Better Me with BodyByBree
Better Me with BodyByBree
Empower YOU for Labor and Delivery with Liesel Teen
Ever wondered how to make childbirth a more empowering experience? Join us as Liesel Teen, a labor and delivery nurse and the founder of Mommy Labor Nurse, shares her expert insights and practical advice for expectant mothers. Liesel discusses the essentials, from understanding your hospital options and crafting a flexible birth plan to natural methods for inducing labor and preventing tearing. Her unique blend of humor and straightforwardness makes complex medical topics both accessible and engaging, ensuring you feel prepared and confident as you approach labor.
Liesel doesn't shy away from common labor concerns, addressing everything from the likelihood of pooping during delivery to the chances and degrees of tearing. By the end of this episode, you'll be equipped with valuable tips and knowledge, making the childbirth journey less intimidating and more empowering.
Liesel Teen, BSN, RN is a labor and delivery nurse and the founder of Mommy Labor Nurse. Mommy Labor Nurse equips pregnant women with the tools, knowledge, and confidence they need to erase the unknown, feel in control, and have an even better birth - no matter how they deliver.
With 9 years and counting as a bedside labor and delivery nurse, Liesel knows that knowledge is the key to an even better birth. To date, over 45k women have completed a Mommy Labor Nurse birth class, eliminated fear, and been empowered by Liesel’s comprehensive childbirth education.
Liesel has been featured on Forbes, Healthline, Fox News, ABC11, Insider, and Parents. She regularly shares pregnancy, birth, and postpartum-related content on Instagram to a community of over 640k and The Mommy Labor Nurse Podcast, which receives over 100k monthly downloads.
You can find more from Liesel:
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Mommy Labor Nurse Podcast
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Are you looking for a space where you will learn to improve your mental strength, emotional health and heal your insecurities from the inside out? Take the first step to living a more meaningful life with the Better Me with Body by Brie podcast. I'm your host, brie. I'm a certified personal trainer, entrepreneur and mother of three. I've helped empower thousands of women to take action through fitness, nutrition, meditation, personal development and aligning thoughts with action. This podcast is for those who are ready to feel inspired and motivated to live a more purposeful life. Let's grow together.
Speaker 1:If you're pregnant and a little nervous of the unknown, or maybe you're a seasoned pro and you want to learn how to make your next labor a smoother process with a quicker recovery, you'll want to tune into today's podcast. I brought Liesl Teen, registered labor and delivery nurse of over 10 years, to give her expertise and teach us. In this podcast we cover the freedom you have as a mother in the hospital, birth plans, how to prevent tearing, how to induce labor naturally, what works and what doesn't work, the best position to labor in, how common it is to poop on the table and your hospital bag must-haves. I share my experience having four children and some tips that I wish I knew earlier. Let us help you have a more empowered birthing experience, so let's grow together. Liesl Teen is a BSN RN, labor and delivery nurse and the founder of Mommy Labor Nurse. Mommy Labor Nurse equips pregnant women with the tools, knowledge and confidence they need to erase the unknown, feel in control and have an even better birth, no matter how they deliver. With nine years and counting as a bedside labor and delivery nurse, liesl knows that knowledge is the key to an even better birth. To date, over 45,000 women have completed a mommy labor nurse birth class, eliminated fear and been empowered by Liesl's comprehensive childbirth education.
Speaker 1:Liesl has been featured on Forbes, healthline, fox News, abc 11, insider and Parents. She regularly shares her pregnancy, birth and postpartum related content on Instagram to a community of over 640,000 followers and the Mommy Labor Nurse podcast, which receives over 100,000 downloads a month. I can't wait for you to learn from her. Hi Liesl, welcome to the podcast. How are you? I'm doing great today. How are you? I'm good. Thank you so much for being with us. I can't wait for you to share all of your knowledge with our listeners, because looking at your Instagram, number one is entertaining You're hilarious, thank you.
Speaker 2:I'd like to make it lighthearted. You know, I feel like birth sometimes can be very medical, right, we've gotten to a point in our society, I think, where, where it, you know, it can be very confusing for people and very like, ah, what does that even mean? So I like to make it lighthearted and funny and yeah it. Yeah, it can hurt and there can be like some serious, serious things that happen during birth, but let's approach it with a lighthearted spirit. So that's the vibe.
Speaker 1:And make it relatable. And I was laughing. You did a real like what my husband should do if I poop on the table, yeah. And I was like, okay, this is my kind of gal, I love it, I love it. Yes, so I'm excited we can chat. So you've been doing this for well. You were a labor and delivery nurse for nine years. Yes, I bet you've seen some things.
Speaker 2:I have, I have, yeah, I'll say that. So I it'll be 10 years this August that I've been doing L&D and I started off. I started off in the emergency department, actually always knowing that I wanted to get to labor and delivery at some point, because I've just always been very intrigued I think is the right word about women's health and pregnancy and birth and just how the whole process goes down. So, yeah, I started off in the ED and then transferred to labor and delivery. A year, a year later, now, nine and a half years later, I'm like, hey, I just had a shift on Saturday night and had a patient who had a beautiful natural, no epidural delivery and it was her first baby. And she just was like, oh my gosh, thank you so much. And blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:It, just it's. It never gets old. It's a magical job, yeah, I love that you're in it. Like you're still in it, you know. So you're probably on top of learning and the education and how to put like mothers at ease. So tell me, how did you get involved in kind of this educating side and empowering women through labor and delivery on your Instagram and wanting to kind of take that to the masses?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so kind of my story. Behind how I started Mommy Labor Nurse was I it's been about a little over six years now when I started. When I started I, like many of us, love my job, but I had a child my oldest one is seven now and I went back to work after I had him and I was like I want to stay home a little bit more with my baby. Can I try and make a little bit of income on the side so I can reduce my hours and just stay home with him a little bit more? So I started poking around and seeing what I could do to make a little bit of a side income, a little bit of a side income. And blogging came up and I was like, oh yeah, I could do that.
Speaker 2:I like writing, like if it's about something I'm really interested in, right, um. And then I thought about it and I was like you know what? There's not really anybody out there and this was six years ago, mind you, right, there's not really anybody out there on social media educating about birth, um, in in this way from a labor and delivery nurse's point of view.
Speaker 2:So there were mom bloggers obviously, like mom bloggers have been out there forever right, there's bloggers like all of these bloggers and stuff, but there's not really like somebody who has that twist on it that's doing it how I want to do it visually and just you know from my perspective. So I was like you know what, I think I can do this. So it started off just kind of like as a blog. I've wrote a bunch of articles, I was on Pinterest a whole lot and then, um, I've always been very, very interested in photography and, uh, getting people to understand something in like a creative way. So I started taking more pictures, uh, and posting on Instagram. If you look way, way back at my very first Mommy Labor Nurse post, they're very white background text. It's very old school Instagram, before reels were even out there, right, right.
Speaker 2:So I started to post that kind of stuff and take that angle as a very, you know, educational but lighthearted, fun, relatable way of educating people about birth. And it took off and people loved it. And you know, now, six years later, we've done, we've put out a few birth courses and, over gosh, almost 50,000 people have taken a mommy labor nurse birth course, which is mind boggling, yeah. But I kind of saw that there was this gap in social media and on the internet of birth education.
Speaker 2:And then when COVID hit, obviously people really took to what I was doing in the online space, because you couldn't go to birth classes in person, even if you wanted to, you know. So, um, so yeah, I just kind of saw that gap and I and I was like you know what I'm, I'm going to do this and, uh, it's it, just it. It flexes a lot of my cool creative muscles that I get to flex, that I can still work part-time at the bedside and also educate women from the comfort of my own home, and I get to do it just on a such bigger scale as well, because the internet is. I mean, there's a lot of people on the internet, so you can just reach a lot more people.
Speaker 1:Well, and how rewarding that's when you're the most scared, like especially your first baby. I mean I've done it four times but I looking, even the fourth baby. You're like it's different every time and so you do have these kind of reservations and there's so much information and you're like where do I start? So I, I was like I for this podcast. My goal was to kind of imagine a woman going through this, um, this journey, and being like what questions would they have and what would they want to ask a labor and delivery nurse to put them at ease? Yeah, um, because there are so many, so much information out there. So one of my questions was what well, are there things that a woman can do to help prepare for labor, to make it like an easier, better, smoother process? What would you say are like maybe a couple tips.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. So I'll give you know a broad say, but also it's concrete. But take a birth course, right, I'm not trying to push my own birth courses out here, but just take some sort of birth course. Educate yourself into what you're about to do, because I think a lot of people go into it starting to get a little bit more understood that hey, like I should be doing my research about what's about to happen to me. But some people go into it like I don't want to know and I'm just going to go into this and I've heard it's really painful and it's really scary and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:But the more you know, you know knowledge is empowering, right. It's going to make your experience so much less scary if you know kind of your expectations and what, what's going on, right, cause it's not like any. I mean you, like you said, remember your first birth, right it's. You can't compare it to any other experience in your life. So if you can go into it with the knowledge, um, it'll give you that empowering feeling and it will just set the stage for, hopefully, a much more positive experience. Because I would have patients come in and I would ask them right, have you taken a birth course or have you not taken a birth course? And the ones who have taken birth courses or just educated themselves in general, before they come in, even if they have an experience happen to them that is, quote unquote traumatic, they might take away, they might have feelings take away from that experience that are taken away from that experience that are much more negative that someone who you know wasn't aware that, hey, a shoulder dystocia can happen or this can happen.
