DH wants to know what to do during labour to provide support. Hints, tips, do's and don'ts gratefully received!

[reluctantincubator]

I am hoping for a home birth with pool. As this will be DC1, and especially if labour is prolonged, DH would like to know (as would I!) if we can benefit from the might of your combined experience in terms of what you wanted your DH or birth partner to do/say to help. We have read up a certain amount and obviously everyone is different and there is an element of "horses for courses", but but nothing beats personal experience IMHO, and any advice would be gratefully received. My Mum will also be there and at the moment I don't know how their roles might be shared, so if anyone has had a similar experience, I would love to hear about it. (also, how his role might change if I have to change plan and go into hospital) Thanks.

make sure he takes a thermos of coffee and plentiful snacks for himself, he has to be able to keep up his strength for what could be a long haul. it is really taxing for the man as theý feel helpless..

make sure he knows your wishes and can advocate for you with medical staff.

If you say you dont want to be touched then dont touch you!!

My DH is a heamophobe and couldn't stay with me once i started pushing, my Mum ended up being my birthing partner with DS... she kept touching my hand, rubbing her thumb across the back of my hand... it felt like she was grining holes in my hand... i told her not to do it, she didn't stop, i threw her hand off mid-contraction, she grabbed it again, even to this day all i can remember is the feeling of grating i had on my hand!! It was something she thought to do to comfort me, but i'm a lone labourer (which as DS was DC1 i didn't know how i'd be) and having her touching me felt awful!! Hence with DD (DC2) i laboured alone mainly.. DH was passing out downstairs while i delivered upstairs!!

Currently 19+4 with DC3, plan my 2nd home birth, and will again labour alone and DH will come up after i've delivered!! Works well for us!!

frogs My labour started at 9.30pm and I haven't let my DH forget the fact he left me to it and went to sleep between 2-5am. He says he was tired.

Non-smelly snacks (for him) are a must. I had horrid nausea and vomiting during labour and at one point he was dabbing my forehead with a damp flannel in one hand and salt and vinegar ceisps in the other. I managed to remain calm but made it very clear that the crisps had to be moved immediately. Dh still laughs about it (his response was 'oh are they making you feel sick' so he MUST have known) but at the time he seriously p*d me off!

DP was given a campbed in the hospital during labour with dd2

I think just be prepared for the fact you are going to see your partner in a huge amount of pain and there is nothing you can really do about it. I know my DH found witnessing my pain incredibly upsetting, and that he hadn't been prepared for it at all.

Don't say "I'm so tired, I've been on my feet all night" after a 5.30 am birth (thanks for that, ex-DH ), and don't accidently pull the canula thing out of your partner's hand (and thanks for that one go to current DH).

Totally agree with hairymcleary - dh failed on 3 occasions to tie my hair back when I asked him to, and on one occasion managed to flick the mw in the eye with the hair band. It was very irritating.

Tell him not to say "my, that's a bigger cut than I thought" when you have an episiotomy. Not helpful.

Apart from that, he was actually pretty fantastic. He read my birthplan in detail (admittedly while we were waiting to be shown to a room...) and spent a lot of time making sure it was going the way I wanted.

I agree with Haylstones - Bear in mind that you might become very sensitive to smell, so I would recommend that he does not wear strong aftershave. A friend also couldn't bear to have her dh near her because he smelled of coffee, and then mints (trying to cover up the coffee).

My dh slept on the hospital bed while I was on all fours over the beanbag! Not a good idea!

And make sure he realises that it is utterly unacceptable to take photos of you immediately after birth looking sweaty and dishevelled with your boobs akimbo trying to force a nipple into your baby?s mouth if he is then going to upload the photos to the computer and send them to EVERYONE in your address book without checking the list first. Don?t think my boss or my accountant have ever got over the shock.

LOL at liberal's going for a nap in the car and Bernard's nerve grating cht chat about the construction industry! Meggle - good idea about the list. I will definitely do that.

out of interest, what snacks work best in labour - is it savoury, or do you need sweet stuff and chocolate for instant energy boosts. for some reason I have fixated on mini tuna sandwiches as something I will want. Bizarre.

Do offer dw the option of being accompanied to the toilet - and don't stay where you are and watch top gear instead!

I am sure everyone will be different, but I had absolutely no interest at all in food during the process. Had a 14 hour labour (from first twinge to baby out - first dc) and no food past my lips. I wasn't sick and didn't feel nauseous, just didn't even think about eating. Drank a fair bit, encouraged by MW and DH. I think my body went into survival mode, with all sorts of hormones winging around, and removed any appetite.

