Late Pregnancy: A Gradual Preparation for Labour

You can’t practice giving birth, but you may find it useful to understand how your body is preparing as you prepare yourself. This can make it much easier to notice and articulate what’s happening to you. Being able to do this is especially important if something feels wrong, of course, but it also helps you to participate more fully in your labour and birth.

Your body is getting ready for childbirth throughout your pregnancy, and the third trimester can be understood as a slow, final preparation.

Your pelvis is made up of two large bones joined by cartilage and ligaments—at two joints in your lower back at the sacrum (called the sacroiliac joints) and at the front symphysis pubis bone. During late pregnancy, the hormones progesterone and relaxin soften and relax these ligaments. This gives the pelvic bones the ability to stretch and open more easily for delivery. Staying upright and forward, combined with gravity, will also help keep the pelvis open and support your baby's descent.

Around week 37 of pregnancy, your baby will help with this preparation for birth by engaging. This means their head will move down into your pelvis, ready for birth, although it doesn't mean birth is imminent. They’ll have more room, and you should feel the difference as there's less pressure on your diaphragm, ribs, and stomach. We covered how hypnobirthing visualisations and the mirror mantra can help with getting the baby in the best position for birth in Article 6 of this series.

Birth Humming Helps You Focus on Your Baby Coming Down the Birth Path

Some of those unhelpful images of birth that reach us through the media are of women in labour pulling agonised faces while being told to “push!”. It’s not yet widely understood that forced pushing is an outdated idea that sprung from a time when forceps deliveries were becoming less common, so the logic became that if a baby was no longer being “pulled” out, pushing must be necessary.

We won’t say that your labour doesn’t involve any pushing. Every birth is different, and pushing may be what your body instinctively feels like it needs to do; it may be best to respond to that in your specific case. Hypnobirthing advocates against forced, sometimes purple-faced pushing. This can put stress on both mom and baby and even delay birth as the vaginal sphincters close ahead of your descending baby. Your body has a natural instinct to nudge the baby down and out far more gently.

Humming your baby out

As we’ve mentioned, you can’t practice giving birth. However, moving your bowels also requires the use of an expulsive reflex action, so, for want of more pleasant options, we practice Hypnobirthing’s “birth humming” technique in the bathroom.

For your practice, when you are opening your bowels, first become aware of how your poo feels as it is nudging its way down. Then take a nice deep breath and begin to hum, directing the sound down and around your poo. Notice how the muscles relax around it and help its progress, and as you do that, imagine more space around and in front of your poo.

Just once, you can also squeeze, tighten, and notice how your poop pops back up. Often, midwives will say that they could see the baby's head, and then it popped back up again. This is a really useful way of appreciating how tightening and tension will not only stop the baby's descent but also potentially move him or her back the other way.

The more you practice this, the more attuned you’ll be to a natural expulsive reflex of your body, as well as how humming and focused attention can keep you feeling relaxed and open. This will prepare you for working with your body to help nudge your baby down and out.

The only true hypnobirthing expert in this scenario will be the labouring mother. You are powerful, and you should go with your body’s flow. You may even like to add a point to your birth plan to avoid outside instruction from midwives.

Birth partner prompts:

Your birth partner should continue to support you with gentle, soothing prompts. Here are some examples:

I love you.
Trust your instincts.
You are doing so well.
Relax as you are humming your or our baby down.

You may like to say the word ‘open’ in your mind or imagine the unfurling petals of an opening lotus or rose. Some women have pictures of these flowers in front of them while giving birth. You may prefer to picture your baby coming closer to you with every surge.

Hypnobirths don’t need to be quiet!

Remember not to suppress sounds that feel natural to you. You can make as much or as little noise as you want. With all the recitations of the phrase “calm and relaxed” you hear on hypnobirthing tracks, it probably seems like we want every birth to happen in silent serenity. We would much rather you follow your instincts. If you’ve been humming for a long time, consider changing positions to whatever your body tells you is best. You may feel that spiraling your pelvis or rocking your hips works for you. Staying upright and forward is often key.

Birthing the placenta

Your surges will continue after your baby arrives to help expel the placenta. If you’ve chosen active management, the midwife will inject your thigh with a drug that encourages its expulsion, and it will be out in half an hour. If you’ve chosen to do this stage physiologically, it can take up to an hour or sometimes longer. The surges will be gentler, and you should continue your Waves of Relaxation to help dispel your placenta.

Hypnobirth: Humming Your Baby Out