23 Weeks Pregnant - birth reflexes, aka, your body knows when to push!

Weekly pregnancy updates from a childbirth educator, doula and mum to 2 little girls. Come and join me on my journey as I share how I’m feeling, how baby is developing, what I’m doing to prepare, and some favourite resources!

I listen to The Great Birth Rebellion podcast regularly, and this week I listened to an episode I’d missed on birth reflexes. That was really fascinating, hearing the explanations and comparing with my experiences with my first two births.

My first labour experience

I will never forget how unexpected the pushing contractions were with my first! It literally felt like my uterus was convulsing so powerfully to push baby down. This is known as the Ferguson reflex, where it feels like the opposite of vomiting/throwing up... it’s like “throwing down”. The contraction is such a big and unstoppable sensation! I was definitely glad of the breathing exercises I’d done through pregnancy, and breathed through these big contractions to keep myself calm and steady. I wouldn’t even describe them as painful, but I could easily describe them as overwhelming, especially at the start, and whereas I’d laboured mostly on my own up till then, here I found myself hanging onto my husband for emotional support. They were SO different to the dilation contractions, which I'd felt as “period pain”-type sensations in my lower back. With both phases of labour, I found the breathing practice served me so well, as I kept my breath steady and worked through each contraction.

My second labour experience

So of course with my second labour I was expecting a similar type of thing, but every labour is different! Second time I relied a lot on my husband to provide counter-pressure on my lower back during contractions in the dilation phase. And then although pushing was an involuntary and natural response of my body when the time came, it manifested differently this time. Not the big “vomiting downwards”-type convulsions, but more like an urge to poop which I couldn’t control. Except it wasn’t a bowel movement, it was my baby coming out!

Fetal ejection reflex

Another reflex which Melanie talked about in the podcast, but which I haven’t experienced, is the fetal ejection reflex. This is where your cervix opens and the uterus ejects your baby, no need for pushing at all! This can happen due to a fear response, e.g. in a hospital setting where mum is told “if baby doesn’t arrive within 5 minutes, we’re doing xyz”, but can also be experienced in undisturbed births. Melanie described a time where she visited a woman in early labour, the couple were coping fine and agreed she should come back later. She had a call 10mins after she walked out the door to say “something had changed”, and she turned around and went straight back...and baby and placenta had already been born! The woman described having felt her cervix open, and baby was out within moments! The human body is just amazing!!

Next time?

And now I can’t wait to see how I will experience labour with my third birth!

What symptoms am I feeling?

OK, so I am officially in that phase of pregnancy where I really don’t want to stay lying around in bed in the mornings! 😂 The pillow between knees and ankles is making a big difference, but still the aching accumulates overnight and it’s so good to get up in the morning and stretch it out!

I’m feeling lots of movement and loving getting to share that with the family! My 3 year old is delighted when she gets to feel her little brother kicking her 🥰

How has baby been developing this week?

Baby is getting tall at around 30cm and 570g! A fat layer is forming between muscles and skin and a coating of vernix protects his body.

What am I doing to prepare?

I went to the chiropractor this week for a check-up and was glad to hear that my alignment was almost spot on, she just had to tweak a couple of things. I had a great time chatting with her while she treated me, since she specialises in working with pregnant and postpartum mums so we had lots to talk about!

I’m keeping up with the Spinning Babies exercises, relaxation audios and breathing exercises as I mentioned last week. I don’t always get to all of them every day, though that’s my ideal, but I prefer the approach of doing what I can as often as I can, rather than giving up on it all because I can’t attain my ideal!

Resource:

The Great Birth Rebellion episode I mentioned above is Episode 168 - your incredible birth reflexes.

And that’s it for this week! 🌿💛

[Image credit: Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash]