hey there in my work as a doula and a child birth educator i often get questions about
pains specifically pains in your belly and these kind of pains can be mysterious and confusing and
can sometimes leave you wondering like what is that
what is it doing and is it normal and what's going on to help out my students and kind of organize
this information in my brain so i can help my clients and students and you guys on youtube
i thought about different ways to organize right i thought about should i make a table should i make
a spreadsheet a slideshow and then it dawned on me that these pains that happen in our belly can be
organized into three main categories and with these three categories there is some overlap
so a venn diagram in my mind is going to help us put all this information together so i'm going
to take these many sensations and descriptions of pain that we can get and experience in our
belly we are going to make a venn diagram it's a perfect excuse for me to get crafty let's do it
so after a quick trip to michael's with the kids i have the supplies i need for my pregnancy
belly pain then diagram we are going to work on making the three circles for the different types
of three pains next step is to write our three classifications we've got round ligament pain
we have braxton hicks contractions and finally we have real labor contractions
those will be our three circles of our venn diagram then on to writing out
on a post-it note each of the sensations that we might experience with each of these types of pain
post-it notes will be put into three categories after that are ready to set up our venn diagram
on the wall let's get started with yellow yellow is going to be round ligament pain
there we go and then how about we do red next so red
over here and that's going to be our braxton hicks
my label
and then last but not least we are going to oh look i'll have to fix that didn't realize
the price tag was on there let's put it here so we can cover it up and that is going to be our
real contractions okay so next i just need to fix these intersecting places and we'll do that next
it's ready so we've got our overlap strong it's not perfect but it's gonna do we have got
our all of our sensations that we feel ready to go and our characteristics
of these three different pains in our belly and let's get to work putting these up on our diagram
so stops with rest we're going to put braxton hicks caused by sudden movements
we are going to put round ligament pain gets stronger longer closer together that's definitely
real contractions can start in the back and wrap around to the front definitely real contractions
stops with hydration that is classic of braxton hicks they can sometimes stop with hydration
and sometimes stop with rest causes changes to the cervix we know this is real contractions
no pattern actually no pattern is both round ligament pain and braxton kicks
so we are going to put in this area right here tight belly is classic
braxton hicks ooh sharp pain definitely round ligament pains are those sharp shooting pains
we have got rhythmic rhythmic we know our contractions they come in a pattern all over your
belly the whole belly is feeling it it's really classic of our breasts and hips shooting pain
shooting pains are those round ligament pains here's a good one starts
increases or peaks and then stops that is going to be our real contractions
how about if they're in the lower belly or the drawing area
that's going to be both our real contractions and our rounding pain that lower belly
area gets worse over time it's definitely our real contractions and then i'm going to put our
mild to strong is really i'm going to put it here in the middle in this between
both braxton picks and real contractions that they can be mild to strong okay there we go
our venn diagram of veins in the belly what do you think this would be i think i could visualize
this being an image maybe like an instagram image let's see if we can make that happen
okay so we have two versions of this new pregnancy belly pain then diagram if you want to check those
out i'm going to pop both of the finished products over on my instagram and check that
out subscribe there too for more content about birth now that we broke this down i think the
next thing you're going to love is this playlist about the beginning of labor that is a great one
to check out especially before contractions start until then see you next time bye guys