dilation

I am not a midwife, only a doula, and I can tell you what I have seen. Keep in mind that this is NOT evidence, only anecdote- give yourself the benefit of the knowledge you can gather and don't base your decisions off of stories!!

On to my story...

What I have seen in mamas who are unmedicated and free to move/eat/etc at will is that they sometimes will have an urge to push at around 7/8 CM. It's more (I'm guessing) aobut how low baby is in your pelvis, and if you're at 0 or +1 station but only 7CM, you're probably going to feel like pushing. What can be helpful is a lot of position changes and a gentle push at the peak of the contraction, just enough that you feel like you are working with it and not resisting hte urge, but not enough to force your cervix.

I am not telling you what you should do, or believe, or think- only what I have seen in my experience. There is the argument that if midwives/docs kept their hands out of the vagina, we'd never know if a woman had a lip and she'd labor past it w/o our interference. There are others who believe that you can tear your cervix by pushing past a lip. What is the right answer? I don't know.

Keep searching!

Quote:
Thank you for that. I have been there twice with unmedicated births and I know that I get very tired and out of it when it comes time to push. Both times I had to ask when to push because I couldn't tell when I was having a contraction. I was just in pain. What I want to avoid is pushing when I'm not dialated enough, so that I can save my energy so that my pushing is effective.

Karen

IMO There isn't a "dialated enough" though perhaps a "dialated enough for your baby at that moment you or your uterus feels pushy" is more apt. I think that the dialation tracking is something that directly stems from managed childbirth and is completely arbitrary during a UC.

I recall a couple of birth stories where an SO would try to check for dialtion during labor, not really know what they were feeling, think it was a lower cm, and everyone gets completely discouraged.

Everyone's bodies are different and likewise so are our babies. I think it stands to reason that this means our uter"i", though varying they may be, are just as wise and well built as our bodies and babies for birth to happen. One mom may feel pushy while technically a 7 or an 8, and for others it may be later. Babies heads come in different head circumfernces, so I doubt the medical "wisdom" of everyone fitting into the magical number ten truly applies to all. It's just another blanket thing.

ETA (because I wasn't done lol) So I wouldnt' worry about somehow hurting your self (like you cervix), allowing birth to unfold in peace is your best bet. An analogy could be that some moms like to gently massage their uterus after the baby arrives, if they feel the need to, but they don't mash down on it and cause extreme pain like an OB nurse would.

Okay, I've never understood the lip thing. I just figure that my body will push when it needs to push, whether that is at the magic 10 centimeters so baby comes flying out, or at 7 cm to help my cervix dilate. It's worked for me twice so far. Though with #1, I know I pushed off and on for hours. I didn't really recognize it as "pushing" I just thought I was having uncontrollable diarrhea (with no more poop) go figure

There isn't any NOT pushing for me, really. I dont' know how any woman can stop herself from pushing once the body says PUSH. I feel like I'm trying to turn my body inside out, that organs are going to come flying out and hit the wall. As a matter of fact, I kind of wish I COULD stop myself, my hemmorhoids would thank me.

Along that line of thought, anyone have any advice on NOT pushing, LOL.

Kat

Might have to come back to ETA...

There are two other ways to check dialation from the outside..

one is a red line that extends up from the butt crack.. approx cm for cm of dialation.. but is hard to check yourself, lol..esp while in la la labor land.. If I remember right, not everyone gets this, or at least it's not visible on everyone.. about 90% have it/visible though

the other is by the xyphoid process (just under sternum).. how many fingers fit between there and the top of the uterus at the PEAK of a contraction can tell you approx how much further the cervix needs to open.. one finger is about 2cm.. so if you can only fit 1 finger there then you are 8-10cm open, 4 fingers means you're about 2cm open. I used this method last birth out of curiousity sake, heheh.. once I was down to one finger fitting there, i started feeling the pushing urges. I only checked maybe 5 times during labor.

I agree with the pushing helping cervical lip too.. once i was down to that last finger, i checked internally and felt the bag of waters and a lip on the right front side.. during a squeeze, I felt the lip drawing back and my pushing(when I felt the urge) helped it draw back further (not finger pushing lip back, but abdominal pushing heheh). I also ended up in some odd position not long after that pushing like crazy until the bag of waters burst.. and I remember thinking.. "Whew, now maybe I can get that rest and relax period of time before the pushing of baby out begins.:" HAHAHAHAHAHA.. didn't happen, just got more intense, LOL.

As a general rule I completely believe a woman should follow her body. But in my case I am worried that with my history of long labors I won't be coherent enough to recognise the urge to push. Now I'm sure you are all shaking your heads. But with my last and even with my first, I never really had that urge. And I'm pretty sure I was at a 10 for nearly an hour before I started pushing. At the point that I start pushing I am pretty out of it and the contractions are on top of each other. I can't tell a darn thing about what is going on in my body. I just feel pain, and yet at the same time I was narly falling asleep.

Both times I gave birth at about 4-5 in the morning after about 20 hours of labor and I was tired, tired, tired. I would have been dead tired, to the point of loopiness, even if I hadn't been in labor.

So how long to I just hand out and wait for that urge to push?

I think you are misunderstanding what is being said here, which is easy to do, because semantically it's hard to make the distinction. But we're talking about two very different things. The first is the notion -- perpetuated by male-dominated birth of the last few centuries and by midwifery of the last few decades that took its cues from that male-dominated birth -- that the woman has to make a decision to push that baby out. Someone will tell her when, or she will decide when, based on some sign or other.

The other is the fact that when birth is not managed nor guided nor disturbed, it happens completely spontaneously. There is a reflex that occurs which you have no control over; the best you can do is to respect it and get out of its way.

Your body will simply start bearing down. It's not something that you'll have to ask yourself, "Is it time to push?" If your body is really ready (and being at 10 cm does not in itself mean the body is ready) you will not be able to help *but* push. This didn't happen for you not because your body was incapable of it, but because your birth attendants were preventing it from happening, by encouraging you to push too early, thus impeding your body's internal feedback system.

A spontaneous and quick second stage is what the body is wired for, but it is rarely seen even in homebirth because there are so many things distracting the mother and interfering with the hormonal process, even things as seemingly innocuous as her feeling observed, not to mention being told what to do with her body and trying to force it to what it is not ready to do.