Speaker 2:Right so if you go into it knowing like, okay, this might happen and this is what this person is is talking about you, your feelings coming out of that can be so much more positive. Right, I can't.
Speaker 1:I can't sit here and say if you take a birth course, this definitely won't happen during your birth, but I can't, yeah, I can't say that I think, feeling empowered and exactly, you just feel okay, I got this, I'm ready.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. So I would encourage everybody to take a birth course. Whether it's taking a birth course or reading books or talking to your friends, talking to people, just engulf yourself into that birth world because it's just it's going to make your experience hopefully just so much more positive. Because I'm just trying, I'm out here just trying to prevent birth trauma, because it is a real thing and we were not yeah, we're not about birth trauma here at Momulation.
Speaker 1:Nurse.
Speaker 2:We want to prevent it, if at all possible?
Speaker 1:Yes, I love that. So one is be educated, educate yourself. What about like stretching, or I've heard of like doing like perineum massages? Is any of that helpful?
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, yeah. So I will say that's more of a we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll put them in like a group, right. So I will say, whether it's stretching, whether it's doing perineal stretching, um, that's a little bit different than like the eating the dates and having sex before you know to to try and induce labor, and drinking the raspberry tea and stuff. On all of this, the curb walking, the curb walking, right. So you can do all of these things. You know, if you Google like how to induce labor, right, you'll get a big list of things that you can do and those things are great. I'm not saying don't do them. You know there's actually work there. So there's the question, right. So there's the question, so thing is.
Speaker 2:So I tell everybody okay, whether it's curb walking or eating pineapples, or having sex or whatever, your body's not going to go into labor until your body is truly ready to go into labor. So when you're doing all of these things, okay, let's say it's eating pineapple, for example, okay, it's not a great one, but it's eating pineapple. You can eat 50 pineapples. But if your body is truly not ready to go into labor, it's not going to throw you into labor, okay. But what you can do is you can eat pineapple, you can have sex, you can eat the dates, you can drink the raspberry leaf tea. With more of the mindset of I'm doing these things to prep my body for when my body is ready to go into labor. Right, because?
Speaker 1:you can prep your body.
Speaker 2:It might soften your ready to go into labor, right, because you can prep your body. It might soften your cervix up a little bit. It might get your baby you know if you're curb walking out. It might get your baby to engage a little bit deeper in your pelvis, right. So when your body is like it's go time, it might be a little bit easier. Sure For your body to you know, hit the go, hit the go button and say it's labor time. So, absolutely, we're big. We definitely encourage people to look at it with that mindset of doing all the things. Don't go into it like, oh, I've been eating all this pineapple and I've been having sex.
Speaker 1:I didn't do all these things and castor oil and I'm trying.
Speaker 2:Nothing is working.
Speaker 1:It's like well, so what your body's not?
Speaker 2:ready. Yeah, that's not the goal. It's just to do the things to prep your body for when your body is ready to go into labor.
Speaker 1:I do feel like there is this weird stigma right now where, like once you hit 39 weeks, people are like induce, start doing all these things, something's wrong. And it's like you can even go to 41 weeks, like whenever your baby's ready, your baby's ready. So I kind of had a question on that. Do you, would you prefer people wait, Like no shame, but do you prefer that is an easier labor if people wait for their body to naturally be ready, versus like okay, I'm impatient, I just want to get induced at 39 weeks.
Speaker 2:Sure. So that is a hard one to answer, just straightforward, right, because there's going to, there's, there's a lot of factors at play. Absolutely, if you look at it like if I don't have any other medical things going on with my body and I also don't have, like, any childcare issues that would get in the way, or you know, my husband is deployed and I need to wait, you know there's any other external factors right At play. Yeah, if you, if you're waiting versus inducing, um, it's generally going to be a better, a better deal for your body if your body's going into labor naturally.
