Dates, Walks & Water: How to Prep Your Body for Labor

You wouldn't run a marathon without training — so why wing childbirth? Midwife Katie O'Brien breaks down everything you can do before your due date to give your body (and your cervix) a fighting chance: eat your protein, drink your water, walk that dinner off, and yes, eat six dates a day. And if you're the support person? Katie's got a whole section just for you — covering everything from taking over grocery runs and meal prep, to knowing when to hand over the water bottle, give a foot massage, and most importantly, reminding her that this isn't just good for the baby — it's good for her too.

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Hello, and welcome to the podcast Mindful Midwifery Presents: Calm, Collected, and Consented Childbirth. I'm your host, Katie O'Brien. I have been a midwife since 2007, and I'm super excited to be doing this podcast. This episode is on how to get your body ready for labor. It's important to start from the beginning to get your body ready for labor. But don't worry, even if you're in the third trimester, you can still get a lot accomplished. Please remember that I am not your medical provider. I am a medical provider, but not specifically yours all the things that I am going to talk about in this episode, will relate to most all women. But it's extremely important that you check with your individual healthcare provider to make sure that it's appropriate for you And for those support people out there listening, I have a whole section on how you can help through this process as well. Okay, let's get started with how to get your body right for labor. Your whole body, not just your parts that are actually gonna be working directly on labor. First things first, you wanna eat right. I can do a whole episode on this, and probably will at some point, but from my labor perspective, your body needs a lot of energy in labor, and it needs the right nutrition during pregnancy to be able to work efficiently during labor. One of the things I think is most important and often missed is making sure you get enough protein during the pregnancy. Protein helps with many things, but one of the things I really wanna talk about is tissue integrity. This is very important with not tearing during childbirth. You want your vaginal tissue to be healthy and strong. Many women are gonna tear. It's quite common. Your body is set up to be able to heal after a tear from childbirth, However, you want your tissue to be able to heal correctly and be able to be repaired easily All providers have had experiences where you have a tear that wouldn't be that bad, but you go to repair it and the needles just go right through the tissue. I know that's very graphic, but it's important to have kind of a visual on what we're talking about. So when you go to repair, it should hold. The stitches should be able to hold. Your tissue integrity should be good, enough to hold the the stitches that we place. But Personally, I feel when somebody particularly has a protein deficiency, you go to repair and the suture just slides through. It just breaks the tissue. And this can lead to a lot of blood loss. It also can e- lead to your tear not being repaired as, as well, and it can lead you to tear when you wouldn't have torn otherwise. So extremely important to focus on that protein during pregnancy. You also want to try to avoid large carbs or sugars without protein. So in early pregnancy, this can make you really nauseous. Particularly with somebody that's having a lot of nausea and vomiting in the first trimester, you want to focus on making sure that your meals have protein and that you're not going a long time without protein so that it stabilizes your blood sugar. This can really help with the nausea. But in later pregnancy, that hypoglycemia can really factor in, particularly if you're eating something like fruits and oatmeal. People will come into triage sometimes not feeling... just generally not feeling good, and one of the things that can often be a culprit is that you are not eating well for that stage. So you're eating things that are feeling like fruits, which is quick sugar, but no protein with it, so your sugar is really swinging, and that swinging does not feel good. This is particularly problematic if you're diabetic, but even if you're not, you're not gonna feel good. So it's very important to be having protein, during pregnancy. So how much protein should you have in pregnancy? upwards of about 80 to 100 grams depending upon your weight I don't wanna delve too much into nutrition focus right now on this episode, but protein can also help you get through labor. Protein is really good to stabilize your blood sugar and give you more longer-term energy, which in labor is really important. Your body is not going to be able to process foods as well in labor. The GI system is not working at its full capacity, during labor. So it's important to eat highly digestible protein in labor. That could be Eggs, yogurt, bone broth Tofu And then of course, there are some pregnancy, specific protein powders, That can be helpful Okay, next thing we're gonna talk about is hydrating well. Hydration is vital in pregnancy. It helps with so much. It helps with amniotic fluid development and blood volume. You have a lot more blood circulating at the end of pregnancy than you do before you become pregnant, and this extra blood really needs extra fluid to be able to support it Digestion is gonna be very much aided by hydration, especially if you're having a struggle with constipation and hemorrhoids, it's important to hydrate That's gonna make everything much smoother, and you're gonna be much less likely to have hemorrhoids. Hydration in pregnancy also can keep UTIs and, vaginal infections at bay Urinary tract infections are gonna be more likely if that urine is very acidic and if you're not going to the bathroom as frequently. I know it's annoying in pregnancy, but really important to hydrate I like to joke that you have to water your flower. You know, your vagina's not gonna be at optimal health if you're not hydrating well And when women come in complaining of vaginal infections, frequently one of the things w- I talk about is are you well-hydrated? At the end of pregnancy, dehydration is particularly problematic because it can cause contractions, but they aren't the good kind of contractions. They're more like the false labor type, the type that's gonna send you to the hospital, but as soon as you get there and we hydrate you, they go away. Nobody wants to go to triage unnecessarily. So really important to keep that hydration up so that your contractions actually work better and you're not getting contractions that aren't gonna make a difference Another thing you can do during the early stages of pregnancy, but even later in the pregnancy, is exercise. Labor is a huge marathon. No one would not train for a marathon. You can't just go out there all of a sudden and run a marathon and see how it goes. You have to work towards that, and we really should be approaching labor with the same kind of mentality. We should be working towards labor as far as exercise. During pregnancy, exercise also lowers the risk of complications, and it builds physical stamina. It helps with sleep, and it helps with digestion which are really common areas of complaints Walking is really helpful. It's very easy, and you can do that with a partner. It's also really good for emotional regulation. You can walk anywhere Walking is particularly helpful after dinner. That's gonna help you, digest well and hopefully help your bowels stay regular and help you sleep And then once the baby comes and you recover, you can walk all together Yoga is another great way to exercise. Yoga and stretching, that can help with pain and help with correct alignment during your pregnancy. There's certainly a lot of pains that show up in pregnancy for the first time that you might not feel at other times, and that's because everything is getting softer and stretching to allow the baby to come through the birth canal correct alignment of your spine and of your hips is really important for the baby making necessary movements during descent during labor In the past, there was a lot of focus on how your pelvic bones were aligning and how the baby was able to travel through them. But in more recent years, we've really focused a lot on the muscles being as important as bone. We have a very unbalanced way of living. We are very right hand dominated now, and so our muscle structure throughout our pelvis might not be as aligned, and that can make it more difficult for babies to come through the birth canal. There are a number of organizations devoted to this, such as Spinning Babies, So you can spend some time researching this and find some really good exercises to be doing to make sure that your muscles are also aligned throughout your pelvis It's not a bad idea to consider chiropractic care as well. Chiropractors do not need special training in pregnancy. It's already built into their education. But some chiropractors particularly love pregnancy, you can ask your healthcare providers for some recommendations on who to go see Weightlifting. Weightlifting can be helpful. You do need to ask your care team for specific guidance or specific recommendations for trainers that might be specialized in pregnancy, but we do know that it can help during pregnancy if it's done correctly It's important in pregnancy to listen to your body, but also to stay active. It can be difficult because if you're feeling uncomfortable or nauseous or you have certain pains to say, "Well, exercise is not gonna be helpful," but exercise usually also helps those things. Let's take a minute and talk about some partner tips for this section so far As a support person, you can do a number of things to help your partner with everything I just mentioned You can encourage daily walks together. That's a really easy way for you to get exercise, both of you, and to feel connected, and to have a structured activity that you're able to focus on each other, not look at phones, and really be able to talk Sometimes she might not wanna feel like going for a walk. That's okay. Try to encourage her and get her up and moving around. Massage. Massage is a great way to help a pregnant woman. There are not that many people that don't like massages. There are some, but most people like massages, particularly if they're feeling pain. A foot massage goes a really long way, but hand massage, wrist massage, sometimes even a scalp massage And don't underestimate the power of a tennis ball on the back. Just rolling it can feel really good A couple suggestions about food. Keep in mind that pregnancy aversions to food can be problematic, And pregnancy aversions are a very real thing. Sometimes nausea during cooking can make it really difficult to eat what you just cooked when you're pregnant. I'll give you an example. When I was pregnant with my first in my first trimester, I was really excited to make this soup, I believe it was like a corn chowder. And I decided to add all these ingredients to it. I cooked bacon. I diced up a bunch of vegetables and cooked this soup, which it was a soup pack that was supposed to make a very large quantity. So it was something like, I don't even know, probably twenty servings by