The Ordinary Doula Podcast
Welcome to The Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rosier, hosted by Birth Learning. We help folks prepare for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.
The Ordinary Doula Podcast
E52: The Power of Touch During Labor
Unlock the transformative power of touch during labor and birth in our latest episode of The Ordinary Doula Podcast. Discover how a simple gesture can provide profound physical and emotional comfort to birthing individuals. With insights from a personal story, we unravel the contrasting dynamics of touch in delivery rooms, where clinical professionals often focus on tasks over tenderness. Learn how partners and doulas provide vital support through techniques like counter pressure and massage, creating a supportive environment founded on trust and consent.
Explore effective laboring touch techniques that enhance the birthing experience. We journey through areas of the body where touch can offer significant relief, from firm contact on the sacrum and pelvis to the soothing strokes of effleurage on the upper back. Delve into the subtle art of using touch as an emotional connector, where gestures like a gentle forehead touch or a reassuring handhold can mean the world. This episode is a masterclass in reading body language and adapting to changing touch preferences, empowering partners and support persons to make touch a purposeful and compassionate tool during labor.
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Show Credits
Host: Angie Rosier
Music: Michael Hicks
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker
Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice Helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast. Thanks for being with us again today. My name is Angie Rozier, I'm your host and we are sponsored by Birth Learning. So today I want to talk about an important piece of a doula's job, but this can be an important piece of anyone's labor experience, whether you have a doula or not, and I'm going to call that the power of touch. Touch can be a very important component, a very important tool, a very important plan, something that it can be used very frequently and effectively during the labor process for comfort and, yeah, just comfort, not just physical comfort, but like an emotional comfort for people that are in labor. So one thing that I think as I do my work as a doula in many different settings, as far as like lots of different hospital settings, even birth centers and home births you think about everybody who has access to or interacts with the birthing person, with the mom in labor. There isn't a lot of connection as far as touch goes for most of those roles, but that touch component can be incredibly powerful. So if you think about the folks you're going to come across during a labor experience, you're going to see and hear and feel it right. Like a nurse, you're going to have some interactions with a nurse or two. That'll be one of your biggest contact points. You're also going to have interactions with a provider, whether that's a midwife of your choosing or a doctor. Of your biggest contact points, you're also going to have interactions with a provider, whether that's a midwife of your choosing or a doctor of your choosing and hopefully it was your choice and then your own chosen birth partners or birth support, so that could be a partner, a mom, a friend, a sister, whoever that might be. And then, if you're fortunate enough to have a doula, awesome. That's another component of the birth team that you will have there. So think of the touch points, the actual physical contact points you have with any of those components of the birth team.
Speaker 2:So some of those roles professional roles are quite clinical. So like any touch you might get from a nurse is going to be maybe putting on a blood pressure cuff, that might be placing an IV, it might be a vaginal exam, they're not going to be like. They're kind of clinical touch points, if you will. So the touch isn't the intention of the touch, is not comfort or familiarity, and that oftentimes is not the role, not that that that person couldn't do that, but that's often not their role. Not that that person couldn't do that, but that's often not their role. And as I work in different hospitals, it's really interesting to me to see how hesitant and uncomfortable a lot of those professional, clinical roles are with patient touch. They kind of there's like this unseen, unspoken barrier that we don't really touch patients. But I want you to think of the power, the power of human touch and the compassion and intention and the effect that can come from human touch when it's present. So it's a lot of times not for professional roles that way.
Speaker 2:So consider a partner, right, like whether that's boyfriend, husband, partner of any type, that person has a whole lot different relationship, touch relationship with the birthing person than the clinical providers. Right, and everyone's different. Every dynamic in a relationship is different. This might be a very touchy in a relationship is different. This might be a very touchy, you know relationship, a very touchy dynamic. And it's interesting to me to the different touch needs of people very widely.
Speaker 2:I met with a couple last night I just did a prenatal with them, preparing for their upcoming feedback and she had had a pretty rough postpartum with her first baby like really rough in every way physically difficult to recover from, emotionally really hard. Breastfeeding was hard, she'd had a c section she wasn't planning on and she mentioned how very incredible touch was from her partner in her postpartum period. So for that, for that dynamic of that couple, touch was very important. And then related to birth. She's actually having a baby any day now and as we met and talked about different coping techniques, touch definitely was one of those and we demonstrated some touch right there at her home that her partner could do, that her doula could do. And I love demonstrating touch in people's homes because a lot of times just melt under that touch and it's intentional touch. It has a purpose of specific purpose of comfort during labor, right, so we're hitting on hips and we're hitting on doing some knee press, some counter pressure, working on the back, working on the head, which we'll talk about those in a moment.
Speaker 2:But that partner, that chosen support person, who's usually an intimate partner, not always, but usually that's someone they know very well could be a touch component. But that's not always the case. Sometimes partners aren't aware of or familiar with or they're nervous to touch this birthing person, which sometimes you know they're like I don't know, I don't want to touch that. I don't want to mess it up or touch wrong. I don't want to, you know, have a negative effect from touch. And we also have other people like moms, sisters, friends, that might have touch opportunity as well.
Speaker 2:So the opportunity to touch, the impact of that, needs to be earned. This can't be something that anyone just waltzes in the room to do and it can be earned quickly. But it's earned by trust and consent. So people need to have consent to touch. So even when I'm demonstrating in someone's home some touch points for comfort, I always ask permission, like you know, said hey, let's see if we can. If you kind of kneel against the chair here, let's, and I demonstrate, I get right on the floor with them. Let's demonstrate some positions that we might use during labor that can help with fetal positioning. And then may I show you, may I touch and show you some some touch points on your back or your shoulders or your head. So that's important to remember is needs to be earned and consent needs to be given. So touch creates connection. Touch really does. It creates connection.
Speaker 2:Some of the most common places as a doula and I'd say, as a doula, my hands are my most commonly used tools and I take them with me, obviously, to every birth and as I spend time getting to know my clients, I let them know that that touch and we go through the different tools that they might want to use. What are the different? You know, from a wide variety of toolkit of opportunities, from pharmaceutical tools to logistical tools, to five sensory tools, to touch points, to hydrotherapy, my hands are probably my very favorite and most used tool and they kind of ache to be used. It's interesting as I see someone in discomfort, my hands just want to go out. You know someone in labor. I want to just reach out and touch them.
Speaker 2:And I do a doula training and part of our doula training we watch several different birth videos together and there's one birth video we watch and we just watch people in labor and who's with them and what they're doing and we have discussions about these birth videos. And there's a particular video we watch where a woman is obviously struggling in labor. She's probably in transition by the way she sounds and how she's behaving, pushing's probably right around the corner and she has someone there supporting her, just sitting near her, just sitting, just kind of just taking up space and that's a term, right, just I'm just holding space for you here, um. But it's interesting, even our new doulas in our training, like why didn't that person reach out and touch her, offer some kind of comfort or support? Because she was sitting right next to her, and I think a lot of doulas specifically, and and other people hopefully supporting in labor, so partners listen up, like if you, you know, want to reach out and touch, if that's okay with the mom and we read people right, reading all the time scanning the needs of the room, but my hands always want to reach out and touch. So sometimes there's a lot, sometimes there's a lot of touch.
Speaker 2:So here's the most common places that I find that laboring people appreciate touch. So the back. When we have access to the back, whether someone's sitting on a birth ball and leaning against the bed, or whether they're lying on their side and we can access their back, or they're kneeling on the bed and they're kind of draped over the top, you get full access to their back. Or maybe they're just standing on the you know next to the bed or leaning on a counter or something. Um, when we have access to their back. I love that they might be sitting on a toilet and we can still access some touch points. So access to the back um is helpful, not necessary, but it's helpful. I've done plenty of back touch when someone's sitting on the bed, um, kind of just wiggle your fist or hand behind the back or when somebody's in the tub, but full access to the back. It's a bonus.
Speaker 2:So generally the type of touch people like below the waist, so this is low back right, we're like we're actually on the pelvis, we're on the sacrum, a very low part of the spine, and on the pelvis is pretty firm touch. So that's your counter pressure touches. And when I talk to partners in their home preparing them for labor, I have them, I demonstrate and then I'll let them try it, let the mom feel it, let the partner try it, so that can be like open handed, like palm on sacrum. It could be like two fists on sacrum, it can be two thumbs, it can be holding, still it can be moving. There's lots of different things to try and as the toucher I'm always looking for body language, even slight shifts in sound or demeanor, to see if the intention of this touch is meeting the expectation of the person who's being touched.
Speaker 2:So low back, hips, double hip squeeze. We come kind of I like to do this directly behind someone usually like we come on the outside of the hips, kind of the fleshy part, and just kind of press in. That's something that two people can do pretty easily as well. They can kind of just straight arm each other and people generally like that a lot like the. The interesting thing about that firm, intentional touch it kind of absorbs some of what is being felt, um, by the person laboring and when we do that double hip squeeze that can help flare the front of the pelvis ever so slightly to help that baby kind of rotate around. So pretty firm touch on hips, sacrum. And then other firm touch is knees, like knee press. So if someone is again, if we have access to their knees, if they're sitting on a birth ball well supported behind them, if they're on a chair, if they're sitting on the bed in kind of a throne position, if they're sitting on the toilet, then we have access to their knees and I will just come right below the kneecap and just push kind of straight in so my open palms and that's a pretty firm, intentional, deep touch and that kind of broadens the pelvis a little bit. You can almost see the whole torso rise. When you do that. It absorbs again some of what's being felt and broadens the pelvis a little bit, allowing just a little bit more space. And you can do knee press again when somebody's sitting on the toilet, even if they're lying down, you can have someone opposite you like doing counter pressure on the sacrum and you're doing knee press on the knees and you just push into each other.