Speaker 2:But there's to say, sometimes we need to induce moms for medical reasons all the time, right, baby's gotten, you know, babies, placenta is getting a little bit older and it's not giving baby that good oxygenated blood flow that we need. So we're seeing that at you know, one of your appointments your provider's like, hey, you know it might be a good idea to. So in that case, yeah, it's definitely better for your body and for your baby and for everybody to induce your labor versus weight Right? Same thing with you, know, if your blood pressure is really high towards the end, it's going to be a way better, a way better choice to induce your labor likely than wait for your body to quote, unquote, you know go into labor. It's obvious to think that we want your body to go into labor when your body's ready to go into labor, versus just inducing for the heck of it.
Speaker 1:Right. So my next question is what about Pitocin? Is Pitocin hard on your body? Is there anything negative about it or what are your thoughts on Pitocin?
Speaker 2:Sure. So Pitocin has its time and place Again. It's a great tool that we can use if we need to use it for induction purposes. But Pitocin, just like any other medication out there magnesium, ibuprofen, right, or Tylenol comes with a list of potential side effects and risks. Right, just, pitocin does too. It has the potential to cause your body to have what we call erratic contractions, where they're just, you know, come on top of each other, on top of each other, on top of each other. There are things that we can do to fix that right.
Speaker 2:Pitocin is nice. It's a nice tool to have versus just giving you a medication like Cytotec, right, where we just give you a pill and we don't really have any control over the pill. Pitocin is nice because it's in an IV and I have a pump that I can say okay, I can go up, I can go down, I can stop it if I need to stop it. So it is a nice tool for induction when it's needed. But, yeah, sure, there are risks to using Pitocin because you can get that contraction pattern that's a little bit too stressful for your body or your baby. There's also this thing called the cascade of interventions. That could happen that people think this is a thing that would happen, whether it's getting an epidural or getting Pitocin.
Speaker 2:But it's basically the theory that, like, if I okay, if we're getting Pitocin right in order to get Pitocin I have to have you on the monitor, on the fetal monitor, and you also have to be connected to an IV pump. That doesn't mean you have to stay in bed and you have to, you know, but you are just connected to an IV pump. Okay. So because you're connected to an IV pump, you might want to stay in the bed a little bit more, even though you don't have to. But you might want to stay in the bed a little bit more and because you're staying in the bed a little bit more, it might be a little bit more painful for you. Or because you're on Pitocin, your contractions are a little bit closer together, so that's making it a little bit more painful for you. So you might say, oh, I didn't really want to get an epidural, but I think I want to get an epidural and then get an epidural. Right, and nothing wrong with getting epidurals.
Speaker 2:But you can see how like, okay, now we've gotten an epidural because so it's like this cascade of interventions that can happen. So really, yeah, if we don't touch you and we don't give you anything, that's kind of better in the long run. But I can't say that just like as a blanket statement right, right, right yeah. So Pitocin is definitely not dangerous at the core. It's just a very useful tool and we just gotta we just gotta use it in the right manner.
Speaker 1:Okay, so my next question, kind of along with that, is how much freedom does a mother have in the hospital? Like saying, I want to birth in this position, or I want to be, I want to, you know labor this way, or you know I want my baby to have this shot or not do the eye cream? Or like, how much freedom do does she have?
Speaker 2:Sure. So honestly, you can't make anybody do something that they don't want to do. I'll say that first. Right, I mean I could strongly encourage you to have. Let's go real far. Your baby could be tanking and we're like this is dangerous, we really need to have an emergency C-section. But until you sign that consent form and you are like, yes, let's go, we can't do anything. So you always have the power to say this is not something that I want. So, yes, you can absolutely advocate for anything and you have the freedom to really do anything. It's just a matter of whether it's best for you or whether you really feel the need to advocate for it.
