Preparing for imminent labour and birth of dc3- top tips please!

[SicknSpan]

Dc3 is due in a few weeks and was an unexpected but delightful surprise. I do feel a bit unprepared as everything my brain thought it needed to know about giving birth seems to have been re cycled to make room for other stuff I needed- school stuff mainly!

My previous two labours were relatively straightforward, 5 hrs each and with just TENS and gas and air (sadly no time for the epidural I was begging for!). I do recall doing some visualisation and found "candle" breathing really helpful, but these are just vague recollections now and could really do with some handy reminders of useful techniques to employ during labour.

Any ideas you can share?

Breathe through contractions.

When it hurts the most, remember that that must be the peak of the contraction so the pain will decrease thereafter.

Each contraction means you are closer to meeting your baby.

Good luck! X

Ah thank you just the sort of thing I'd forgotten!

I had hundreds of lists when pregnant! Nice time of year to have a baby :)

There's a great book full of very practical, usable techniques to manage pain during child birth - Birth Skills by JuJu Sundin. Can't recommend it highly enough!!! It includes visualisation techniques, breathing, movement, vocalisation. I read it when pregnant with my first and re-read for births no.s 2 and 3 and used my favourite techniques again. That book plus TENS was all I needed.

Enjoy your growing family, life with 3 is fab!

Thanks Moonhare have just downloaded it to Kindle- looks great. Thanks for recommendation.

Moonhare I started reading the book you recommended yesterday, it's excellent. Thank you so much- just what I need to remind me of the pain management techniques I'd used successfully from elsewhere when having ds1 and ds2.

Just wanted to say to anyone else wanting to do some prep on pain management that this book makes so much sense. Will update in a few weeks time when dc arrives on how well the methods worked but for now it's given me confidence that I can do this again, which I was a bit shaky on before.

I'm actually looking forward to giving birth again now. 37 weeks today pleeeeeaase let it be soon!

So pleased that you're finding it useful. It really made sense to me when I read it and I have recommended it lots of times since then. Not everyone 'gets' it but those who do usually say it made a difference to their labour and they had a better experience as a result - even those where it didn't all go quite as they'd hoped found they coped better.

You can definitely do it again! I understand those niggle doubts needled away at me sometimes too but once you get to birth no.3 your body knows what to do, you know how you handle things and the techniques get you to the end.

Really hope it's straightforward for you! Looking forward to hearing how you got on!