trish: [00:00:00] Good morning, mamas. I am Trish, your favorite labor and delivery, go to birth coach and advocate. Today we're going to dive into one of my most favorite topics and your most powerful tool that you can use for your birth. That is your Mindset, girl, what you tell yourself matters, whether you're a first time mom or a seasoned birth bro, this episode is going to show you exactly how important your mind is and how to sync it with your body for a confident, calm, empowered birth experience.

That's what we want, right? So get ready to unlock your birth power. Take control of your journey. Let's jump in.

All right, we're going to be talking about birth queen vibes today. Y'all up for that? Okay, so we're going to go ahead and get started. Of course, I have my notes right [00:01:00] here so that I will stick to it. So today's chat is about mind over labor. And we're going to talk about like, how to be like a boss birth queen, like how to have those birth queen vibes and not the I'm freaked out.

Losing my, poop vibes, right? I'm sure you guys want that. So as you guys are dropping in here, tell me who you are. Tell me how far along you are. Tell me what number, baby. All the things. I want to hear it all. Okay? All right. So we're gonna be talking about mastering your mindset because mindset, I'm just gonna tell y'all, spoiler alert, Your mindset is 90 percent of your birth, 90 percent of your birth.

So you definitely don't want to go into birth with a negative mindset, a fearful mindset, a worrying what am I going to [00:02:00] do? How am I going to handle this? That is the worst mindset to enter your birth. So the very first thing we're going to talk about. Of course, I've got my notes over here is first of all, if you don't know who I am, if you're new here, cause we've had thousands and thousands of newbies here.

So if you're new around here, my name is Trish, or you might know me as labor nurse mama. I am a long time, 16 year labor and delivery nurse and a mom to seven. I've given birth to six of mine. And I'm going to talk a little bit about how. Fear entered into one of my births and really changed the dynamics a bit, so we're going to talk a little bit about that today.

I'm also the creator of Calm Labor, Confident Birth and the VBAC Lab, both the best birth courses on earth, I promise you. Okay. So we're going to talk about the role of mindset in labor [00:03:00] and the thing here, spoiler alert, is that the role of mindset in all areas of your life is so freaking important. It's so important.

And I know you know this, because if you think about it, we spend so much time worrying about things instead of preparing figuring out what can we control in whatever it is we're worrying about, whether it's, your birth, or maybe parenting this baby.

So the role of your mindset is so important because it actually influences how you perceive the pain of labor. If that's not enough for you to start working on mindset strategies, I don't know what is. Because your mindset actually influences your perception of how bad labor hurts. So someone who goes into their birth.

with a positive mindset, a solid mindset and mindset strategies, they're going to perceive their labor pain, not as painful and their [00:04:00] overall birth experience as better than someone who goes with absolutely no strategies, no knowledge, and just wings their birth. They're going to be the ones who are telling you a horror story, a horror birth story at the, at the grocery store while you're standing in line, just because they saw that you have a pregnant belly.

And I know that happens to you. Because that happens to everyone. So for me, let me just tell you how mindset really played a role for me with So my son, Gavin, I was pregnant with him and I was actually having my birth photography, like my pregnancy pictures done. And I felt this very big movement.

And he had turned to me. Transverse, so he was no longer head down. I was like 37 weeks you guys and he moved and I remember up until then I was not afraid about birth at all I was [00:05:00] like, let's do this baby number four I got this and I suddenly was filled with so much fear and anxiety because I didn't know what was gonna happen And it, it's such a powerful example for me even that when you have an unexpected diagnosis or something new happens during your labor, like maybe your doctor walks in and says something that you don't know what they mean, right?

Or you don't understand the plan of care, like you don't understand like what your doctor's recommending. You can go from being so calm and so confident to out of this world, insanely crazy with fear. And that's where I found myself with Gavin, because I wasn't adequately educated about what had happened what was going to be the course of action.

And so this is why inside of Calm Labor, Confident Birth and the VBAC Lab, I have a whole section on [00:06:00] unexpected roadblocks and warnings. And we go through things Breach baby and gestational diabetes and getting diagnosed with GBS your GBS positive or just the unexpected because the unexpected can really mess with your mind.

So we're going to talk a little bit too about the mind body connection. So one of the things that I teach inside of my classes is the it's the pain tension cycle, right? The fear pain tension cycle. And this is such a clear. way that your mind has such dominion over your body and how what happens up here can actually affect how your labor plays out.