Speaker 2:So let's say you get an epidural, right, you absolutely have the freedom to move around in the bed as you see fit. Sometimes your legs might be a little bit denser than other moms, so you might need a little bit of help moving, but we always encourage movement in the bed. That's a myth that some people think that like, oh, just because you get an epidural, you have to stay straight on your back. No, we can move around. In fact, I really want you to move around and flip side to side, because when you have an epidural you're less likely to be moving around than somebody who doesn't have an epidural, because they're moving around, because they're trying to get in the right position, because they're uncomfortable, right and that's helping baby come down in your pelvis. We really want to be moving after we get epidurals.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, you definitely have the freedom still to move around. If you want to move around, you can say you know what? I did my research on this eye ointment or this vitamin case shot or getting hepatitis B before we, you know, we leave the hospital and I really, you know, it's not my cup of tea, I really don't, don't want to. Yeah, we don't, we don't, we do not have to do any. If you were like no, or if you were like yes, we, we. This is a relationship we got to play by your rules too.
Speaker 2:You're not you don't. We don't have to force you to do anything.
Speaker 1:Do you prefer women um delivering if they don't have an epidural? Because I think it would be probably hard Cause I'm thinking my. With my epidural my legs were like completely numb, like I couldn't move at all which I have had an epidural for all four babies, so I've never had a natural birth. I don't know what that's like. I think I'm just too scared. One time, my first baby I think this is what scarred me, my first child I was like maybe I could do it. And then the lady next to me was having a natural birth and I was like, nope, cannot do it.
Speaker 1:The screams that were coming out of that room I was like I'm too scared, give me the shot. But all of my labors have been super peaceful and like, very calm and very like, beautiful and like, because I'm not in pain, I'm just like, do, do, do, like, it's just great. I had a very positive experience. But my question is for the women who do the natural labors do you encourage them to like have different labor positions, where maybe they're standing or they're crouching over or they're on all fours, and is that better than laying on your back? Cause I've heard tell me if I'm wrong some of the myths I've heard, or maybe their is if you're laying on your back, you're more likely to tear, or it's harder for the baby to come out, which that's what I did. So I don't know. You tell me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so it's, they're somewhat true, right? We, like I said it's, it's great to. We want you to be intentional after you get an epidural, especially if we're concerned that your baby might not descend, right, there are going to be moms who have pelvises, like yours probably. If we give them epidurals and we just lay them in the bed on their backs, their body's going to push that baby out. It don't matter if we move them around or if we don't move them around, but I don't know that going in, you know. So all I know is that I'm going to, I'm going to still try and move, you know, my mom around, if I can, because that's what you know has been shown, to help her progress, right, but again, there you. You could still lay on your back and still have a baby, no problem. Yeah, plenty of people do that.
Speaker 1:But I didn't know what was preferred. Is it like, is it preferred to be able to kind of stand?
Speaker 2:It's like not stand, but you know the position where you're kind of leaning over, you're on all fours, or when you have a, when you don't have epidural, yeah. So, yes, upright positions we always like to encourage because of gravity right, gravity pulls that baby down in that pelvis. And upright I'll say not just upright positions but different positions Movement can benefit your labor progress so much because your body and your baby really are kind of working together to get that baby out of your body. So sometimes what happens is you know your baby and your uterus is pushing down that baby. But sometimes mom has to get upright, so her pelvis is at a little bit of a different angle, so her uterus is pushing down at that right angle, right. So I'll say, yes, we definitely encourage upright positions, but more so changing positions. And if this one position is working for you and you're making progress, cool, let's stay in it until it doesn't work anymore and then we change.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's great. How many. I'm trying to think of all the questions that I had and that my friends had when we were going to go into labor? How, like what, do you think the percentages of people who tear?
Speaker 2:So if you are a first time mom, your chances of tearing I believe I don't know, just like tear versus not tear We'll talk about like kind of the decrees of tearing but your chances of tearing are definitely higher if you have never had a baby before because you never had anything that big come through that area, right?