the time I was done. Well, by the time I was done cooking this soup and getting it all together, I literally couldn't eat it. It was making me so nauseous. Even just thinking about it in the fridge. There was no way my husband could eat all that, so he ended up throwing most of it out. I didn't even wanna freeze it 'cause just thinking about it made me sick As a support person, if you can take over cooking, that could be extremely helpful especially if your partner has a lot of nausea or food aversions. And meal prep can be particularly helpful if you take that over. Offer to go to the grocery store and keep snacks around that are healthy My husband is actually a much more efficient grocery shopper than I am and I really enjoyed when he would go to the grocery store and I didn't have to think about food as well. Sometimes people, not even just pregnant people, need things done for them because they're not particularly good at self-care themselves. So having snacks around that you know that she's gonna eat and you can just periodically give her can be helpful Keep a tab on her hydration if you can, and offer to carry the water bottles I know I'm not a particularly good hydrator when left to my own devices, and it can be helpful for somebody to just make that appear When you are talking to your partner, try not to focus entirely on the baby's health when discussing recommendations. When you're pregnant, it can feel like everybody's just so focused on the baby and nobody's actually solely focused on you. And you're carrying around another human 24-7, so it's pretty selfless at that moment. And sometimes you just need somebody to say that they're focused on you too. These health recommendations, yes, they're important for the baby and they're important for the pregnancy to develop well, But they're also just, they're also important for the woman's health regardless of the baby. Try not to be critical. It's really hard to share your body with another human for 10 months. I always like to focus on the humanity of pregnancy, and this is a human having a human. It's not perfection. It's really hard work. So try not to be critical, but just encourage her to stay on track and, focus on how this is helping her as well as it's helping the baby For example, these things are gonna make her feel better, not just make the pregnancy grow healthy And also remind her that this is a team effort. You are the support person, and you are gonna help her towards success One last thing that's not really part of things I've mentioned, but just something to think about, is watch the heat during pregnancy for your partner Pregnant women cannot tolerate heat nearly as well as when they're not pregnant. They're much more likely to have heat stroke and heat intolerance. So just keep an eye on that, especially during the summer months Some of the activities that are naturally planned, during the summer, particularly for example during Labor Day or times when people have parties, a pregnant woman's gonna get overheated much more quickly than when they're not pregnant okay, so These are things you can focus on during the pregnancy to help the labor go well The next things we're gonna talk about is how to prepare for labor from a cervix standpoint. So if you think of your uterus like a balloon, like a latex balloon, and you think of the bottom of that latex balloon, the part that you're gonna blow in, that very much looks like what your cervix is like. And your cervix has to get thin and soft in order for labor to be more efficient. So there are some things you can do during pregnancy to help get your cervix ready for labor Once again, please talk to your healthcare provider about whether or not these things are appropriate for you personally We'll start with evening primrose oil. Evening primrose oil is pretty easy to find. You're gonna be able to find it possibly even at like Walmart, Target, but definitely at your average Vitamin Shoppe or on Amazon. There's limited studies on evening primrose oil, just like a lot of things that I'm gonna be talking about. And one of the biggest problems with limited studies on something is that we don't actually know the effective dosing. So sometimes it's not just whether or not it's harmful or beneficial, it's also what's the best dose? And so when you look these things up, you're gonna see a lot of recommendations, and the fact is that there's not a clear-cut guidance on this But the ones that we're gonna be talking about have been around for a long time and are pretty unlikely to cause problems. Evening primrose oil is thought to possibly help soften the cervix and efface it. There's some suggestion that it might even shorten labor. The dosing usually comes in capsules, and the dosing should start somewhere around thirty-seven, thirty-eight weeks, Maybe even a little bit earlier. But general dosing suggests that you're gonna take five hundred milligrams orally. There's a number of different ways that you can dose this, but the way I usually recommend is that you start on day one with a five hundred milligrams dose once daily. The second day, you do a five hundred milligrams oral dose at breakfast and then again in the afternoon. And then on the third day, you do five hundred milligrams once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and then with the capsule, you insert that vaginally at night, and you stay on that dose of one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one vaginally at night,, for the duration of pregnancy The next one is red raspberry leaf tea. There's limited studies on this as well, certainly with dosing. It may be able to strengthen your uterine walls and decrease labor