Birth is about maintaining a positive mindset
building the inner strength and resources to birth your baby in most enjoyable way
So it’s good to strengthen your mind so that your body will follow.
The reason for this is that when we are tensed and frantic, then it makes labor more painful and longer!
You'd rather have a more relaxed, shorter, easier birth
So what do you do to strengthen yourself
➡️ Commit to simple daily practices during your pregnancy that will begin to slowly prepare your mind and your body for birth.
For example There's a practice that teaches you how to relax through discomfort during labour how to
hold a handful of ice cubes in your hands for 60 sec
at a time (about the length of a contraction). Pay attention to the things that help you focus. Is it paying attention to the coldness of the ice? Is it taking your attention away from the coldness? Is it humming? Whatever the case, this is your time to practice
In other words, the best way to prepare for labor is NOT when you’re in labor. You don’t want to figure it out on the fly. You give yourself the best chance of “successfully” having an unmedicated birth, by preparing
When you prepare your mind + body for labor, you can ultimately make your labor easier, faster and more comfortable
You don’t need to do a ton of difficult things to actually prepare.
You really just need a solid routine and an understanding of WHY you’re doing these things.
Here’s some ideas
1️⃣ Choose a doctor/midwife that you actually trust
2️⃣ Take a childbirth education class- NOT the hospital courses- or read a labor prep book to better understand birth and your options!
3️⃣ Physically prepare your body with simple exercises that focus on opening the pelvis.
4️⃣ Mental prep! A lot of women take this one for granted. It’s super important to build your mental stamina to get through the marathon that is labor.
And Finally
In preparation for your labor and birth, there is nothing more important than education and knowledge
Educate yourself on the different stages of labor, on your options for pain relief, on what to expect and what choices you can make along the way.
And it’s great because you’re doing it before you’re deep in the intensity of labor. When possible, we like to get clear about these things before labor because we can typically make better decisions.
The process of creating your birth preferences is a powerful exercise in education. Things to consider include:
✨ How do you feel about pitocin to speed up labor?
✨ How do you feel about invasive interventions like forceps or vacuum?
✨ How do you feel about the possibility of an episiotomy?
✨ What will you use for pain relief? TENS machine, heat packs, shower, acupressure, epidural, etc?
✨ What about after baby is delivered - delayed cord clamping, the golden hour, active management of the third stage? Who will cut the cord?
✨ What about in the event of a caesarean? Do you want the drapes lowered to see baby enter the world? Do you want the room to be quiet and as dark as possible?
Make sure your support people and your provider know your preferences going in. BUT, as always, you have the right to change your mind at any time - consent must always be given, and can be taken away.
The power is in educating yourself and your support person during the pregnancy period.
.
But here’s the interesting thing that I want all women to know —though unfortunately a lot don’t know.
Feeling safe. Feeling loved. Feeling confident in yourself…..is the BEST pain relief.
It triggers all these incredible hormones in your body, that help you in birthing your baby. It gets you through those tough moments
About the Creator
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Ketogenic Diet & Intermittent Fasting
If you're having breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Don't forget about the snack, snack, snacks, right? That's an average person. You're just pretty much grazing the whole day. You will get belly fat, fatigue, memory problems, lack of focus, you're craving, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, and diabetes. But other than that, you're doing pretty good. So what is the common denominator of all these high levels of insulin? Okay, you have insulin resistance, which is causing high levels of insulin. That's what's creating all these symptoms. So these symptoms are the tip of the iceberg. This is the iceberg, okay? So we have to fix this. The way we do it is through keto, because keto's gonna lower the carb, and it's going to reduce the insulin, all right? Intermittent fasting works because you're gonna eat less frequent. Not the amount, but less frequent, because every time you eat, you trigger insulin. So the combination works really good to lower insulin. So when you start it, between day one and day three may go through a little transition period, which you're gonna feel some symptoms of low blood sugar, and that would be lightheadedness, hunger, and cravings, maybe a headache. You have to realize it's temporary, and if you give up right here, you're gonna lose the benefits of all the great things down the road. So just realize it's gonna happen, and just hang in there. But you can actually increase potassium and B vitamins to make it even smoother. You should Take electrolyte powder and nutritional yeast tablets. for this, we're gonna do three meals only, no snacks, because we're transitioning from sugar to fat. So when you make the transition, you're gonna make new cellular machines that run on fat and not sugar anymore. Thats keto adaptation, to do that is you're gonna go from one meal to the next. You're gonna have to add some fat to satisfy you so you're not hungry. So the fat is the thing that you need to adjust so you have just the right amount, so it's not too much where you're feeling bloated and right shoulder pain and a headache, and you have just enough to go from this meal to this meal when you're satisfied, so you're gonna play around with that and adjust that. I'm talking like brie cheese, nuts, pecans are good, walnuts are good, eggs are good, avocado is good. Any of those fats are really healthy. And if you were to do a hamburger, for example, which has twice as much fat as protein versus a steak, which has twice as much protein versus fat, you'd be better off with the hamburger because the fat helps you go from one meal to the next, all right? So make sure you have enough greens, whether it's salad or vegetables, because we wanna start increasing potassium. Very important, you need 4,700 milligrams of potassium. That's between seven and 10 cups of salad. That's a nutrient-dense food to allow the hunger to go away because your body's finally gonna be satisfied of nutrients, so you're not eating these empty calories. So, but primarily, you're gonna get a lot of potassium to really help reverse this insulin resistance problem. Now, you may experience constipation, for example, in which you might need to even add more potassium, or it could be the vegetables that you're consuming you're not used to, like kale, for example. If you're having too much kale, that can bind you up. If that's the case, switch the vegetable. But let's say you have keto fatigue and you're tired. That usually means low salt, so add some more sea salt. And by the way, when you're doing a ketogenic diet, you need about one teaspoon of sea salt every single day, compared to over here, you need about 1 ⁄4 of a teaspoon. Okay, so we need more sea salt, not table salt, to actually prevent fatigue and help your body with the electrolyte, sodium, and chloride. All right, so we're gonna do this for a while. We're gonna get used to it. Now we're gonna slowly graduate to two meals per day. The way we're gonna do that is we're gonna take our breakfast and we're gonna start to push it forward. In other words, when you wake up in the morning, ask yourself, am I hungry? No, good, go longer. Keep going longer and longer and longer. Because if you do this right, you wake up at night, you've been fasting all night, and now you're not hungry in the morning, push it further and further and further until you're at the lunch, we have no more breakfast, and you're at two meals per day.
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I sometimes have dreams of either becoming pregnant, being pregnant, in labor, or already having a baby. All varying forms of pending motherhood. I assume these types of dreams are common amongst women to have in some form with varying meanings and significance to their lives- but I can't help but feel that my feelings towards them might be... different.
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In the heart of a bustling city, there was a small but cozy neighborhood where people knew each other by name. Here lived a remarkable woman named Sarah, known fondly by everyone as Aunt Sarah. She wasn't a biological mother, but she was a foster mother to many.
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OF MOTHERHOOD.
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Comments (2)
Very creative writing
well done!