Speaker 2:So a lot of people think like, oh, I tore the first time, am I more likely to tear the second or third or fourth time or whatever? No, actually you're less likely to tear the second or third or fourth time because you're not a first time mom. So your greatest risk for tearing just you know, not compared to anything is just being a first time mom. Okay, but there are different degrees of tearing. So if you are going to tear, you're the most likely. The most common tear that people have is called a second degree tear. So if we think about your vagina and your butthole right, there's the skin, the perineal skin, that's kind of like at the bottom of your vagina, and then there's the perineal muscle and then there's your butthole right and your anal sphincter. That's another muscle, and so we score them on degrees. So a first degree is just that skin, you're just that baby's just kind of just, you know, had a little almost like a rug burn, right, a second degree tear is going a little bit into that muscle, that perineal muscle. That's the most common tear that we see with most moms, whether it be a first-time mom, second-time moms if they do tear most moms, whether it be a first-time mom, second time moms if they do tear. Um, now, if we're getting into a third degree, that is where we're going a little bit deeper into that muscle, that the anal synctor, right, that's a third degree and then fourth degree. You can imagine is you're just cutting all the way through that third degree and that fourth degree are much less common.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's something like 93 94 percent of people who tear are going to either have a first degree or a second degree. But obviously severe tears do happen, you know. So we want to be prepared for that. But yeah, if you are going to tear, the most common type of tear is either a first degree or probably a second degree, just going into that perineal muscle. And if you have an epidural, usually what your provider will do is they won't need to give you any more numbing medication down there, they'll just kind of stitch you up right after delivery. It takes a few minutes, usually if it's not a complicated tear and you're good. If you don't have a numper rule, they will have to numb you down there with some lidocaine. But most people agree that the shot getting numbed is worth feeling than either not getting stitched up at all when having a second degree tear or, uh, like feeling the whole process of getting stitched up. I think I would rather have just a quick little like okay, now we're numb, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Is there anything that a woman can do to help prevent the degree of tear?
Speaker 2:Uh, so there are a few things. Number one we can talk about perineal stretching that you can do prior to birth. That one is evidence-based, but there was a study that came out recently that said it's actually you would think that you have to do it like all the time right For it to be the most effective. But believe what it said is starting at you'll have to quote me or I don't. I don't know exactly the week, but something like starting at 34, 35 weeks. If you do perineal stretching um, one to two times a week, that's supposed to yield the best benefit for reducing the likelihood of having a severe tear. Remember we talked about severe tears. Those are those third or fourth tears. Right, it doesn't reduce your likelihood of tearing at all, but it can definitely reduce your likelihood of having those severe tears. So we talk about perineal stretching. It's basically where you can take your fingers or you can take your thumbs and you just go in and you just kind of push some downward traction on your vagina, put some lube on your thumbs or your fingers first, so yeah, so you're nice and looped up a little bit in there, um, and then do some downward traction until it's like just a little bit uncomfortable and then go a little bit more. But don't, you know, don't, don't, don't be crazy, right, but you're just kind of want to get to that edge and then a little bit sub and hold it for a few minutes and then, and then that's it, and then you do another session, um. So some people you know definitely find benefit in doing that, cause it's like something that they can actually do instead of just like hope for right. It's like, okay, I'm doing this to prevent my likelihood of having a severe tear, so that's number one Um. But again, you don't have to do that and you definitely could still have a tear, you know, if you don't, if you don't do any sort of perineal stretching. So sometimes people try it and they're like this is not worth it, it's too uncomfortable. I'm just going to let my body do its thing and if I tear, I tear, if I don't, I don't, whatever. Um. So some people don't think it's worth it because it's uncomfortable to do Um. But some people do and they want to do it.
Speaker 2:Uh, the other thing that I like to tell people that I love to do this with my patients is get a nice hot, warm compress and put um, like a nice warm compress on your perineum as you're pushing, and that makes sense, right Cause it it dilates those, um, those blood vessels down there so it makes the skin a little bit less likely to tear a whole lot because it's just getting a little more blood flow down there and it just kind of feels good too.
Speaker 2:I mean, you have an epidural, you have an epidural, so you're not feeling the temperature change at all, but it's just like a little bit of warm and a little bit of support down there as you're pushing. So that's something that you don't have to do it yourself. You can let your nurse know that this is something that I want to happen at delivery. Can you help me with this? Or if you have a doula, you can let your doula know they can help you with that perineal support with the hot compress. But that's another good thing that I love to do with my patients is to just have that nice warp compress while we're pushing and that just, yeah, it just kind of I don't know it just kind of helps to guide the baby out too, and when I'm also putting not my hands inside but my hands just kind of like supporting the perineum as you're pushing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, what, what? How common is it to poop during birth? The question of the day no it's so funny.
Speaker 2:Cause my mom my, my patient that I had the other night. That's the first thing she asked me when she was done. She was like did I poop? And I was like no, actually you didn't.
Speaker 1:Um, but I feel like people are just terrified. I never have unless they were all lying to me but I was holding my friend's leg and she pooped. I was like we're just, we're just not going to say anything, yeah, and that's exactly what you do. That's exactly what you do, they all lied to me and I didn't even know. You know what I mean, but who cares?