Speaker 2:And a lot of these touch components are done during contractions. We kind of lay off between contractions because not a lot of coping might be needed between. But then when a contraction comes, use that touch component. Another common place on the back, but different, is above the waist. So we got the whole expanse of the back there and light touch massage is often very effective on the back. So we call that effleurage. You can use your fingertips, you can use the backs of your fingers, fingernails.
Speaker 2:I do carry a massage tool. I've hardly ever touched it. It's been probably years. It's been sitting in my bag and I haven't pulled it out. But my hands I will use my hands quite a lot. So light touch massage. Sometimes we'll do that between contractions, but oftentimes we'll save it for that time during contractions and some people say, hey, stop, you know, and you can read, you can read the room pretty well and say, okay, this is not working and tools don't work all the time, right, they they and say, okay, this is not working and tools don't work all the time, right, they, they'll shift and change what's working and what's needed. So we're always looking to see if the touch is still being effective.
Speaker 2:Another very common touch places the head and I think when people, when their head is touched, they kind of just everything under that. It just kind of relaxes, releases and sinks, if you will. So a lot of times and I will couple my touch sometimes with a verbal prompt so people are receiving this comfort through two of their senses the sensory, like their sense of touch, and their sense of hearing. So I might touch someone's head and I might kind of run my fingers from their scalp, like top of their scalp, down the back of their head and just say, release here, release from the top down, and you can just see that body just melt under that touch. It's pretty cool. Forehead is another really common place, especially if you're seeing it kind of scrunch up. You can see those wrinkles happening on the forehead. The jaw is scrunching up.
Speaker 2:I might touch just with a finger, with a couple of fingers, sometimes with a, oftentimes with a verbal prompt. I'll touch the forehead and sometimes, if someone's eyes are closed and they don't see that touch coming, I might say I feel a touch on your forehead before I actually touch the forehead, so they know it's coming and they're not startled. But like there's two touch points I learned this from a client years ago. She called them positive points. You could do it to your own self too and it's probably got a lot of cool ramifications in life but putting like a finger and a thumb I use my, my middle finger and thumb kind of equal distance on the forehead, so like if you were like looks like a finger pose, almost like put those there and lean down onto it. I'm doing it right now I don't know if you can hear that as I'm leaning into my own fingers near the mic but that kind of touch and I might counter that on the back of their head where I'm kind of just firmly gripping their head Not too firm, but people will also just melt under that.
Speaker 2:So kind of a combination of verbal prompts and touch on the forehead. So I might just say touch the forehead and say smooth out the forehead, they're hearing it, they're feeling it. I might touch the jaw just briefly and say release your jaw. So they're feeling it, they're hearing it. I might run my fingernails kind of slowly over their scalp down to their head, kind of like the nape of their neck. People just melt under that. So that's some important touches.
Speaker 2:Shoulders is another place we might touch, especially if you're seeing them kind of scrunch up a little bit, you're seeing that tension be present and build in their shoulders. I might say take a deep breath and touching their shoulder with a gentle but firm pressure and a verbal prompt to release shoulders, let your shoulders sink into your body. That can be pretty powerful. It's intentional. When you touch with intention, people know it. You touch with purpose. Your purpose is to connect to comfort, to help release tension. People are going to feel that and a lot of times they just melt into your hands.
Speaker 2:Another touch point is hands. Sometimes I'll just hold someone's hand right Like, or have a hand nearby, and it's amazing how often if I have a hand near someone's hand, they just reach out to hold it. They know if it's their partner's hand or if it's my hand, right, if someone's getting an exam, if I'm present when a vaginal exam is being done, I'll say, do you need a hand to hold? And they may grab my hand, they may not. I also, when exams are being done, I try to stand generally to the side of a person. So, partners, you can do this so that people don't feel, you know, they don't feel alone, they feel supported during that time, because that can be a difficult and an uncomfortable time for people very often. So kind of stand to the side, hope for their providers, gently, kindly, respectfully, talking them through what they're doing, and you can offer support by being there. So I'll be on either side and I'll offer a hand to hold. I will also touch the head. So just kind of give some gentle but firm touch on the top of the head or the forehead. So play with touch. Those of you who are supporting someone in labor, play with touch and get familiar with it.
Speaker 2:Another thing I'll do with hands. Often time is if I'm seeing them tense up, if I'm seeing hands kind of smashing something or wanting to, I might just again with a verbal prompt. I'll have my open hand and run it along their hand, just demonstrating openness. I also might say loose, open hands, nice open hands, and people will open their hands and tension just kind of flows right out at them. And we want all the power, the tension if you will, the power to be the uterus contracting, not the hands clamping down on anything, not the shoulders scrunching up, not the forehead. We want all the power to be in the uterus and making the effective change it needs to on the cervix. So when, with touch and verbal prompts, when everything, when every other muscle is encouraged to be soft and released, that uterus can have the most bang for its buck, if you will get the most mileage out of every single contraction.
Speaker 2:So I love being in a room and touching a client. It might just be a reach out right. Just reach out, touch their shoulder. I might do a little squeeze if we're having a difficult conversation or making some decisions or they're getting some information they may or may not want to have. I've earned that right to just reach out and touch them. And it's phenomenal to me the barriers that breaks down where the immediate support people of that pregnant person, whether it's partner, mom, sister, friend doula, that the other people of the team, the clinical people nurses, doctors, midwives there's kind of a barrier where they don't touch. I wish they did. I've been in rooms many times where I have, you know, full permission to touch. When nurses are just barely like, oh, let me put this blood pressure cuff on you, and then they back off. It's like they're scared. They're scared to touch their patient. But a lot of connection can come with that. So think about that, the connection that comes with touch, and sometimes you'll do a lot more. Sometimes people will find, like leaning on, like there can be like full body touch sometimes.
Speaker 2:Um, just a few weeks ago I was at a birth. Um had a really awesome supportive partner that was there. But, um, the mom found that she liked leaning into me. So I was standing near her bed and she absolutely just leaned into me and I just held her. Um, I was standing kind of prop my my knee up on the bed and she just leaned into me and I just held her. I was standing kind of prop my knee up on the bed and she just leaned into me and that was the only place she was comfortable, like coping for a while my wrist and hand kind of did go to sleep for a while, but that was a really important place. She just kind of buried her head on my shoulder and leaned into me. For a long time. There's been other clients where I'm the right height for them and so they'll just drape themselves over my shoulders and just kind of hang on me. We might sway together.
Speaker 2:Um, so those of you who are supporting people in labor, um, or those of you who are going looking at this labor process that's coming up for you see, like, consider the touch points, like for receiving and giving touch and giving touch and what you're comfortable with, and you might surprise yourself what you might like, what might, what you might want, what might feel most comfortable to you. But the power of touch is incredible. Uh, like I said, as a doula, my hands are my most important tools. Every once in a while we'll have a client who says I don't want to be touched and you can tell. You know people will change their touch preferences throughout the labor process. I absolutely expect that and as we get on towards transition and things, sometimes that you know what they liked 10 minutes ago they're not liking now and we recognize that and definitely roll with it. But consider touch, human touch, and the connection and comfort and compassion that comes from that, to be a tool that you can use, that you can access, it's easy, it's free, it's right there. So practice it Sometimes with my clients I'll encourage them to practice ahead of time. Do some counter pressure, do some knee press, do some effleurage light touch on the back, do some intentional touch.
Speaker 2:There was I probably mentioned this on this podcast before but Penny Simpkin, who's an incredible doula, kind of the. She started the doula movement in the 1990s and before and she had, you know, babies decades ago and she said one of the most impactful parts of her entire having a baby experience was in the postpartum period. She was in her room postpartum I don't know if her baby was with her or not, but a pediatrician came in, talked to her about her baby, and this pediatrician he reached out and touched her foot, just like in a kind, gentle, compassionate way, just patted her on the foot and I'm sure there was some verbal connection that went with that. Whatever that was like hey, good job, or what. I don't know what he said. Um, but that touch was so impactful to her and it was so small and so after birth, right, it was in the postpartum period. So please consider the power of touch, um, and know that it's a powerful tool that you can use as you prepare, if you're preparing to help someone, if you're preparing to be in labor, know that that can be a pretty powerful tool.
Speaker 2:So I'm signing off again from the Ordinary Duelo podcast. My name is Angie Rozier. Thanks so much for being with us and the power of touch. I'd encourage you to go out and make a connection with touch with someone in coming days, whether it's someone you know well, someone you kind of know. But see what the power of touch might do. Just a short reach out, a small reach out an elbow, a shoulder, a hand, whether that's a handshake that lingers a little longer, an embrace of some kind. You know we all have all we have different cultural awarenesses. But see what the power of touch can do, even on those relationships in your life and human connection. We all need to be connected to one another. Hope you have a wonderful day. We hope to see you again, hear you again, have you again here on the Ordinary Doula podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth.
Speaker 1:Learning. Episode credits will be in the show notes Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.