Indybel Birthing Ball

1. Find a Soothing Environment

Your birth setting must feel safe to you. It should have space to walk and bathe, as well as a variety of options to enhance movement, comfort, and pain relief: a soft bed, CD player, rocking chair, birth ball, low stool, and/or squatting bar. It should also have policies that encourage you to try a variety of positions. Access to appropriate medical care is crucial if problems arise.

2. Choose Your Team Carefully

Knowledgeable, caring midwives, doctors, nurses, partners, loved ones and/or doulas create a supportive birth team. When you’re treated with respect and patience, stress and inhibitions decrease, and you can more easily find your best coping mechanisms.

3. Learn About Labor

The more knowledge you have, the fewer surprises you will experience. Find out everything you can about labor from books, magazines, Web sites, videos, classes, a hospital tour and discussions with your health-care provider, doula, family and friends. Familiarize yourself with the procedures and customs at your hospital or birth center. Such discussions are best had before labor.

4. Express Your Fears

Are you worried about pain and labor, needles, medicines or losing control? Speak with a knowledgeable and trusted friend, childbirth educator or doula. Voicing your concerns can bring relief as well as practical solutions to your concerns. Stating your preferences in a birth plan can also help calm fears.

5. Practice Rhythmic Breating

Breathe fully in a slow rhythm during contractions. Release tension with each exhalation and try moaning. Also try taking quick breaths, about one every 2 to 3 seconds (20 to 30 per minute). Your partner or birth coach may be able to help you keep your rhythm with eye contact, rhythmic hand or head movements, or by talking you through contractions.

6. Use Imagery and Visualization

Focusing on something that makes you happy (like your partner’s face, an inspirational picture or favorite object) engages your senses and decreases your awareness of pain. Listen to music, a soothing voice or a recording of ocean waves, and imagine yourself in a relaxing environment.

7. Take a Warm Shower or Bath

A warm shower is soothing, especially if you can sit on a stool and direct a handheld showerhead onto your abdomen or back. Bathing in warm water is relaxing, and it may even speed up labor.

8. Keep Moving

Move around as much as you can. Walk, lean, sway, rock and squat. Some positions will be more comfortable than others.

9. Seek Relief with Warm or Cool Compresses

Place a warm pack on your lower abdomen, groin, lower back or shoulders during labor. A cold pack or latex glove filled with ice chips can soothe painful areas. Cool cloths relieve a sweaty face, chest or neck.

10. Indulge in Gentle Touch or Massage

Have your partner or doula massage you in whatever way provides the most relief for you.  Whether it’s someone holding your hand, stroking your cheek or hair, or patting your hand or shoulder, touch conveys reassurance, caring and understanding.

Letting Less Air In…

Breast-fed babies:

• Be sure baby’s lips form a good seal far back on the areola.
• Eliminate fuss foods from your diet if breastfeeding (see elimination diet).
• Feed baby smaller volumes more frequently
• Keep baby upright (at about a forty-five-degree angle) during and for a half-hour after a feeding.

Bottle-fed babies:

• Be sure baby’s lips are positioned on the wide base of the nipple, not just on the tip.
• Tilt the bottle at a thirty-to-forty-degree angle while feeding so that air rises to the bottom of the bottle; or try collapsible formula bags.
• Feed baby smaller volumes more frequently
• Keep baby upright (at about a forty-five-degree angle) during and for a half-hour after a feeding.
• Avoid prolonged sucking on pacifiers or empty bottle nipples.

…Getting More Air Out

• Respond promptly to a baby’s cries.
• Be sure to burp baby during and after feedings.
• The gas pump. Lay baby face-up on your lap with her legs toward you and her head resting on your knees. Pump her legs up and down in a bicycling motion while making a few attention-getting facial expressions.
• The colic curl. Place baby’s head and back against your chest and encircle your arms under his bottom, then curl your arms up. Or, try reversing this position by placing baby’s feet against your chest as you hold him. This way you can maintain eye contact with your baby and entertain him with funny facial expressions. (Read more about colic here.)
• Tummy rolls. While laying a securing hand on baby’s back, drape him tummy-down over a large beach ball and gently roll in a circular motion. Another use for a large beach ball (you can purchase “physio balls” from infant-product catalogs) is the baby bounce. Hold baby securely in your arms and slowly bounce up and down while sitting on the ball.
• Tummy massage. Sit baby on your lap and place the palm of your hand over baby’s navel, and let your fingers and thumb encircle baby’s abdomen. Let baby lean forward, pressing her tense abdomen against your warm hand. Dad’s bigger hands provide more coverage. Or, with baby lying on her back, picture an upside down “U” over the surface of your baby’s abdomen and using warm massage oil on your hands and kneading baby’s abdomen in a circular motion with your flattened fingers, massage from left to right along the lines of the imaginary “U.”

• Tummy tucks. Place a rolled-up cloth diaper or a warm (not hot) water bottle enclosed in a cloth diaper under baby’s tummy. To further relax a tense tummy, lay baby stomach-down on a cushion with her legs dangling over the edge while rubbing her back. Turn her head to the side so her breathing isn’t obstructed.

