Braxton Hicks Contractions...False Labor or the Real Deal?
It’s always a good idea to check with your doctor or midwife when you start having cramps, but don’t panic. You may just be having Braxton Hicks contractions. Many believe that they’re your body’s way of getting ready for the real deal.
It’s always a good idea to check with your doctor or midwife when you start having cramps, but don’t panic. You may just be having Braxton Hicks Contractions. Many believe that they’re your body’s way of getting ready for the real deal. These practice contractions are probably just your womb doing some toning and strengthening workouts for your big job of pushing your baby out. They can usually last for 30 seconds or up to 2 minutes.
What Are Braxton Hicks?
Braxton Hicks contractions are a tightening in your abdomen that comes and goes. They are contractions of your uterus in preparation for giving birth. They tone the muscles in your uterus and may also help prepare the cervix for birth.
What Do They Feel Like?
Sometimes these contractions are so mild you don’t even feel them. They’re not usually painful. They’re more like a band tightening around your uterus, or your belly getting hard.
Don’t have a regular pattern
Don’t get closer together
Don’t get longer over time
Don’t get stronger over time
May stop when you change activities or positions
Are felt only in your belly
Taper off and disappear
What Triggers Them?
Dehydration the most common cause of Braxton Hicks contractions.
Illness that causes nausea and vomiting.
The baby’s movement inside the womb.
The mother’s activity, especially lifting something.
Braxton Hicks Contractions or Real Labor?
Many moms wonder if they are experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions or actual labor contractions. Don’t hesitate to call your care provider and/or doula just to double check and make sure!
Strategies for Relief
Change your position or activity. It might help to lie on your opposite side.
Support your belly when you stand or roll over. Move more slowly.
Try to rest. A heating pad or a hot bath may help.
Drink water.
Take a walk. Braxton Hicks contractions often stop when you change position or get up and move.
If you've been active, take a nap or rest.
Relax by taking a warm bath or listening to music.
Get a massage.
You may have Braxton Hicks contractions during your third trimester of pregnancy or as early as your second trimester. They’re normal and are nothing to worry about!
Sources
Labor Playlists: Music can help you no matter what type of birth.
Just like the music playing during our shows and movies, music sets the emotional scene for what the producers and writers want us to feel and experience. It can create the space for you to let go, feel ready, boost energy, instill courage, settle in, release tension, fight hard, dance baby out, focus inward, connect with our baby, master the rhythm, ride the waves, & find our strength.
Just like the music playing during t.v. shows and movies, music sets the emotional scene for what the producers and writers want us to feel and experience. It can create the space for you to ‘let go’, feel ready, boost energy, instill courage, settle in, release tension, fight hard, dance baby out, focus inward, connect with your baby, master the rhythm, ride the waves, find our strength. We connect to our milestones, life events and memories with our senses.
You may feel strongly about having music to play during your labor or haven’t thought about it at all. Regardless of your inclination one can find energy and the spirit that music brings to us all. I have observed the peace brought into the chaos of birth with the soulful voice of Adele, seen Grateful Dead bring baby’s first out of the womb listening experience, it send a woman into a birth trance with drums of ….., it connects a woman back to the joyous milestones in her life with some Jack Johnson, stepping into dancing with our partners with Ed Sherron’s Think out Loud.
Moving with the shifts of labor can be heightened with the use of music. Whether you are giving birth at home, birth center or hospital, your birth team and doulas are there to support your process.
Doulas can recognize the need for transition often before you do and can be an important asset to help you find your new jam (or position). Whether you desire an unmedicated or fully medicated birth you will still have hormones and discomforts with childbirth. We see parents at their most vulnerable and realize the value of shifting on the fly. You might find that your labor picks up very unexpectedly or it is going slower than you’d hoped. There are many points along the way where playing the right songs can help you to get through that moment or those hours.
You don’t need to be a music lover to find it helpful in your birth. Sometimes as doulas, we just grab your Spotify or iTunes and play your ‘liked’ songs. If you are a planner and want to create a list that includes songs that you love, begin by searching through your liked songs, look at already existing labor or birth playlists that others have created and use ones you like in your own labor playlist. In your third trimester you may begin needing to find relaxation techniques to get through back pain, discomforts and Braxton hicks contractions.
When it comes time to push your baby out or meeting your baby in the OR, there may be a need to quiet or it may be a time to pump up the volume (Roar by Katy Perry or Push-It by Salt n Pepa).
Moving with the shifts of labor can be more smooth with the support of the right tune. Partners can be helpful in knowing what you like and you can skip the songs that you aren’t feeling. Always bring a charger for you phone or device that you are playing it on as well as if you bring a bluetooth speaker.
Spicing up your experience during labor can be as easy as hitting play on your liked songs or a planned as several different playlist for different moods of your labor. Just know you and your partner do have the options to bring music into the hospital or birth center just like your would bring your diffuser with essential oils or your laptop to play Netflix.
Have a blast jammin’ to you favorites during those strong contractions! The power of music is magical!
Thank you note to my doulas
Doulas are often mistakenly thought as just an ultimate crunchy home birth accessory, but I do not know how I would have navigated the medical system without you. Even from the early days of pregnancy, in a whirlwind of rotating nurses, doctors, and midwives, you were a constant.
To my dear doula team--
Okay, in defense of my tardiness, you failed to warn me that babies cause actual warps in spacetime. But you’re long past due for a proper thank you.
Now where to begin? You were with me from the first trimester. You offered nutritional counseling, brushed the disastrous post-pushing hair to which I was oblivious, taught me how to help my baby latch not chomp. But these things only skim the surface.
Throughout pregnancy, I read and researched in preparation for an empowered, low-intervention birth--only to discover after my preeclampsia diagnosis that most of my favorite birth books wrote off “complicated” births with a sympathetic “Sorry, not our department.” But where books failed me, you shone.
Doulas are often mistakenly thought as just an ultimate crunchy home birth accessory, but I do not know how I would have navigated the medical system without you. Even from the early days of pregnancy, in a whirlwind of rotating nurses, doctors, and midwives, you were a constant. You coached me in how to speak with my providers and built up my trust in my care team. When a heavily monitored birth became inevitable, you guided me through what to expect, even contacting a local OB for a play-by-play of a preeclampsia induction.
You helped me process my fears and disappointments as plans unraveled (and did not bat an eye when I announced I no longer believed in birth plans a few days before I went into labor). I’ve often been patronized when nerves got the better of me. But though you saw me go full basket case, not once did you make me feel less than intelligent or capable. You treated every emotion as valid, even as you eased my mind with your calming perspective. Your confidence kept me in touch with my own guts.
In the end, I saw less of you than I intended during labor because (plot twist!) our prep together had so readied me for the experience that I didn’t feel the need to call in reinforcements until my baby was just hours away. From the time I arrived at the hospital, I knew my options. I knew the questions to ask. And even shaking and loopy with adrenaline, I was not afraid.
Who would have predicted that I could feel so self-assured waddling to the car with bag half-packed and amniotic fluid squelching in my shoe, or trailing a million tubes and a patient husband down a hospital hallway in the wee hours of the morning? I guess the scenery was less impressive than if I’d squatted in a field in the beams of the rising sun. But I was an active participant in every aspect of my beeps-and-needles labor, and I loved it.
I said from the beginning that a peaceful birth was more important to me than tub or stirrups, hypnosis or epidural. And because of you, I got my peaceful birth. But more than that, I got a happy birth. I got a birth story I am eager to share not to shock or horrify, but to encourage. And I will carry that with me forever.
So thank you. Thank you always.
Ariel S. - first-time mother, aspiring writer