Who should I tell when I go into labour?
Who Should I tell when I go into labour?
Should you be telling anyone that you are in Labour at all? Or are you planning to give birth in a Party atmosphere? Who should you tell?
I choose not to tell anyone in my family that I was in labour the first time around (admittedly it was before the days of the internet, but still the phone worked!). They had all asked me to let them know. It wasn’t a decision that I had even thought about until they all started asking.
In the event I didn’t even tell my Mum!
It was an instinctual thing. I felt deeply that I needed to do this by myself, and I did. All through the first night for many hours and again through the second night, in fact I didn’t even wake my then husband. It just made sense to me to let him sleep and for me to practise breathing through the surges on my own. I got myself into a rhythm well before they became intense. I did not need him fussing about me. You can find out what to do when labour is getting started here
I woke him when I felt that I needed to go to the hospital. I had planned a hospital birth, as the lack of antenatal education had led me to believe that it was safer to have my baby at the hospital…. I now know that actually it isn’t, if everything is straightforward. Hindsight is a wonderful thing…
The first causes a cascade!
I still didn’t want to tell anyone that we were going to the hospital. It was the middle of the night and I didn’t want them coming out in the cold and sitting all night waiting for the news. It felt like pressure that I didn’t need at that point. And as much as I would have liked to have told my Mum that I was labouring, I felt that if I told her, I would have had to tell my in-laws, my sister and so on and so forth.
So who will you tell when you go into labour? Have you thought about who you want at your birth? Who are you planning to tell that your labour has begun? Are you planning on telling anyone at all? I found that as my pregnancy progressed more and more people expressed a wish to be there. This really surprised me, it wasn’t something that I had envisaged at all!
Labour and birth is not a spectator event and it really plays havoc with your hormones when you have lots of people disturbing you
I love this quote about where to have your baby, it speaks of the intimacy of birth:
‘Home is soft and comfortable; it is where you feel safe and where you make love to your partner - in turn triggering the release of the hormone oxytocin - and labour is the time to release more oxytocin than ever before’ Caroline Flint (2013) Do Birth: A gentle guide to labour and childbirth
Considering the privacy aspect of labour is important. Labour is fuelled by kisses, and intimate contact with your partner. Kissing, cuddling and foreplay is the best way of stimulating your labour and keeping it going when surges start to tail off. Intimacy raises your oxytocin levels, which in turn raise your Endorphin levels. Your endorphins are the hormones that help you get through the sensations of labour. They are your natural pain killers and will make your labour manageable.
Boosting your oxytocin levels is easy when you have privacy, or can just shut your bedroom door and have a cuddle. It is not so easy with half your family asking how you are feeling and if you want anything.
Choosing your birth companions really is an important decision to make. The people that you choose to have around you can make or break the experience. Understanding how your mindset works with your hormones for your labour to progress is a really important part of your antenatal education. Have your really thought about how who you have at your birth might impact your experience?
