One of life’s greatest gifts can and will come with powerful birthing sensations. These are no secret, they’re a normal part of giving birth, and there are many great ways to ease the pain naturally.

How intense are we talking about? It honestly depends on you, the birther. While the contractions themselves can be a lot in the moment, they’re not permanent, they don’t hang on,  and they don’t linger. I also believe you can do anything for 60 seconds, with a 2-minute break or longer in between.

People feel their sensations differently, ranging from “This is worse than I thought,” to “This is easier than I thought,” to even a past client of mine who didn’t feel anything really until they were around the 8CM mark.

Your uterus is a large and powerful muscle that contracts around your baby, working to nudge them a little closer to your arms each time. These sensations are often described as period cramps, intestinal cramping, feelings of constipation, downward pressure, low stretching, tightening, waves, and on, and on.

Contractions are just as much a psychological game as they are a physiological process. Studies show the more you understand physiological birth and its process, the more you trust and relax into it the contraction, lessening the sensations (parasympathetic nervous system).

Fear and mistrust about your contractions will have the opposite effects. Fear puts us into a state of fight or flight, where blood leaves all the NON-essential organs AKA your uterus and diverts itself to the muscles and organs we need to stay alive. Your body is doing the same work, and it’s doing it against tension and with less oxygenated blood. This may increase how strongly you feel your sessions and how you interpret them.

No matter what kind of birth you’re intending to have or where it’s taking place, every expectant parent needs some tools in their labour toolbox to help them be comfortable. This is a good reason to know what natural relief options are available to keep you comfortable and relaxed.

And relief options we have, in abundance! Here are 22 ways to ease your contractions naturally. 

1. Express Your Concerns and Thoughts

Personally, I find that taking a good look at your thoughts about birth and contractions is a great place to start because when you understand the thought you are having, we can often use education and knowledge to help change the response to those thoughts and feelings you are having about your birth, and in turn changes the feeling that you have to more positive and powerful ones.

I try to support my clients by providing them with the education and feedback they need to help

support them with the actions they take and their birth wishes. All this knowledge may not change the myriad of thoughts, beliefs, and feelings we have about childbirth; however, arming my clients with the tools and the information they need goes a long way in supporting them when they express their thoughts and feelings.

So, if you’re worried about your contractions, ease them naturally by airing out your feelings about them! Talk to your midwife, doctor, or birth doula. By expressing your thoughts and concerns, you can give yourself relief and peace of mind, meanwhile learning about practical solutions. Listing your preferences in your birth intentions is also a good way of helping calm your fears around contractions. 

2. Ensure a Soothing Environment

Choosing your birthing environment is going to make a difference in how your overall body feels, including when those contractions happen. You want a space that is comfortable to you, space you can walk, bathe, and have a variety of furniture and devices which help enhance movement and pain relief like a rocking chair, birth ball, squat bar, low stool, a soft bed, or a birth pool. These are just examples, and your birthing space might look completely different for you.

3. Labour and Delivery Study

Sounds like you’re going back to school, right? The thing is, it’s helpful to research your birthing space and even your hospital. Knowing their common practices and procedures and what the space is like, and what you can bring into it can be calming to you before you even need to think about contractions.

These are great ways to see perspective on contractions, get questions answered, and have your fears and concerns addressed. Speaking of concerns…

4. Carefully Choose Your Support Teams

Having two (yes, two!) teams for continuous support during labour and delivery helps to boost your emotional and psychological well-being, which helps lower the need for medications and emergencies, as well as lowering the risk of prolonged labour. 

Your medical team comprises your medical personnel (doctors, nurses, midwives). Choose this team wisely! It’s essential to choose a provider who shares similar beliefs and values as yourself. Your Care Provider works for you, and not the other way around. Interviewing and meeting with different care providers should be as important a decision as buying your first house or car.

Team #2 is your continuous support team, consisting of the people you invite into your space. Remember, they are there to witness and support. You’re in a highly intuitive and vulnerable state during birth. Anyone you ask to join you should always be 100% behind you, and you are the person who feels they should be there. Including:

• Your birth doula
• Family
• Friends

Reading the above list, you’re probably thinking, “You didn’t say my partner, WHY?”

If your partner (if you have one) is a first-time parent, too! Their understanding of birth may be about the same as yours, sometimes less. Your partner is emotionally, psychically, and spiritually connected and invested in both you and your baby. They’re experiencing, feeling, and going through this experience with you in different ways. They need the same continuous love care and support of:

• Your doula
• Family
• Friends
• Or anyone you invite into your birthing space

5. Practice Breathing, Meditation, and Relaxation Techniques

I often direct my clients towards learning meditation, and I can even show you now a few ways to learn how to relax and breathe.