I had taken energy sweets, cereal bars and fruit/nut mix with me (ws induced), but didn't touch them. Handy though for the 4 days afterwards in hospital whilst bf!

Take a mixture of things, as you never know what you'll be in the mood for. High fat things are generally bad though, as they can make you feel sick. Cereal bars are good options as they are low-odour, which might be an issue (as mentioned before), they're also good for after labour if you end up in hospital (no room service at the 3am feed ). I'd also recommend glucose tablets, as they were the only thing that I could stomach.

My DH insisted on eating cheese and onion kettle chips, by the way, during DD1's delivery, while I vomited constantly. They were banned from DD2's delivery!

cheese and onion kettle chips? EEEUW!! They can turn a non-labouring tummy at fifty paces!

DH was a star through both labours.

doing the whole phone call thing.. labour ward, midwife, he assembled and filled the birthing pool, he sieved poo, kept me and the midwife in drinks, did cold flannels for my forehead. BUT most of all, once a contraction started he reassured me that this one was passing, a bit like the counting down that was mentioned earlier. It was something to aim for and focus on.

and when I doubted myself he reassured me that I could do it.

DS was born at home 2.5 yrs ago, DH and my mum were my birth partners. You may have to transfer, but try and see it as labouring at home as long as you can, also 60% of first-timers don't end up transferring...

DH and my mum worked as a team, I was really impressed by how well they got on together. I had talked to DH beforehand about not being offended if I didn't want him around at all. He did try a bit of back massage at one point and I couldn't stand it! He backed off fairly quickly.

As others have said, lots of practical things that they can do re snacks/drinks. DH was also the one who called the MW when I was incapable of talking any more. One practical thing, first labours can be long, I laboured overnight and so DH & mum took 'shifts' and turns to sleep so that they were a bit fresher and able to support me.

Hope it all goes well for you - am gearing up for DC2 in about 4 weeks time myself....

Frogs - 10lbs in 10 minutes???!!! Just thinking about that made my eyes water. I also just watched some birth videos on youtube and not sure if that was a good idea or a bad one. . Thanks for the inspiration tho rhinestone - and good luck with your second!

dh jobs were to

make drinks

warm towels and baby clothes on radiators/tumble dryer

and to sit there.

i am a very hands off person in labour. dont like to be touched by anyone.

Yes, from 5 cm to giving birth in 10 minutes. I was still in the admissions suite, not on the labour ward. For several frantic minutes they got the trolley wedged across the corridor, with me doing theatrical, childbirth-in-a-soap-opera groans, while the midwives shouted 'You can't give birth in the corridor'. I distinctly remember thinking, 'what are you talking about, of course I can'.

Mercifully it didn't come to that. But I do remember yelling 'Give me drugs' and the midwife replying, 'You're not having drugs, you're having a baby'. Had I not been quite so busy she might have lived to regret those words.

And yes, he was 10lb. Second baby, though. With the third I went from cervix tightly closed to giving birth in 15 mins. She was 9lb 14oz. And no, I'm not having any more.

Snap misdee!!!!

Frogs thats sounds too scary!!!!!! I thoguht my 8 and 6hr labours were fast enough!!!

LOL@ "the midwives shouted 'You can't give birth in the corridor'"

as regards the mahoosive babies - I am only 5'1 and DH is 6'2" with a 50inch chest and ginormous shoulders, so I was worrying early on in pregnancy that I would "grow one too big" but bump appears to be a manageable size, considering.

Funny though - given todays modern technology, not to mention aeons of midwifery experience, I always assumed that estimating an actual birth size should be really easy and quite accurate - I wa surprised to learn i was completely and utterly wrong and that apparently nobody can really know til baby comes out!

Yes, they told me dd2 would be much smaller than my other babies, no more than about 7lb.

Yeah, right.

Agree with not being smelly. I made my DP go and clean his teeth while I was in the middle of my marathon two-hour pushing fiasco because his breath was a little stale. Cheese and onion crisps or pongy aftershave would have been unbearable.

My DH's jobs were:

Keep the glasses of water coming - if you have gas and air it dries your mouth out terribly.

And telling me how things were going when we got to teh pushing stage. Things like 'I can see the head' and 'OMG it's got loads of black hair' really spurred me on at the end.