Hey Mama, welcome back to parently. Today we are talking about how to labor without an epidural. So why would you want to labor without an epidural? Well, maybe you want to shed those tears of pain and joy bonding with your baby. Or maybe you are scared of an epidural. Maybe you don't want that epidural headache that some women have told you about.

Or you think I just want to be able to get out of bed and move around. I don't want to have to be on bed rest while I'm laboring. Or maybe you just think okay, women have been doing this for thousands of years all over the world. I'm going to do it without an epidural. So today I'm going to tell you some things that will be very helpful on preparing your mind on how to have a baby without an epidural. So now let's talk about labor and delivery.

There are three stages of labor and delivery. And the first stage it's broken down into three phases. The first phase is early labor. When you start to feel like you're going into labor, you are coming up on your due date. Maybe you're past your due date. And you know, okay, I'm starting to feel contractions and this is it.

I'm going to deliver today, mark down on your phone or a piece of paper at that time that you started to feel contractions. early labor can take up to 12 plus hours. For new moms, it's going to take a pretty long time. So mark on a piece of paper on your phone, okay, I started contractions at this time. early labor contractions are just kind of uncomfortable, they feel like menstrual cramps, and you're going to notice that they're going to be anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds long. But the gap in between that interval can be anywhere from five minutes up to 30 minutes.

So that's enough time for you to you No walk around, get some exercise, do your housework, just get in a mindset of Okay, this is happening. I'm excited. Talk to your husband say, Honey, I'm going into labor, let's start practicing those breathing techniques that we learned before so that when we get to the hospital, we don't have to talk about it, you just know exactly what to do. Alright, let's head on down now to the active phase of labor. This is when your contractions are starting to get very painful. They're going to last about 60 seconds, and they're going to be about three to five minutes apart.

You're gonna think, let's go to the hospital. Now honey, pack the bags, hop in the car, but you really want to stay home. So why stay home during active labor? Well, when you're at home, you get to be in your environment. You get to get out of bed and walk. You don't have to stay strapped to any monitors.

You can have the lights how you want them. Nobody has to come in the room if you don't want them to. You can go outside and walk you can drink water, eat a snack. These are things that are much more difficult. Do at the hospital. Also at the hospital, the second you walk in, they start the clock, they want you to deliver your baby in a timeframe that they think is normal.

And so if you're at home and you labor for several hours longer than they expect you to, then you don't have to worry about them saying, okay, we're going to see section or we need to hurry this along. You get to be at home in your environment and have things the way you want them to be. So while you're at home, laboring and your contractions are picking up, they're very painful. This is when you're going to need to lean over the couch, get up change positions, maybe take a bath, breathe with those techniques that you and your husband have learned. So once you start approaching that five to six hour mark, maybe and you think I have got to go to the hospital, this baby is going to come get in the car and head to the hospital. You are going to be entering into your transition phase of life.

Labor transition is the most painful part of labor. But it is bearable, you can do this. So transition phase is when your cervix is complete it is at 10 centimeters dilated. This phase is the quickest phase out of the early inactive phases of labor. So it's going to be very painful, but it's going to go very quickly before you start pushing. At this phase, you're going to be making noises you never thought that you were going to make before you're going to have hot flashes, maybe chills, nausea, vomiting.

You feel like I can't do this. But get in the mindset. You can do this for me by the time that I hit the very end of my active phase, and then through my transition phase, I had pretty much plateaued I had been climbing, climbing, climbing, and by the time I got to my transition phase, in my mind, I said, this is as bad as it's gonna get and I can handle wit, sometimes the expectation of How bad is it going to get? That's what's so scary. And that's what we don't know if we can handle. But by the time we get to the top, that peak of the mountain, and we say, Okay, I'm surviving this, this pain is bad, and it hurts, but I'm doing it and so that's when your mind can grasp the pain and cope with it.

So when I got to the transition phase of my labor, I was in the hospital bed, and I was just breathing. I didn't talk, I just slept in between contractions. So in your transition phase, the contractions are anywhere from 60 to 90 seconds long, and they're about two to three minutes apart. So sometimes they do overlap sometimes you don't really get much of a break in between. And so for me, I was in my hospital bed, and I just pretty much kept my eyes closed the whole time. I knew that my husband was next to me the nurse was in and out.

Check my cervix taking my blood pressure asking me how my pain was. And I just kept my eyes closed through it. And I focused and I said, I can do this. What is pain? There's no such thing as pain. I can do this.

And so that transition phase went pretty quick. And then came the pushing stage of labor, the pushing and the delivery. This is the second stage of labor. So can you push without an epidural? Yes. And actually, the pushing stage is amazing because those contractions come, but when you push, it alleviates the pain.

So without an epidural, you can push very effectively. It is like having the biggest bowel movement of your life. You just you want to poop that's what it feels like all of that pressure. That baby's head is down on your sacrum and on your rectum. It just a feel like you want to push and you want to poop. So I'm just getting that mindset of when you get through the transition phase and you say, I know I need to start pushing this baby out that the pain changes.

I had kind of like a second wind at this point I woke up, and I my head, my health care provider at the end of the bed, and I was holding my legs. And when I would feel that contraction starting to build, build, build, I would pull up my legs and tuck my chin and start pushing. And I was really frustrated because pushing took a lot longer than I thought it was going to take. But my health care provider kept reassuring me You're doing great. You're pushing effectively. I was talking to her I was I was kind of like, Is there any way we can get this baby out faster?

Like do you have any other techniques, anything other than you know, something that I didn't want, I didn't want to use forceps I didn't want to vacuum and there was no need, but I just wanted this baby to come out. I've been pushing for a few hours and you know, I'm just communicating with my husband. He's putting rags, cold, wet rags on my forehead, then that's when I felt the ring of fire because once the head comes out the body delivers very quickly. And the ring of fire was just this stinging sensation. Some women don't experience this, but I did. And I remember feeling it.

I remember at this point, I, I cried, I shed some tears because there's just so much emotion. I had been, you know, groaning and making crazy noises and just trying to push this baby out. And I did feel a ring of fire. But it was so fast. And before I knew it, I was skin to skin with my baby. I'm holding my baby.

And it was over. It was pain, pain, pain, pain. I can deal with this pain. I'm pushing. It's hard. It's hard work.

Baby delivers. And now I'm holding baby. So after baby is delivered, then you have your third stage of labor, and that is the delivery of the placenta. So I had skin to skin with my baby while my placenta was being delivered. And I vaguely remember it, there was a little bit of pressure, some kind of appalling feeling. And then it was delivered.

And I think I was just so wrapped up and excited about holding my baby that I kind of knew something was happening down there. But it wasn't enough to take my attention away from my baby. And I tore during my delivery. And so my health care provider was also putting sutures in my tear while I was holding baby. I also don't really remember that nurses, text doctors, everybody's kind of doing their own thing and I'm just in my own world. At this point, the nurse is going to be massaged your uterus to make sure that you don't have any risk for bleeding later that there is no parts of the placenta left that there's no blood clots, anything that could put you at a great risk for a large blood loss later.

So that part is painful. Also, after you give birth to many children, you're going to have those after birth pains where your uterus is contracting, and it's going to be painful. But again, you just went through this whole process of stages of labor and delivery, you finally have this little joy and you don't even focus at least I didn't on what was going on around me. So that is having a baby without an epidural. It can be done. And you were created to do this.

God put in you every capability to grow a baby, to labor with a baby and to deliver a baby We wish you the best of luck in your pregnancy and in your labor and the delivery of your baby.