Labor Pain Relief: Pain Substitution

Series Summary

Pregnancy is the carrying of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, inside the uterus of a female human. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets. Human pregnancy is the most studied of all mammalian pregnancies. Obstetrics is the medical field that studies and treats pregnant patients. Childbirth usually occurs about 38 weeks from fertilization, approximately 40 weeks from the start of the last menstruation. Thus, pregnancy lasts about nine months. The most difficult part of most pregnancies is giving birth to your child. Labor pains are notoriously difficult for women and thus have led to the development of many coping techniques. In this free video series on pain control during labor, an expert labor educator will teach you about a variety of labor pain relief techniques. You will learn how to use meditation, pain substitution and massage to cope with contractions and labor pain. You will also learn about using visualization, warm baths and deep breathing during labor. If you are pregnant or have a partner who is going to be giving birth, let our expert show you some of the best ways to control the pain of giving birth.

Video Transcript

"So luckily there are lots of pain coping techniques and you're going to definitely need them in labor, in this one I'm going to show you how you can use ice as substitute for labor pains. Labor is called labor because it is hard work, your body is laboring, it's working hard. I'm going to teach you a lot of different ways you can deal with pain though, and I want you to try to practice all of them as many as you can. You might find that something that works now, might not work in labor. And it might be that things that you think are not effective now might end up working in labor. So you don't want to judge or decide what is right for you or what's not right for you. So for a lot of these exercises you can practice them with an ice cube. Obviously an ice cube feels nothing like labor pains, but it's a good substitution for pain in general without inflicting a lot of harm to yourself. So what you do, is you get an ice cube, everyone's got an ice cube. Get yourself a washcloth too because you're going to want to not have big water spots all over you. Another thing I like to use is a timer, this one is just your basic timer. A lot of cell phones have timers on them now, so you might even just have one on your cell phone. So what you do is you just get the ice cube and you're going to grip it in your hand. Don't be a wimp about it and hold it like this, full on grip it in your hand, put the washcloth underneath it, and then get you're little timer. And start and time yourself for a minute. When your minute's over, then you can let go of your ice cube, dry your hand off. And you'll find that this is a great way to try to stimulate pain without really hurting yourself, and it also is going to kind of see, o.k. when I'm in pain does this technique work or does this technique not work. So you're going to learn a lot of pain coping techniques, and I want you to use the ice cube for a lot of the exercises to find out if it works for you or not."