childbirth educators and doulas have come up with an awesome way to practice for labor so we
can't just turn it on and off contractions and see what they feel like and practice our comfort
measures but we have an activity that we can do that comes kind of close to it so if we haven't
met in real life my name is Alice Turner I am a doula a childbirth educator and on my channel
you're gonna find videos that have to do in the childbirth so if that's your thing make sure to
subscribe and hit the notification belt so you'll find out when our next video is published today
we're going to talk about using ice to simulate contractions so in order to participate with me
make sure you get two items ready first you're gonna need a bowl filled with ice cubes old
filled with ice cubes have that ready to go the next thing you're gonna want to have is a towel
because Ice Cube's melt the third thing which is optional but suggested is to have your partner be
with you so whether you're the support person or the birthing person having both people try this
exercise is the way to make it the most effective okay so when you use ice if you pick up a big
handful of ice it's uncomfortable and so that is what we are going to do in order to simulate
discomfort during a contraction but before we just reach in and grab ice there's a couple of
things that I suggest you do first of all talk about what techniques you are going to practice
during this exercise you can start off and try to ice exercise with using no coping techniques at
all and that kind of gives you a baseline at how uncomfortable the ice is and then you can layer
on techniques and try different techniques you can try breathing position changes visualization
vocalization all the great comfort measures that you have learned in class and if you haven't taken
a class check out the free birth a twosie course because there's tons of comfort measures in there
you can check out the link is gonna be below birth a-to-z okay the other thing before you start is
I have put together a really easy to use video to make this process easier so I'm going to load the
video right here with this video you'll see that it uses both a visualization of the contraction
and it also uses an audio that you will hear that when you're at a rest state you're gonna hear a
nice soft easygoing noise easygoing music and then when a contraction starts you will visually
see that contraction building and going down and that's gonna be our annoying music so what
we're gonna do is get your eyes ready I'm going to start this video and when you hear that nice light
music that's when we're gonna relax and be in our restful state as soon as the music changes and our
contraction starts I want you to reach in and grab three bowls of ice so it's gonna look like this a
whole handful of ice and you're gonna squeeze it probably easier to squeeze it over a bowl so it
catches your drips squeeze squeeze squeeze all the way until you see here the contraction end
with the nice music starting or and you're gonna see the contraction end on the screen right here
okay everybody ready if you're not ready just pause and then we'll do it together let's go
getting ready get ready we're gonna need to grab the ice soon
oh now we can warm up our hands what you think we'll stop this video so we kept playing this
video we have a full four minutes of rest the contraction that you just practiced is a one
minute long contraction so one minute long contraction with a four minute rest is that
typical five one one that is suggested by a lot of health care providers to head to the
hospital though other providers are looking more at a more closer paced contraction rate how did
you feel this is where I really would love for you to put it in the comments what you think
about this now I want to hear from you did you try the techniques did it was it uncomfortable
what can you imagine using that breathing or using whatever technique that you tried
and labor to make it better now if you found this helpful you can just rewind and practice it over
and over again if you are a family practicing for birth go ahead and check out the supporting
her course inside the course is the full video where you can practice three contractions with
the four minute rests in between and there's also two other videos that have two different
patterns for you to try so there's one that has eight minute apart contractions that are just 30
second long contractions eight minutes apart 30 seconds long and then there's another one that
is three minute apart contractions with a minute and a half so that's the one that we're looking
at more active labor transition type labor to practice if you are a birth professional that
would like to use this in your own practice or with your own clients go ahead and check
out a link below for more information so that you can get access to these videos - hope you
guys have a great day and keep up your practice I really recommend it see you next time bye guys
you