• Belly Breath: This one releases tension. A Belly Breath is a quick deep breath in the count of 4 – hold and release to a count of 6 or more if you got it. 
• Box Breathing: Breathe In 4 – hold 4 – out 4 – hold 4 and repeat. This is good for panic and high anxiety release.
• Horse lips: relieves pressure by inhaling deeply and then pressing your lips together so they go THPPPPPPPPPPP like a horse.
• Normal Breathing! Plus, toning during a contraction, followed by a deep, loud exhale sigh at the end, releases pelvic tension.

This is all that I recommend; however, you have been breathing for however many years old you are. Keep doing what you’re doing, and arm yourself with some meditation. 🙂

6. Visualization and Imagery

If you are a visual person, this technique is for you. Visual imagery and happy things and places (your partner’s face, an inspirational image, or a favourite object like a journal, plushie, book etc.) are great. However, visual imagery in birth would be to imagine your cervix is ice cream in the sun, and melting away. Imagine that with every contraction, your cervix opens twice as big as before, and your baby is twice as close to your arms.

You can also try using sounds. Playing music, a voice/Hypno recording, or sounds that are soothing to you will help you melt into a more relaxed state. Try using them differently!

7. Hydrotherapy

Water is great therapy, whether it’s for physical or psychological benefits. Shower or tub, warm water is great for relaxation when you are in labour. Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure that pushes back. Floating in water and birthing in water has all these benefits. 🙂

Benefits of hydrotherapy: When in the tub (especially if having a water birth), 

• Helps you move easier and gives you greater mobility because of buoyancy
• During and between contraction relaxation 
• Pain management which is safe and effective
• Reduces blood pressure
• Gives you control within your own private, warm cocoon space
• Helps with cervical dilation

8. Just Keep Movin’

It’s about comfort. You’re likely to become sore, stiff, cranky, while stuck in a bed in one position for hours on end, which may stall labour and will cause contractions more intense over time.

Our bodies are built for movement and instinctively know just what it need to do, follow your body and move into positions that feel right, however, movements like dancing, rocking, lunging, and squatting all work to open the pelvis and bring the baby down. Leaning over the bed and swaying is a restful, calming, and relaxing movement that removes pressure and eases pain.

It’s best to change your position every 30 minutes to an hour at most. Different positions help with labour progression and reduce the intensity by increasing your pelvic opening. There will be positions more comfortable to you than others, so find what you feel is the most comfortable.

9. Warm and Cold Compresses

Birth is a warm event, rather than an intense workout, meaning your body needs warmth to heal and close after you’ve given birth. Keeping you, the birther, warm after birth is important. However being too warm can also be a problem, so that’s why it’s good to have both these options.

Warm Compresses:

• For comfort in labour, warm and wet towels, a hot pack, a hot water bottle, or a heating pad can be placed below the pregnant abdomen
• To reduce perineal discomfort, encourage softening and stretching of perineal tissues with a warm, wet washcloth on the perineum

Cold Compresses:

• Refresh and relax with a cold washcloth on face, neck, and upper chest
• Refresh the back of the neck with a cold washcloth to reduce the feeling of nausea (Pro tip, add a couple drops of peppermint to relieve the nausea)
• A cold pack on your lower back helps with back labour and/or discomfort

10. Massage or Gentle Touch

Reassurance, caring, and understanding can all be conveyed through touch, whether it be hand holding, stroking of the hair or cheek, or patting a shoulder or hand. Your partner or birth doula can soothe you with a massage of light or firm strokes with oil or lotion. 

11. Acupressure

Not to be confused with acupuncture, acupressure helps reduce intensity by pressing and massaging specific points on your body, which your birth doula, midwife, nurse, or birthing partner can help you with. 

12. Music

Music can be soothing, a distraction tool, and help with rhythmic breathing. It can also be a good focus rather than on contractions. Just Daaaaaaaaaance, dance your baby out. HAHAHA the babie song 😉

13. Use Your Voice

When we’re in pain or discomfort, we often express ourselves using our voice. Being vocal is powerful. It’s worth knowing there’s a very big difference between how we respond/cope when we stub our toe and when we are in the pains of a contraction. 

There are two pathways that conduct pain to the brain. There’s the pathological pain pathway, aka your body is saying “FIX IT” when you’re hurt or something is terribly wrong, and your body is telling you this. That’s the pain that comes with stubbing a toe.

Then there’s physiological pain, which is the muscular or working pain. Meaning when you go to the gym you feel that burn, or you’re hiking uphill, or you’re a runner training for a 10K, this is the run through it kind of pain. This is what contraction pains are more in line with, because you’re using muscles you’re not used to using before now.

The best thing to do with this tip is to follow your body. Your body knows it’s natural to make sounds using these muscles, and you can release your warrior cry when the actual birth happens.

14. Hypnobirthing

Hypnobirthing is the use of hypnotherapy. It’s a state of deep relaxation and concentrated focus,  which can help you manage pain naturally and control your breathing during labour and birth. 

15. Dim the Lights

Labour happens for most parents in the middle of the night, and for a reason. Melatonin levels are higher during the night, and this allows our bodies to relax so we can enter labour. When there is light exposure during labour, it can slow or stop contractions. By having low dimmed lighting, it helps your labour progress and feel more comfortable.