Now I'm going off tangent a little, but that's okay, y'all. So cool. Cool. When you are laboring, when you're in labor, when your labor begins, you have a couple choices and it's how you perceive, how you look at it can affect how you [00:07:00] feel about it. So when your contractions start, if you are like, heck yeah, go wild, like I'm all in, like I'm ready for this, I've prepared for this, I have all these tools to pull out of my tool bag, then you're not going to get into a negative.

frame of mind. However, if you're not prepared and you don't have coping strategies and you don't even know what to expect, you're like, is this labor? Is this not labor? I don't know. I'm confused. A lot of times what will happen is you start perceiving the pain as so much worse. And when you do that, it actually gets you onto a hamster wheel, this cycle, this pain tension cycle.

So what happens is labor starts or contraction starts or whatever, and you get really afraid instead of confident. This is why I teach you how to stay confident and calm inside the classes. When you get afraid and feeling that way, your pain actually [00:08:00] increases in your head and in your body. Because you start getting tense.

You get afraid. When you get afraid you tense. And our bodies are actually really created amazingly. I was talking about this on the last live and I got so many DMs and questions about it. So I'm going to tell you guys again, because it is a mirror.

It's miraculous, right? When we get afraid, our bodies are designed to do something amazing. Just like when we're a labor, our body is designed to do something amazing. But the two should not be hand in hand because they work against each other. So last week I was telling you guys that like, if we were out in the wild, we're a wild animal, right?

We are mammals, by the way, and we're created this way too. When you're out in the wild and you are attacked, right? You go into a fight or flight. in our lives too, if we're attacked. Whether it's our husband just being a jerk [00:09:00] or, some random stranger like yelling at you or it is a knife wielding bandit, our body goes into fight or flight mode.

Now, I have to drill this into you guys, okay, because this is why I do what I do. This is why I created my birth courses. That is incredible. Fight or flight mode is insanely powerful. powerful. It's our superpower. That's why if a child gets trapped under a car in front of their father, the father can pick up the car because they go into this fight or flight and adrenaline starts pumping to your arms and to your legs.

You can run really fast. You can fight harder than normal. But what you can't do is labor because all of that works against birth and that's good because if you were out in the wild and you were laboring and then you started to get attacked, you don't want your labor to continue. You don't want to give [00:10:00] birth during an attack.

You want your body to do what it's supposed to do. Now that goes back to the fear part. Or the fear, tension, pain cycle. I've been saying it wrong. Fear, tension, pain cycle. When your adrenaline kicks in, it makes you like more aware of what's going on around you so you can fight. During labor, we should not need to fight.

Now I know some of us do because we have, issues with the hospital system or whatever, but, or your mother in law, if you let her in the room and you shouldn't have. But during labor, you should not have to fight. So if your body goes into fight or flight, it's going to work against your labor.

It's going to slow down your labor and it can even stop your labor because adrenaline is the enemy to oxytocin, which is the labor hormone. Now I'm getting like wild today. But that's okay, because we're going to keep talking, we're going to keep talking about this, and if you want to go deeper, join my classes, reply, comment, the word class, and you can [00:11:00] join my classes, get more of this stuff.

Some of the things that we can do to work with our body, instead of our body, against it, instead of going into fight or flight, the number one thing you can do is, It is knowledge, whether it's learning coping strategies, whether it's having a knowledge of the process of labor, whether it's understanding what's happening in the birth center of your choice, whether it's a hospital birth center or the home birth, you still need to educate yourself for a home birth ladies still need to know what's going on because you're still going to labor and when you're laboring and you're in the right.

Frame of mind, your mindset is working, where you're at does not matter the same, okay? So you do need to be comfortable, you do need to be safe and honored and treated like the birth queen you are, but hopefully you're going to go down into your labor bubble and your partner is going to be your advocate at that [00:12:00] point, right?

Does that make sense? Hopefully. You have to learn coping strategies, whether it's, we teach over 50 coping, different types of coping strategies, whether it's movements or breathing techniques, visualization, or, all these different breathing techniques that we teach to help you cope. Hope during labor and life in general because you can use a lot of them So we teach some deep breathing J breathing we teach you calming breathing that can help you at your doctor's office or if you're arguing with your partner and we teach you different techniques on managing your pain and Staying in the right mindset.

