KiwiParent from Parents Center NZ Test Volume | Page 48
But ignorance is not always bliss, and to face up to the joys and troubles
of labour while still pregnant give you more information to understand
and face what may be to come.
What is absolutely critical in labour is that you have
good people around you, to help you, distract you,
encourage you, and support you. If you take nothing
else from this article, take this one piece of advice.
Try to have another woman, who has had children,
supporting you in labour. My advice would be that this
person is not your Mum, or perhaps not only your mum.
Mums are great, but sometimes they can worry about
the fact that their daughter is in pain. Sometimes this
means they are not the very best person to be in the
room. What has been shown to be very helpful, is for
women to have another woman who has had children
already, whom they trust, there with them. There is
significant research that supports this theory.
Don’t for a moment think your partner shouldn’t also
be there. Of course they should, and they are the main
person you need. But I would really encourage you to
consider having someone else around too. Labour can
be a long game, and your support people will need to
take a break now and then for food, or at the very least
to use the bathroom.
Labour
One woman’s experiences
Labour. Both dreaded and longed for, planned
for and un-plannable, for all pregnant women
it is something that must in some way be faced,
or perhaps actively avoided, in the road from
pregnancy to baby.
In my four birth experiences, labour featured in three.
All were eventually caesarean sections, which have
their own unique delights: we’ll talk about those
another day. But today, let’s talk about labour.
As a pregnant mother (and father) sitting in the
antenatal class where you watch the ‘labour video’
it can all be overwhelming. I remember watching
nervously, as the woman on it laboured at home, in
full 1970s clothes, and as time went on, less clothes.
Ahem. One woman in my class made a swift exit to
the toilets. At least one dad-to-be chose not to watch.
But ignorance is not always bliss, and to face up to the
joys and troubles of labour while still pregnant give you
more information to understand and face what may be
to come.
46 kiwiparent – supporting kiwi parents through the early years
All pregnant women want to know what labour is like.
I can only tell you what mine were like, and I’m sure
yours will be different. But for me, this is what I know.
Contractions don’t start off terribly painfully, unless
brought on by a contraction enhancing drug, such as
might be used for induction. In the best of all worlds,
contractions begin as fairly strong, low abdomen pain.
The thing to remember about contractions is that they
are like a wave. They come on slowly, like a small wave
of water running up the beach. They crest. They recede
again. And then you get a little break, to talk, to drink,
to ready yourself for the next wave. And so on.
As time goes on they get closer together, and more
painful, and with less break. There is a huge range
of normal here. For example, in the intense stage of
labour, throwing up is quite normal. Pack a toothbrush.
Laughter is normal. Noise is normal. Silence too is
normal. Your maternity caregiver, midwife or other
specialist, is who you need to trust to care for you and
your baby, and tell you if problems arise that you need
to make decisions about.
I’ve had an induced labour, a labour that started on it’s
own and during which I stayed at home for a long time,
an entirely avoided labour for a planned caesarean, and
a labour that decided to present itself the night before
another planned caesarean. Knowing my history of
labour and birth, I ignored that last labour, and simply
arrived at hospital the next morning for the caesarean
as planned, mentioning to the staff that I was
contracting, by the way. Several sets of eyebrows were
raised, not least those of my obstetrician, who told me
off and said that this was precisely the kind of thing
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