time. Some people really like red raspberry leaf tea. It's fairly easy to find In the later parts of the pregnancy, like the last trimester, you can drink one to three cups a day Dates is the one thing that we're gonna be talking about that really does actually have research, and the research looks great. It looks like you are more dilated, at admission to your birthplace, shorter first stages, more likely to have intact membranes, meaning your water doesn't break prior to labor, which is a good thing, more likely to go into spontaneous labor, and less likely to need your labor induced The general recommendation is six dates a day starting around 36 weeks Now with the larger dates, that would be three. Couple things to think about with dates. Dates are really healthy, but if you're diabetic, you are definitely gonna wanna see what happens with your sugars. Also they can cause some GI upset in certain people, so see how you do. In pregnancy, people tend to be a little bit more constipated, so they might be helpful I had someone taking one of my classes say that they were eating dates. They would take Medjool dates and cut them in half, fill it with crunchy peanut butter, and then put a small layer of.. 70% or more dark chocolate on top and freeze it. And then they'd take it out of the freezer and eat them after letting it thaw for a minute. I tried this. It was amazing. Now, I can't tolerate dates all that well, although I'm not currently pregnant and we didn't know about this when I was pregnant. I definitely would have eaten it in pregnancy. but they were absolutely delightful this way. You can also throw them in smoothies. Like I said, if you're diabetic, just watch your sugars. Otherwise, they're really good for you Castor oil. Castor oil also has limited studies But I do think castor oil can work I believe it works best when your body's on the cusp of labor, so that's probably closer to 40 weeks than 39 weeks And I do think that most people wait to do this until they're feeling really desperate. So that could play into why it works so well. If you look this up, there are a lot of different recipes on how to take this. There's certainly not one proven right way. It works by causing uterine contractions through GI disturbance, so you will have to go to the bathroom after this. Most of the time, you don't continue to have to keep going to the bathroom throughout all of your labor. But I did have a midwife tell me that she took it her own self, and that was kind of her story, having to use the bathroom a lot during her whole labor. Though she did take it again with another baby, and it worked both times It's possible that it works better in second time plus moms than it does in first babies, and it might not be a good idea for trying a vaginal birth after cesarean, but talk to your provider about that The last thing to talk about with getting your cervix ready is membrane stripping. This is done by a healthcare provider, and it's done during a cervical check. It involves them rotating their finger to detach the fetal membranes from the decidua, which is the thick mucus membrane lining the uterus. It is a bit painful depending upon your tolerance of vaginal exams, There was a 2020 analysis of forty trials suggesting that it actually did reduce the rate of formal induction, and that you were more likely to go into spontaneous labor, without affecting other maternal or neonatal outcomes. So there is evidence that this can work. Participants generally feel the benefits outweigh the harms, which is mostly discomfort, although I tell people that it's possible to inadvertently break your water doing this. That does not happen frequently, but it's not impossible So talk to your provider about this as a possible way to get your cervix ready or help put you into labor, One last thing I'm gonna talk about, about getting your body ready for labor, this is not specifically your cervix, but it's perineal massage. So perineal massage is where you're massaging the perineum to get it ready for a baby coming through There are a number of techniques on how to do this This can be done any time in pregnancy, but you particularly wanna focus on this in the last trimester It's gonna be a bit uncomfortable at first, but it will become more comfortable over time, and you shouldn't be doing this to the point of deep discomfort. You definitely wanna use oil lubricant, and you or your partner could do this. If it's more comfortable, you can even do this during a bath. But it generally involves moving your fingers or your partner moving their fingers in a way that is gently starting to stretch the perineum. This can be helpful to help your perineum stretch during crowning So there you have it, some ways that you can start getting ready for labor now. Eating well, hydrating exercising, and if you are closer to the end of pregnancy, starting to do some of these things to get your cervix ready Thank you for listening to this episode of Calm, Collected, and Contented. I hope that you're gonna gain some information from this to be able to use during your pregnancy. And make sure you talk to your partner about this. What is helpful for you to start doing as a couple? How can you start making these things more structured and part of your everyday routine so it starts to feel automatic, and not like you're having to think about it? When it comes to the general health tips, these are good suggestions to do for long-term, even past the pregnancy. So how can you start incorporating them into your life now? Thank you for listening, and if these episodes have been helpful, please share them with someone else. Podcasting is still highly dependent on word of mouth