raspberry leaf tea - does it really help labour pains??

[brightonbleach]

just wondering, as am 34+3 and have had this tea or capsules (which is better as well?) recommended to speed up labour and recovery - a friend of a friend told me her labour was quick and pain-free because of this tea! can this be true??

Quicker...maybe. Pain-free, no chance!

I drank loads of this tea with my 2nd, none with my 1st. 1st baby was a 20 hr labour, 2nd was 3 hours. Could be nothing to it, but it tastes nice and can't harm anyway.

No, it makes your uterus contract more efficiently. She was just lucky

Its only supposed to help with the pushing stage. Everyone sayes second labours are quick, my second was far too quick and didnt touch the stuff. Its a general fact that second labours are quick anyway.

There isnt enough evidence that it works because its very difficult to compare. Factual its very sketchy as the theory has been cut and pasted from website to website.

No one can say whether they had a quick second/pushing stage on the tea as their bodies may be very productive anyway.

None of my friends took it either and the majority had very good labours anyway.

No.

I wish.

Had there been some trade-off between labour pains (or speed of said labout) and quantity of r.l tea drunk then I wouldn't have had 2 (yes, I tried it the second time too...) 28 hour bloody awful labours.

But since there's not much else you can do to prepare for labour and it will distract you from the fact that a baby is about to come out of your nunny, keep focussing on the rasberry leaf tea

i had a marathon labour, but my uterus did zip back into place at lightening speed. Could have been the raspberry leaf tea? Makes me feel good to think it was

as a word of warning - I drank loads with DD2, my labour pains were far worse, and then my body pushed her out too fast (due to stronger uterine contractions) that I tore very badly & ruptured my urethra! My MW asked if I had been drinking RLT, and said she could tell as this was one of the bad side effects

Totally agree with posts above that there is unlikely to be a pain-free labour (was your friend's wishful hindsight?!) but a way you can control your reaction to the pain is through visualisation or self-hypnosis.

I discovered a great book - only at 34 weeks, but still think it helped massively with managing the pain during the labour... "The Gentle Birth Method" by Gowri Motha. I think you can also take classes in 'hypnobirthing' which might have same effect. Makes a big difference if you have a plan for how you'll cope (mentally) with the pain.

Hope this helps! (I also drank raspberry leaf tea which I really enjoyed but have no idea if it made it quicker - i'm pretty sure it didn't affect the pain which is a mental thing really).

I was wondering if it was the RLT that caused DS2 to shoot out in 1 and a half hours last weekend! Seriously, I know he was my second but even the mw's were shocked at how quickly I dilated and then pushed him out. My uterus also seems to have contracted down a lot quicker but that all could be coincedental.

Definitely DID NOT decrease the pain one iota, in fact as it was all so quick didn't have time for the epidural I was begging for

HTH