today I'm gonna break down these massage techniques so they are super simple that
there is no chance you're gonna get it wrong and believe me it's easy to get it
wrong because I've worked with over 300 couples as a birth doula and what I've noticed is that
massage during labor doesn't necessarily come naturally so i want to set you up for success
i haven't met before my name is alice and i am a birth doula Lamaze certified child birth educator
and on my channel i like to make videos to help you prepare for this life-changing event that
is childbirth now whether you are the person that is going to be receiving the massage and labor or
the one giving the massage in labor i want to encourage you to stay to the end of the video
that is where i'm going to give you more information about grabbing an additional
resource that i created really a cheat sheet on physical comfort during childbirth
for today's demonstration i am bringing in my daughter lily who's home from college on break
while lily is not pregnant she is going to be a suitable model for me today now i promised in
the title of the video that these techniques are going to be super easy but i also want to make
them easy for you to remember so i put together a little acronym sos massage so sos massage stands
for slow one direction and steady so let's jump in and take a look at this in action i like to start
with a shoulder massage because a lot of laboring people tend to hold tension in their shoulders
so again we're going to be slow one direction and steady and we're going to start here and go
out towards the edge of the shoulders so nice and slow one direction and steady so shoulder massage
is a great place for labor but also arms can be good so let me show you what arms look like during
using this sos technique so we're going to start up here at the shoulders and go one direction down
nice and slow and steady slow and steady nice and easy the third place i'd love to
show you is hips so with hips let me change the camera angle a little bit so you can see hips
so for hips we can start at the outside of the hips and move in so our hands are going in
one direction or we can go down the sides of the hips like this
one direction steady super easy so a quick note do not confuse this massage with counter
pressure now lily actually helped me out with the video on counter pressure it's very popular and
i will put a link down below and also link it at the end of this video because you might
want to look at this next but massage is for releasing muscle tension and counter pressure is
for providing relief during a contraction so two different reasons to do two different techniques
so now that you know how easy this is i want to share three of the most common mistakes that i've
seen in labor and i don't want you to make these okay the first one is random movements so random
movements is kind of like this and i see this all the time now my second daughter lily's sister
actually compared this technique to washing dishes and i love that imagery you really don't want to
massage like you're trying to clean something on off a plate so this one direction technique
is really important and it's kind of like if you can imagine petting a cat or a dog right that one
direction so no dishes more like petting a cat or a dog the second mistake i don't want you to make
is to end too quickly or not do enough so you know doing massage for a couple seconds or in between
contractions and being like okay i massaged it's really not enough we want to stay and linger a
little while if you've ever had a massage yourself you probably understand that if it feels good you
want it to continue for a little bit so you can get an adequate amount of relief the third mistake
i don't want you to make is to try to do more than one spot at once try to do too many spots
at one session so if you're ready to give your partner a massage and you're like this and this
that's too much focus on one spot get one spot relief and then you can move on to another
or if your partner can communicate and let you know what feels good and what area needs
some of that relief then you can focus on that spot but don't try to do it all at once
with this sos massage technique and avoiding those three mistakes you can use massage as
an awesome tool for physical comfort during labor now if you really want to guarantee
success in this technique then i highly recommend practicing yes spending some time
practicing before labor starts and you'll have these techniques locked down ready to use for
the big day now i have a free cheat sheet with 10 ways to provide physical comfort and i think you
want to grab it the link is below the video and as i mentioned earlier make sure you check out
the video on counter pressure it really breaks that down simply but if you've
already seen that one i know you'll like this one so see you guys next time take care bye
you