16. Double Hip Squeeze Technique

This tip is a form of pressure massage that you can ask from your birth doula, the hip squeezer cheerleader. It’s done to help relieve that pain in your back or pelvis while you’re in the later stage of labour.

The easiest way for you, the birther, to start feeling the effects of this technique is to lean forward in whatever position is the most comfortable for you. You can stand, you can sit, you can get on your hands and knees, or you can lean over a ball or a support team member’s knees. 

Your hip squeezer will then place hands onto your hip bones and make a ‘W’ with the thumbs so they point towards your spine. Then, they’ll push your hip bones in and up towards your upper body and shoulders. You can give your hip squeezer cheerleader directions while they do this like “less” or “more” for the pressure, and “across”, “down”, and “up” for where to apply it. 

You can also say “stop” if you’re not enjoying the sensation or feeling relief, and definitely say something beforehand if you can’t stand being touched in that area of your body.

I often joke that the only well-defined muscles are my arm and shoulder muscles from squeezing for 60 seconds and dropping it like it’s hot at the same time into a deep rocking squat helps my bum. 🙂  Birth doulas are not only trained, we do it regularly and we do it often.

17. TENS Therapy

Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS therapy, is a small, hand-held device that sends gentle electrical pulses to the nerves in your body via 4 electrode pads placed on your back. 

This therapy is safe and effective for parents in labour. That’s because its technology is based on what’s called the Gate Theory of Pain Control. In plain English, TENS will gently stimulate your sensory nerves, and it does this to block or suppress the pain signals going through your body.

TENS is most commonly used for reducing back pain. It also pumps up that already high as a kite endorphin level your body experiences during birth and postpartum naturally. This boost can leave you feeling extra attentive and happy while caring for your baby after the birth. Overall, it’s a super handy tool for both labour and your comfort. 

18. Rebozo

This one’s more of a Mexican tradition but it’s worth mentioning! The word ‘rebozo’ means ‘shawl’ in Spanish because that’s what it is. A rebozo is usually 4-5 feet in length and 29 inches wide, made of cotton or Rayon wrap. 

During labour, you can ask your birth doula to use a rebozo so your belly can enjoy the feeling of being swaddled or gently hugged. Since the rebozo tends to lift the belly lightly, this can also ease your contractions and help you relax. A rebozo can also be used for the above double hip squeeze technique.

Fun fact: I was trained to use a rebozo by a Mexican doula, and my rebozos are handwoven and purchased from a family that makes them for doulas from Mexico. If you’d like to learn more you can check out this handy article here!

19. Birth Ball and/or Peanut Ball

A peanut ball refers to an exercise or therapy ball shaped like a peanut. A birth ball refers to an exercise ball, which can comfort and strengthen your lower back, better support your pelvis which becomes symmetrical while you sit on it.

Both balls can help with comfort while sitting or lying down while in labour, and both balls are great tools to help change your position when being used to turn a baby or help promote cervical change. Spinning Babies shows many of the different ways these balls are useful with and without epidural. 🙂

20. Sustenance

Keeping hydrated and eating light during labour keeps up the fuel you need to reduce contractions.

Eat foods that are higher in good carbohydrates and fats to promote slow sugar burn, keeping your energy levels level longer. For example, nuts, seeds, fruits, and broths are great foods that our bodies burn slower. These are also light foods that are easy to pack and bring to the hospital. 

Hydration is any clear fluid expectant parents should be drinking around 10 glasses a day. Clear liquids, water, natural/unsweetened juices, tea, gatorade, coconut water, and “labour aid” are all good.

21. Using the Bathroom

Emptying your bladder helps to not only feel more comfortable, but also an empty bladder helps in progression of labour. Going to the bathroom helps to clear things out and make room for the baby to get through. By squatting on the toilet, you’re relaxing your bottom and it’s excellent for a parent in labour. 

Fun fact/teaching moment: the toilet is known as the dilation station because physiologically and psychologically are conditioned to relax and release on the toilet. In fact, there is a position that is not only helpful in coping, but also a trick to rotate the baby down and spin them. Sitting on the toilet backwards not only opens your pelvis differently, you also have the conditioned reflex-ish and you can build a nest to lean forward and relax for a few. 🙂

22. Birth Doula

Your cheerleader, coach, squeezer of hips and knows squats birth doula at your service! A greater risk of a positive experience, reduced complications, less use of interventions and quicker recoveries are what you sign up for when you add a birth doula to your support network. My team and I are here to guide you gently with many relaxation techniques and tricks that can help with labour and birth, while being present every step of the way with you and your partner. 

At Stages, we have a village to guide you, and we can take pictures too. Our services include doulas, postpartum doulas, and birth photography/videography. If you’re curious about any of these ways to ease contractions or you feel ready to add someone to your birthing support network, contact us or book a free initial consultation here.