During pregnancy, avoid thinking too much about your probability of having a normal delivery or a cesarean section. Try to stay away from too much planning because it is likely that you won’t be able to stick to it.
About 85% of pregnant women do have a fair chance of delivering vaginally, but only about 65% are successful. If you are one of those women who want to have a baby the normal way take a look at some useful pregnancy tips for vaginal delivery.
10 Pregnancy Tips For Vaginal Delivery
1. Regular Exercises
Doing mild exercises throughout pregnancy can help you build not only good stamina but also keep you active during this span. Regular exercises with vitality can strengthen the pelvic muscles. Kegel exercises are particularly helpful. The strong thigh muscles are helpful in combating the stress of labor pains.1
Pelvic stretches and tilts, deep squats, aquatic pregnancy exercises can open your hips and make your pelvic muscles stronger to enable you to have a normal delivery. Keep in mind to exercise under the supervision of an expert as wrongly done exercises can do harm to you and your baby.
You can also try prenatal yoga, which increases flexibility and will help you have breathing control. Yoga will also keep you relaxed and calm.
2. Watch Your Diet
Eat properly and eat rightly. You must keep a tab on your weight, too much weight gain can interfere with your chances of having a normal delivery.
Many times women put on a lot of weight on the excuse of pregnancy by eating fatty foods. Keep your cravings under control. Nutrition is important not only for your health but also for the health and development of your baby.
Food is essential for making you strong and for nourishing your body. A healthy and well-nourished mother is capable of facing the challenges of labor easily and more comfortably. Drink a lot of water and eat a lot of green fresh vegetables and fruits.2
3. Keep Away Your Stress
Stay away from stress, anxiety, and too much contemplation. Your current phase requires you to stay cool and composed. There are times when avoiding stress is quite difficult still try to be calm.
Read good books about parenting and be in the company of good, friendly people. Steer yourself clear from situations and people that make you anxious or cause you discomfort.
Remember maternal stress can adversely affect the baby’s health and wellness.3
4. Practice Breathing Exercises
Breathing exercises are very important as during the process of delivery you need to hold breath from time to time. Proper and sufficient oxygen supply is mandatory for enhancing growth of the baby.
So, practice mediation and deep breathing exercises regularly. This way you will inch a step closer to having a normal delivery.
5. Educate Yourself
Educate yourself well about the process of delivery and labor. Get information on natural pain management techniques like breathing, relaxation, and other natural labor management coping techniques.
You can ask your doctor to tell you more about delivery or can join prenatal classes to enhance your knowledge about the phenomenon of giving birth.
Prenatal classes that cover labor pain management techniques would be particularly helpful. You can also research online, read good books, and have a confident mind.
6. Regular Massages
You need to have regular massages done after the seventh month of pregnancy. It reduces stress, helps an expectant mother tackle labor efficiently and mitigates joint pains and muscular tensions.
7. Find The Right Support People For Labour
It’s very important to have the right support people at your birth if you want a drug-free birth.
You might think it will be all wonderful having mom, sisters and all the family to be there to watch your baby be born, but are they going to encourage you and help you get to where you want to go?
Or are they going to collapse into a bawling heap and tell you how awful it all is and a little pain relief can’t hurt? The support people in your labour are more important than you think.
If your support people start to panic, you are more likely to panic too – and that’s when you might be looking for the next exit to the epidural freeway. Be sure your support people are strong because they are going to have to be there for you and not for them.
8. Move Around! Don’t Sit Still!
When you arrive at the hospital, keep moving to stay comfortable. If you’re strapped to a monitor, you’re bound to bed. Ask ahead of time if your hospital allows intermittent fetal monitoring, which gives you the freedom to get up.
Walk and stretch, sit on a birthing ball, and hop in and out of the birthing tub if it’s available. Use a combo of gravity and hip movement to help the baby come down.
Movement of the hips, belly dancing, hula dancing, squatting, rocking, pelvic tilts and such help maneuver the baby down and through to find the easiest path out of the mother.
9. Visualize The Finish Line
The transition phase, when the uterus is dilating from 7 to 10 centimeters and then it’s time to push, is when most moms-to-be want to call it quits.
Make sure your partner knows you’ll need a good pep talk at this stage. This is absolutely normal, your body is doing what it’s supposed to do, it’s almost over.
Also, try to have an open mind. If you reach the point where a natural labor is just not happening, you have to accept what’s good for your child. The goal is a healthy baby.
10. Trust Your Body
Women have been birthing since the beginning of time and while mortality rates during childbirth are much lower than that of our ancestors, their instinctive ways of birthing is much more efficient and less painful than what we commonly experience on our backs, in a bed, at the convenience of doctors.
Have confidence and faith in your amazing birthing body, follow your instincts in labor and allow your body and your baby to do exactly what they know to do.
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