So that whether that's Visualizations we you we teach a lot of that. I am so So obsessed with visualization. And then also affirmations and self talk. What you're telling yourself up here really truly matters for your birth experience. And I want you guys to keep that in mind. Saying things like I am capable, I am [00:13:00] powerful, I'm birth queen, I'm going to rock this birth.

Stop telling yourself, Oh my God, I'm probably going to freak out. No, don't say that anymore. Get rid of that. Get that out of your head. And tell yourself, no, I'm gonna go in there confident, prepared, I'm gonna learn the coping strategies, and I am going to be a birth queen. Hopefully, you guys, this is like completely resonating with you guys.

Another thing that you can do is making sure that your coach is also adequately prepared. If they're prepared and they are, encouraging you and speaking back to things that you guys have learned, that's going to also keep you in that powerful mindset.

rather than freaking out. So you have to be prepared. You have to have knowledge. Do not skip a birth class. You have to take a birth class, comment class or reply class to take mine, and we will get you in and help you get reimbursed by your insurance. You also want to create a birth plan. [00:14:00] Now, You can't create a birth plan if you haven't taken a class.

You just can't. I mean you can do a check off the box one from the internet, but you really want to take a birth class first because all the things you put on your birth plan, you need to understand what and why. You need to know when are those interventions appropriate. appropriate and when are they not appropriate because you can't really navigate that.

And I say this every time I teach you guys, but if you don't know your options, you don't have any. So you have to understand why would they use a fetal scalp electrode? What is an IUPC? Why would I get external or internal monitors? You need to know all of those things. And then you need to be confident to discuss your birth plan with your providers.

Inside of my birth classes, I use a three part framework, and it starts with the knowledge, because you have to be educated. You cannot wing your birth. The next part is the mindsets part framework. [00:15:00] Then we have the confidence framework, and that's teaching you how to advocate for your birth, because you can be as knowledgeable.

I could teach you all the things, but if you're still too scared to speak up and do the things you know are right, then you're not being the birth queen that you need to be. Okay, so combining all of these strategies is how you're going to have the most beautiful birth. And you're going to be able to go in there and keep the fear at bay, keep the adrenaline pressed down so you don't go into fight or flight.

And you'll be able to move through your birth gracefully and with so much confidence. All right, you guys, anybody have any questions for me? Let me see if I have any questions. I'm going to go down to the end for those of you guys who stuck to the end. Anyone have a question? Hello? Hello? Let's see. Let me see if I have any questions before I hop off.

I've got a few minutes. Hi, how are [00:16:00] you? All right, you guys, if you don't have any questions, you can always shoot them to me in a DM. We try to answer all of them. Again, if you comment class, you can join our birth classes and we'll send you a sweet little discount. Okay, you guys have a great day. I'll see.

Oh, here we go. Any tips for a first time mom with OCD? So I'm not sure if your name is Amy. I don't have my glasses on. Ann Parks, tell me this. My number one tip would be to take a birth class. Have you taken a class? Because a lot of times OCD will be out of control if you don't know what's happening. So that would be my number one tip.

I struggle with OCD as well, and I have a child who is very OCD, like diagnosed OCD. She has. Okay, good. So the number one tip for her would be educated. She [00:17:00] needs to have some mindset strategies and she needs to, for those of you who are birthing with her, make sure that you have some grounding techniques.

Her partner or whoever's going to be in the room needs to take her class as well. How do you know when to go to the hospital? My last birth, I was 10 centimeters. When you got there, you need to go sooner. So for our second time mamas, we say when the contractions are less than five minutes, each contraction, 60 seconds for one hour, if it's your first baby, we say less than four minutes, each contraction, 60 seconds for two hours.

Okay. You guys have a fantastic day. day. As always, our new podcast comes out on Friday. Have a great day, you guys.

I hope this episode has empowered [00:18:00] you to harness the mind body connection. Your mindset is everything for an incredible birth experience. Remember, your body is capable, your mind is powerful, but together they can make your birth everything you ever dreamed of. If you found today's discussion valuable, subscribe.

Subscribe to the podcast, share it with other moms to be, and don't forget to connect with me on Instagram for more tips and inspiration. Remember, we also have a free mini birth class. Click the link in the bio and take our three secrets to a faster, smoother birth right now. Your best birth is just a mindset away.

Until next Friday, bye for [00:19:00] now.