• Give baby simethicone drops (Mylicon is a brand name) or glycerin suppositories.

Read more about gassy, fussy, and colicky babies here!

I just read an article at Lamaze.org that makes me feel better about my decision not to use pacifiers. Jeannette Crenshaw, MSN, RN, IBCLC, LCCE, FACCE, says that the risks versus benefits are not as straightforward as they may initially appear.

Reasons to Pop in a Pacifier

In favor of the pacifier (besides for the obvious quick-comfort factor) is research suggesting that babies who suck on pacifiers don’t sleep as deeply and wake more often than those who don’t. While this might not seem like a desirable situation, these are factors believed to reduce the risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). For this reason,  the AAP’s SIDS-reduction guidelines include the recommendation that babies be given pacifiers during naps and at bedtime (but not to force it if your baby refuses). If you’re breastfeeding, the AAP suggests waiting until nursing is well established or until your baby is about a month old.

Reasons to Pass on the Pacifier

On the flip side, these same benefits (babies who don’t sleep as deeply and wake more often) can be achieved by breastfeeding your baby.  Pacifiers are linked to higher rates of ear infections, diarrhea, yeast infections and dental problems. In addition, pacifiers can also interfere with successful breastfeeding, which provides protection against the likelihood of your baby getting ear infections, diarrhea, yeast infections, etc.

Feeling like a Human Pacifier?

What happens to me, in absence of a pacifier, is that my babies come to consider me the Human Pacifier. Whenever they get fussy I pop them on the breast and they’re sucking away as blissfully as any pacifier plugged baby (but more so, considering that they get to suck, nurse, and be held by mommy all at the same time!).

It’s true that babies do at times want to suck something just for comfort, so you may be wondering what’s wrong with using one in between feedings. But there are still more good reasons for avoiding pacifiers, says Dr. Sears, especially in the early weeks while baby is learning to latch on and suck at your breast:

• Pacifiers are artificial nipples. They require a different sucking motion at the breast and can lead to problems with nipple confusion.
• A baby who is given a pacifier instead of being offered the breast may not nurse enough to gain weight adequately.
• Without enough stimulation from baby’s sucking, mother’s milk supply may dwindle. Comfort sucking at the end of a feeding helps to build mother’s milk supply.
• A 1999 study reported in the medical journal Pediatrics showed that mothers who used pacifiers during the first six weeks after birth tended to wean their babies earlier.
• Prolonged pacifier use can lead to crooked teeth. Between two and three years of age, toddlers can cause their upper front teeth to protrude by sucking intensely on a pacifier, especially at night.

It’s understandable that sometimes Mom’s patience wears thin. Or nipples get sore. Or mom is just not available all the time. But it is OK to be a Human Pacifier. As Dr. Sears points out, you want your baby to learn to seek comfort from people, not plastic. Your baby’s need to suck for comfort will diminish with time. Meanwhile, enjoy cuddling with your baby at your breast.

Having said all that, pacifiers are far from the worst thing you can give your baby. The decision to use a pacifier — or not — is up to you. Let go of any guilt or pressure, and try to figure out what works best in your situation. If you have a baby who really seems to need one, then “use it, don’t abuse it, and quickly try to lose it!” Follow DR. BILL’S BINKY ADVICE on how to use the pacifier properly.

• Select a one-piece model that will not break into two pieces, allowing baby to choke on the bulb. Also, be sure it is dishwasher safe and easy to clean.
• Be sure the base of the pacifier has ventilation holes. Avoid large circular shields that may obstruct baby’s nasal passages when baby draws in the pacifier during intense sucking.
• One size doesn’t fit all. Choose a smaller, shorter, newborn-sized pacifier for the early months.
• Pacifiers come in a variety of nipple shapes. Some are symmetrically round, like a bottle nipple. Others are preshaped, supposedly to duplicate the elongated, flattened breast nipple during sucking. Preshaped nipples, however, may not always fit baby’s mouth, especially if the pacifier turns during sucking or is inserted upside down. Some pacifier manufacturers claim orthodontic benefits, but these are questionable. Try various shapes and let baby’s discerning mouth decide.
• Avoid attaching the pacifier to a string or ribbon around baby’s neck or pinning the pacifier string onto baby’s clothing. This is a setup for strangulation. it is better to keep one hand on baby and the other hand on the pacifier. Or use a pacifier clip with a ribbon that is too short to pass around baby’s neck (Like this elegant  personalize pacifier clip!)
• Avoid making your own pacifier out of a cotton-stuffed bottle nipple. Baby may suck the cotton through the hole.
• Resist the temptation to sweeten the offering by dipping the pacifier in honey or syrup. If baby does not yet have teeth, he is too young for honey or syrup. If he has teeth, he is too old for the decay-producing sweets – and probably the pacifier, too. If he has to be enticed to suck by sweetening, he would probably benefit from some other form of comforting – having a change of scenery, going out in the fresh air, playing, cuddling with you, rocking to sleep, and being held more.

Image from mommyspeechtherapy.com

What’s your pacifier preference? Leave a comment below and let us know!