Tuesday 25 June 2013

Labour Pain Relief



Labor pain relief
The body is an amazing thing, even beyond the fact that it is the physical aspect of life, but that it is resilient through pain and trauma, as well as wired in such a way that an action in one area can create a response in an entirely different place.  Added to this is the fact that women are able to gestate the formation of life and bring that life to fruition after the arduous task of labour.  The miracle, then, is not just the emergence of a child, but also the body that can do so.

Natural childbirth is becoming more popular, as people shy away from immediately subjecting their child to the petri dish of diseases in hospitals, or if they want the birth of their offspring to be private and personal, rather than public and coldly clinical.  Some mothers who have gone down either path attest to the fact that natural birth not only changed the experience for them, but seems to show itself in a more positive personality in their child.  Natural childbirth, though, does come with the same pains of labour, although methods that do not include drugs and chemicals may still be utilized to help the mother see her way through the ordeal.

The most common form of pain management for natural birthing is the use of a breathing technique which can incorporate visualizations to shift the focus away from the pain.  Breathing exercises were originally thought to distract the mother from the pain by giving her another task to keep occupied with, and the breath count is linked to the times of contraction in order to synchronize the physiological processes and make labour less physically taxing, providing much labour pain relief.  However, respiration and the acuteness of pain are linked, as controlled respiration can mimic the effects of exercise and release natural pain relieving endorphins through the body.  This moves breathing beyond a mental form of pain relief and provides true physical benefit as well.

Other natural pain management is based on the way that nerve receptors connect within the body.  In much the same way that acupuncture or reflexology can elicit a response in one part of the body by activating or relaxing muscles in another, these forms of natural pain relief rely on similar principles.  The main nerves and blood vessels are affected by tension in the jaw and facial area, since they run on either side of the neck.  The ability to keep the jaw relaxed during labour will change the way pain is received from the nerves that link to the abdominal area.  In the same way that breathing is more than focus and is an actual physiological reaction, the easing of jaw tension provides another proven method of labour pain relief 

You can find our products for Natural pain relief during labour at our Laboraide shop.


Photo credit: jerhoyet / Foter.com / CC BY-SA 

1 comment:

  1. Great article about Natural ways of giving birth. Thank you.

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