Speaker 2:Who cares? You know? Yes, you're exactly right. But I will say, um, pooping during delivery is quite common. I'd say two out of three, three out of four people are probably going to poop. It's pretty common. But here's the thing when we, when we think about pooping in general, uh, it's not like you're you're pooping Like it's a whole poop, right, when you go to the bathroom, it's like maybe it's just a little bit. Some people have quite a bit of poop that comes out, but the majority of people, 90% of the people who poop, if they're going to be out of that three to four, it's just a little bit. It's just a little bit because think about your anatomy, right, your vagina. You're just pushing so hard, your baby's grabbing up against your rectum, so like anything that's in there is going to come out. It's just going to come out.
Speaker 2:Ladies, don't be nervous, don't be scared, it's all normal Maybe you have a head twisted at your head.
Speaker 1:I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I say that too because that, honestly, I think is the biggest concern for people. It's like, oh my God. I don't want to poop in front of my husband. It is embarrassing, but I say I've never. I've never heard of somebody getting divorced or breaking up after, after delivery Cause they saw their partner poop. And if they do, then you should not be with him in the first place Okay.
Speaker 2:So it's fine. And I also tell people, if you poop, um, I'm not going to say anything about it, unless, unless the vibe is there and we're talking about it beforehand and you're like it's funny, and you're asking and like, right, but I'm not going to be like oh, you're pooping now, right, because it might miss, it, might throw off the whole you know, your whole progress, right? So I'm not going to say anything, it's fine, we'll clean it up where we that's, that's labor and delivery, nurse in one oh one. That's like. The first thing you learn how to do is to be super, super sneaky with like we get that poop out of the way. So we try to make sure it just it doesn't get in the way of anything and you don't smell it and we just get rid of it, so I just don't want it to mess you up.
Speaker 1:No worries, I think that's, I think that's very sweet of you and every nurse that has ever done that. So tell me, how important is it to have a birth plan?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean I'm to the thought of like everybody should have some sort of birth plan, uh, going into their labor, their birth, their C-section, whatever you have. It just doesn't have to be written down. But I mean, if I could pick right, I would like to. I would say, yeah, let's have everybody write down what they feel is most important to them. But I will say, yes, I think it's important to go into your birth with some sort of plan. But I don't even really want to call it a plan.
Speaker 2:I will say, let's go into your birth with some sort of like guide or like wishlist or like what's most important to you. Have an idea, Right. And if you want to write that down, perfect, even better, I can take it then when you come in and I can see it. You don't have to explain it to me. We're going to be talking about it, right. But it's like, right there, I can see what's important to you and what you don't care about and what your preferences are and stuff. But yes, if you can do it, it's only going to help. But for some reason, if you forget or if you don't want to write anything down, or if you just are against it. It's OK, we will go over your birth plan when you come into the hospital. Just be a little bit of an expedited process and I'll be asking you questions, Right, but yes.
Speaker 1:What do you want on your birth plan? Yes, what type of stuff do you want on your birth plan?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I like to uh, I like to give people our little template. It's just mommylabournursecom slash birth plan and it's like a little template. It has little questions that you know we'll say do you want um, you know, different position changes? Do you want to get talk about pain management? Do you want to get about pain management? Do you want to get an epidural? Do you want to get IV pain medication? Do you want to get nitrous oxide?
Speaker 2:What are some things after birth that you care about? The vitamin K, the eye drops? Do you want baby to be in the room at all times with you? Do you want the baby to be bathed here? Do you even want a bath at all? Stuff that you might not even be thinking about before you're thinking about it. So that's another reason why I encourage people to write birth plans, or write or at least fill something out, because it gets you to start thinking about these types of things. But yeah, it's a lot of concrete things like that, like how do you, how do you envision your birth to go? And here's a bunch of questions that I'm going to ask you. That's going to get you to that point.
Speaker 1:I love that. I I definitely felt way more empowered my fourth labor versus my first. My first I didn't do. I literally walked in and I was like what do I do? I don't, I don't know. And I had no um like opinion on anything because I was just like whatever you just say yeah, and then you learn.
Speaker 1:then you have a few babies by the fourth. I was like, okay, here's the, I'm all, we're not bathing the baby after. I want that stuff soaking in. Like I like knew exactly what I wanted and they were so accommodating and so great. And the nurses were like awesome, I'm all delayed cord clamping, like I did all the things and I felt so empowered. It really did help. So I think that's super smart, good, um, okay. Last thing, tell us your hospital bag must hahaves, yeah.
