Rest Is A Weapon!

🐻 Another bugbear of mine 🐻

Whenever people talk about having some feelings of starting labour or ask for tips to ‘encourage’ those feelings of labour into something more tangible or are willing labour to speed up if it seems slow to start/taking its time to become established, the first suggestions are always:

1. WALK…..keep on walking, it really work, walk that baby out bla bla bla.

2. Bounce on that ball. Keep bouncing. Bounce the baby down.

3. Keep active.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS PRECIOUS, can we change this???

While I understand the narrative of mobility and activity to encourage good positioning of the baby/descent/uterine activity, please can we reconsider?

What people DON’T need when their body is gearing up for one of the most PHYSICAL events EVER is to exhaust themselves with activity.

They don’t need to tire their body anymore than absolutely necessary.

They don’t need to zap the resources they almost certainly need to draw on very soon to get through labour.

My suggestions when you feel labour might be about to start/has started slowly vary very significantly from the usual ‘keep active’ talk:

1. REST IS A WEAPON. REST as much as possible, sleep, doze, or try to proactively rest your body, unless it is telling you in no uncertain terms to keep moving.

2. Nourish yourself with good food while you can. Keep your energy levels up.

3. Keep hydrated, drink well. A nicely hydrated body can work optimally.

4. Pee regularly.

5. Ignore labour sensations as LONG as possible.

6. REST. Really.

Once labour gets going *PROPER* all the above will likely become obsolete, but while things are on the brink of happening, the above is a good strategy to preserve energy and encourage good labour hormones within your body.

Give yourself a break and rest up ♥️