Even very calm and well-balanced women experience quite natural anxiety before giving birth. No matter how the sequence of contractions, the frequency and duration of the courses for expectant mothers has been memorized, fear still remains and it is associated with the unknown. What will the contractions be like, how painful it will be, with what can they be compared? We will give answers to these questions in this article.
What it is?
Contractions are the process of tension of the muscles of the uterus, in which the cervix opens. The walls of the uterus at this time exert pressure, under which the baby takes the correct position based on his presentation, which is optimal for passing through the birth canal after the cervix has opened completely.
The sensations during labor can be different, and largely depend on the period of labor, the individual pain sensitivity of the woman in labor. Those who sell methods of childbirth without pain are a little disingenuous, because there are no contractions without pain. Another question is that some women tolerate pain relatively easily, while others worse.
The first contractions are rare and short. They are called latent. They last no more than 8-10 hours. This is the longest period of labor, and the contractions feel sore.
This is followed by a period of active contractions, when they are repeated every 5 minutes and last up to a minute. This is more painful, but the opening of the neck at the end of the period is about 7 centimeters, and very little remains before the attempts. After 3-5 hours of active contractions, transitional contractions occur, with them the disclosure increases to 10-12 centimeters, the uterus opens completely. These are the most palpable contractions, which are protracted, last about a minute each and are repeated after a minute, maximum two. This period lasts from half an hour to one and a half hours and turns into attempts when the baby begins his journey through the birth canal of the mother.
Recognizing real labor pains is easy. They differ from false and training ones in that they are repeated at regular intervals, develop and strengthen.
What to compare with?
Often women compare the initial contractions with pain during menstruation, with the ebb and flow of the surf. Indeed, contractions are similar to this in their rhythm - the uterus tenses and relaxes. Cramps occur at regular intervals, in between, you can relax. Naturally, the longer the rest period at the very beginning, the easier it is to tolerate a short spasm.
With pain during menstruation, labor pains are similar only in localization. A breaking pain arises with the onset of the tone of the uterus in the back, smoothly descends and fetters the lumbar region, the lower abdomen, and spreads throughout the abdominal wall. Then, in the reverse order, relaxation occurs.
Pain - what is it?
It is believed that pain during childbirth is of psychogenic origin, because there are no nerve endings in the uterus. Experts call overexcitation of the nervous system the main cause of painful contractions. Therefore, women who remain calm have a good idea of what is happening in her body at one time or another, give birth easier and faster, and argue that they did not experience transcendental unbearable pain.
It should be noted that pain is a very subjective concept. What is unbearably painful for one woman in labor is quite tolerable for another. It all depends on the pain threshold - the individual threshold beyond which the human nervous system simply ceases to perceive pain as pain.
In world practice, there was a proposal to measure pain in dol. These conventional units allow you to determine the threshold values of pain from a particular effect, but, alas, only for a specific person. On average, pain at the very peak of labor, during the transition from contractions to attempts, is estimated at 9-10.0 dol.
To understand whether this is a lot or a little, a woman needs to know that the average limit of patience, after which the perception of pain as such stops, is 10.5 dol, that is, labor pain is at the limit of human capabilities.
The experiment was carried out in 1948 in one of the American clinics, where 13 women in childbirth dripped drops of boiling water on their skin between contractions. It was then that it turned out that the burn, which was previously considered the most painful, was not at all like that - childbirth would be more painful. Many women did not respond to a drop of boiling water after a contraction, but not all. And this proves that the threshold of pain is different. Those who felt the hot water had pain that was below 10 dol, although they were in the same stage of labor.
There is no consensus about these units of measurement, and there is an assumption that they are so subjective that they cannot act as a single measure of pain. If we talk about some kind of scale by which one can assess labor pain and pain during real contractions, then it is easier to focus on the usual 10-point scale, adjusted (solid!) For individuality.
Thus, surveys conducted in several clinics in France, Great Britain and Canada, when women were asked to describe pain after childbirth in numbers, showed that the initial stage of childbirth was estimated by many as 0-2 points. Active contractions received higher grades of women in labor - 5-7 points. Transient contractions - up to 8-10 points. But after giving birth, an hour later, the women rated their well-being at 1-2 points on a ten-point scale of pain.
If you want to determine your own pain threshold before childbirth, you should ask any anesthesiologist to test you with a special algesimeter device - this is the only more or less accurate way to understand what your pain sensitivity is. All people are divided into four types of pain sensitivity and sensitivity.
What influences perception and how to relieve it?
As already mentioned, it's all about the woman's nervous system. Pain is a controlled process, which is why yogis and special forces are able to regulate their own pain, walk on glass, and not feel pain from a burn or cut. A woman, of course, is not a yogi or a spetsnaz intelligence officer, but absolutely any woman in labor can learn to perceive pain correctly and reduce it.
On this for a long time, explanatory work was based, which was carried out in Soviet antenatal clinics with all pregnant women. The development of a pain reduction method belongs to Soviet scientists, it formed the basis of exclusively all international pain reduction methods.
The right attitude includes auto-training, meditation training, self-hypnosis, breathing techniques, and muscle relaxation techniques. Calmness, confidence that the female body has enough natural wisdom and strength to give birth to a child will help to feel the contractions more easily. It's true.
From the first contractions, you need to move, not lie down, inhale deeply and exhale slowly, this will help to relax, and the relaxed muscles of the uterus contract less painfully. If the contractions become active, a change in posture will help, some are more comfortable standing, some are more comfortable sitting on a fitball, someone walks or stands on all fours. Strong contractions are better to "breathe" finely ("like a dog"), and when pushing, it is important to take in air and hold the breath, "squeezing" the baby out with the chest.
Fear, panic, screaming, moans, hectic spontaneous breathing, lack of contact with medical personnel intensify pain (the woman does not listen to the requests of the obstetrician, does not fulfill them).
Reviews
There are a lot of reviews on the Internet about what labor pains can be compared to. Most women compare them with familiar sensations, which are the same for about all the fair sex - with menstruation, but emphasize that the contractions are much stronger. You can also find such descriptions as pulling an invisible web in the abdomen during a fight, like clenching a fist.
Some argue that the contractions were almost imperceptible - by the time they arrived at the hospital, when the pain intensified, the opening was already almost complete. But this scenario is more characteristic of multiparous. For women giving birth to their first child, this difficult period is felt brighter.
Some find it difficult to describe what contractions are like, because they were in a state of stress and cannot compare those feelings experienced with anything that can be described in words in principle.
For what contractions feel like, see the next video.