Speaker 2:We have a great list that you can also download. I think it's MommyLiburnerscom slash hospital bag checklist. Correct me if I'm wrong. See, I don't do the links in Mommy Liburners, somebody else handles that. But we have a great hospital bag checklist as well. That has you know. You don't even have to think about it. You can just look at our checklist and then check, check, check, check.
Speaker 2:Right, but I'll give you some of the ones that I think are most important for and I'll tell you the reasons, so number one a fan Okay, Not a big giant fan, Right, but if you can bring one of those, if you most people register for like one of those little stroller fans, right. So register for one of those. Or if you have one from a previous baby, bring that sucker in because you can wrap that thing around to to the bed and it's like you have a nice little personal fan right in your face, Cause I would have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you get kind of hot, okay, and you know your husband or your partner or whoever can be fanning you with something right, but if, but, there ain't nothing like just having a nice little fan right there in your face to cool you off. If you need to be cooled off, so bring that stroller fan. If you have one, that's a, that's a great one, and they're really small and convenient. Another one is another. One is a comb. Okay, and you're not for your hair, um, but if you're having a baby without pain medication, a really great tip that I give, uh, patients that is really really easy, that's very effective is taking a comb and squeezing a comb, because what it does is it sends sensations to your brain, um, and it sends sensory sensations to your brain that sometimes get in the way of the pain sensations that are trying to be sent to your brain.
Speaker 2:So, if you can, you're distracting it, exactly, exactly, so it can get your brain to care a little bit less about that painful contraction that you're having. So bring that comb and squeeze that comb during labor Easy one, I'm pretty sure everybody most everybody owns a comb. So throw that in there too. Really small item that you can have. And then the last one I'll say is for baby.
Speaker 2:So most hospitals have petroleum jelly, but some don't. I'd say, just bring your own, but bring, like, a little bit of Aquaphor or petroleum jelly, because babies poop after delivery and that poop. You've had four of them now, right, you remember how sticky it can get on their little behinds. It's just a very sticky tarry. It's called meconium, it's just a very sticky tarry mess. And an easy way to help not to be such a sticky tarry mess is to put a little bit of Aquaphor, petroleum jelly on their butthole right before they poop, just right after delivery. Put it on there, and then when they poop it's a lot more slippery in there. So it's, oh my gosh, way easier to wipe them. And just then next diaper change. Just put a little bit on there too and it just. It makes it so much easier to clean than trying to trying to like tail, it's just, it's a mess.
Speaker 1:That's a good little hack. I'm trying to think of like three things that I loved Headphones, headphones. Yeah, I'm trying to think of like three things that I loved Headphones, headphones. Yeah, I played like meditation music so that I could just zone everybody out. And then peppermint oil because I was super nauseous, so the peppermint oil helped me like not be super nauseous and I remember that was like those two.
Speaker 1:I was like I would die if I didn't have these two, yeah. And then my cute nurse like had a peanut ball and she would like push me side to side and that helped too, because my back kept going numb. So that was great. But usually the you wouldn't have to bring your own. Usually the hospitals have those right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the peanut balls, for sure we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, that's so helpful. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Let's tell everybody where they can find you and your resources if they want to learn more, yeah, so you can find me most often on Instagram, a little bit more often on TikTok. Now we post on TikTok too, but most often on Instagram, and I'm just at mommylabornurse on there. I also have a podcast of my own it's just the Mommy Labor Nurse podcast, and we have all of our online birth classes and our resources on our website too, and that is mommylabornursecom.
Speaker 1:Okay, thank you so much for being on. I think you just hopefully made whoever is listening that's going to have a baby, have peace of mind and just have a little more knowledge and, like we're all in this together, hopefully they get a nurse. That's as sweet as you.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, yeah, absolutely Anything. I can do, anything I can do to help.
Speaker 1:All right, I'll talk to you later, thank you. Thank you for joining us in today's episode. If you liked the content and want to hear more, remember to hit that subscribe button and write a review. As a small business owner, I appreciate it more than you know. If you are looking for a program to help with self-confidence to lose weight, get in shape and work on your mental, physical and emotional health, check out my training programs on wwwbodybybreecom. My team and I help to hold you accountable through the Body by Bree app, where you log in to see all your workouts, custom meal plan made specifically for you and your needs, and communication through the messenger. You are never alone when you're on the Body by Bree training program. Click the link in the show notes to get more information on how to transform your life from the inside out.
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