when it comes to managing labor pain many people choose an epidural and if you talk to enough
people about their birth experiences you'll find that they pretty much fall into two teams the
first those that love their epidural the second those that really wanted to love their epidural
so if a epidural might be in your future or supporting someone that has one is in your
future i'd love to share three mistakes to avoid so that you can fall into that love the epidural
team and as a result have a positive birth experience now if we haven't met in real
life my name is alice turner i am a birth doula a le mans certified child birth educator and on
my channel i talk about birth so if that's a topic that interests you then you're in the right place
so I want to dive in straight away with a video of interview that i did with a
friend of mine that was willing to share his experience supporting his partner at birth
let's take a look we paid attention more in class when they were talking about
the options and what to do if you were not getting an epidural because i sat there thinking well
my partner is going to get an epidural so why do i have to pay attention to any of this stuff I'm not
going to need to know any of this stuff and then it turned out we were in a situation where she
couldn't get an epidural and then i didn't know any of the stuff that i didn't pay attention to so
as you can see they were on the really wanted to love my epidural team and in their case something
happened that was quite rare and that is she was unable to get an epidural at all and so they were
left without any strategies because as he said he didn't pay attention in childbirth class in fact
he kind of skipped childbirth education altogether because he wasn't paying attention he didn't learn
other coping strategies any either did she and so they had a very challenging birth experience
because of this first mistake and the first mistake is skipping childbirth education
i've heard many times that people say oh i don't need to take a childbirth class i'm
planning to get an epidural no please don't do this if you want to have a great epidural
then i want you to have backup strategies to go with that epidural because even though it's not
very common to not be able medically to have an epidural at all it is fairly common to experience
some side effects from epidurals or to have the epidural wear off and have some pain break through
to have spots that just aren't covered adequately if you take some childbirth class and have some
backup strategies that you can use to cope then you will work along with your epidural to create
that positive birth experience so if you find yourself in this boat and don't have any backup
strategies make sure you download the cheat sheet that i have below of physical comfort measures
and take a look at that and prepare before you are at that situation on to mistake number two
now this one if you'll bear with me i'm just gonna share a personal story to illustrate the mistake
i made the mistake myself so during the birth of my first child and actually you might have met her
if you saw this video on counter pressure she was actually my pregnant model for that video
seems like yesterday but it wasn't i had an epidural and during the epidural i completely
checked out of labor and so did my partner he and i started acting like it was just another day
and actually so did our care providers i clearly remember a conversation that the nurse had with my
husband over me so i was in the bed with the nurse on one side husband on the other side and once the
nurse found out that my husband was an attorney she started having an in-depth conversation with
him about a lawsuit that she was in about the signing on her house now you remember things very
clearly sometimes from your birth experience and i remember this like it was yesterday
and i felt very disconnected to what was happening with my body i wasn't paying attention to my
contractions i wasn't paying the attention to the monitors i almost turned off labor and checked out
mentally now this isn't necessarily bad some people think that sounds great but what happens
is sometimes when it comes time to push people have a hard time gearing back up to the work
that has to be done in the pushing phase so if you check out entirely you can have a harder time
mentally getting yourself back in to all the action necessary to push the baby out
and if your support person also checks out it is harder for them to jump back in and provide
adequate support during pushing so i want you to stay in labor do not check out of labor
pay attention to the frequency of your contractions how is your labor progressing
pay attention to what's going on with your care providers rest if you can of course
but always know that you still have a critical part and that is pushing the third mistake to
avoid to help you be in the love your epidural camp and have a great birth experience as a result
is stop moving so i don't want you to stop moving that is a mistake
and it's true that once you have an epidural what movement looks like is going to change you will
no longer be up walking about you'll no longer be bouncing on a birth ball but it's important
that you do keep moving in the confines of the hospital bed so what this looks like practically
is flipping from a left side to a right side to maybe wedged up a little bit and leaning
on one hip maybe with a peanut ball between your legs maybe even sitting up in the bed once the
epidural has full coverage but changing up your position about every 30 minutes now partners
can really help with this because they can set a timer for say 30 minutes on their phone and every
30 minutes ask for help from the nurse to change positions if you have a doula they can also be
very helpful in remembering changing positions with an epidural is so important the baby has
to make their way down through your pelvis and changing up your pelvis is going to help so much
so what i don't want you to do is get an epidural and just stay in one place for hours upon end
we want to keep moving so that we will love our epidural and have that positive birth experience
avoiding those three mistakes are going to help you have that positive birth experience and if you
want more information about what to do to have a positive birth experience i pulled together
five of my favorite videos into a playlist that you can get to right here and those
are the next ones that you're going to want to check out see you next time bye
you