for all that time, but according to the midwife my 2nd stage didn't begin until I was pushing fully for the entire contraction rather than at the peak of the contraction doing a little 'grunt'. It would have been better for me if I had been aware of this and my expectations hadn't been raised and I think I would not have wasted energy on the early pushes.
Anyway, back to your original question, I could easily have relaxed through the early little pushes (and I wish I had), but I couldn't and didn't want to not push when I was properly in the 2nd stage as it felt gooooood!

You can "not push". Did it with DD by panting to slow down the delivery of her large head!

I had a 4 hour pushing phase. For the 1st half an hour my body was pushing, but I was not actively pushing. I wasn't sure if I should actively push or not, as I was told I was not in labour. After about half an hour the midwife finally accepted I might be in labour and was obviously found to be 10cm dilated. I then started pushing actively.

After about 3.5 hours of pushing my contractions stopped and had to be put on a drip to get them restarted. I could have not actively pushed as it was so painful to push against the contractions, but my son was so stuck I don't think contractions alone would have done much in my case (had ventouse then forceps anyway).

I have see on TV women who have had an epidural where they let the head get to the stage where it's nearly out and then they ask the women to start pushing then. Maybe someone whose had an epidural might have experienced this.

If your body starts pushing but you're not 10cm and shouldn't be, they can give you an epidural to stop you.
My body started it at 1pm, they had checked me at 10am and I was 6-7cm, they weren't going to check me again till 2pm but mw said go with it if it felt ok, which I did. Just slowly though, could have gone harder but this is what I found to be the most sore, where you feel the canal stretching so took it easy to keep damage to a minimum(ha!). Waters broke at 2.50pm which relieved a lot of pressure, 20 minutes later my ds was born. It felt like half an hour in total but when we went over it later that day, realised I started at 1pm and he was born after 3, my doesn't time fly when you're having fun?!

Ha! I never got the urge to push with DD!
The midwife told me when to do it. I was in constant pain and just wanted her out!
With DS my cervix started closing up again!
I had to stop pushing and sit up to let gravity help out. Not pushing was the hardest thing in the world.
It was wonderful to actually know when the contraction was coming and feeling the urge to push though.