5 Steps to Labor Ready!: Step 2 Pregnancy Empowerment
Empowerment begins with understanding.
We’re not here to overwhelm you with complicated medical language, but knowing the basics of how your body is designed and how it changes throughout pregnancy, labor, and birth can completely shift how you experience it.
💛 Nurse’s Note
As a doctorate-prepared nurse with extensive experience in perinatal care, I’ve walked alongside women through pregnancy, labor, and postpartum recovery in both clinical and real-life settings.
Everything shared here is rooted in evidence-informed practice and compassionate support, because you deserve guidance that is both medically sound and deeply human.
My goal is simple: to help you feel informed, confident, and empowered as you prepare for birth and beyond.
Your body isn’t random. It’s intentional. It’s adaptive. It’s powerful.
As your pregnancy progresses, incredible hormonal, physical, and emotional changes are happening behind the scenes to prepare you for labor and delivery. When you understand what’s happening, and why, fear decreases and confidence grows.
And let’s be honest, there are questions.
Some you’ve Googled at 2 a.m.
Some you’ve been too embarrassed to ask.
We’re here to talk about all of it- openly, honestly, and without judgment.
Because informed moms feel empowered. And empowered moms walk into labor ready.
Pregnancy, labor and delivery are often very scary times and with the onslaught of well-meaning friends, family and the internet we experience an overload of information! It is hard to know what is true and what is not true. This often leads to fear.
The more mentally prepared you are for birth, the more favorable your experience will be. However, the laboring and birthing process are all unique and unpredictable for everyone. True medical emergencies can and do happen. No matter how much you prepare, babies will determine how they want to be born.
By understanding the things, you can control understanding the things you can’t control and understanding the things you have a little control over, you will be empowered to remain calm and focused.
The calmer and more focused you are, the more your body can relax and open and this will help labor to progress. On the flip side, if you are stressed, fearful of the pain of labor, afraid of what to expect and fight the contractions, you may have a longer more difficult labor resulting in a less than favorable birth experience.
This is called the fear-pain-tension cycle
FEAR
Fear will cause you to become tense and that tension will increase your pain. The increased pain will make you feel more fearful and initiate the fight or flight response which increases stress and anxiety and feelings that you can’t do it.
In order to stop this cycle, we need to reduce fear through understanding what to expect during childbirth.
When we understand what our bodies are doing, what we can expect and what is normal we are armed with knowledge. Knowledge is powerful to decrease fear by taking away the unknown.
PAIN
Pain is caused by the tension in your body. So the goal is to reduce tension through relaxation which will then reduce the pain.
Be aware of the areas you are tense. Partners, you know this. Where does mom tighten up when she is upset or mad at you? Is the tension in her jaw, abdomen, pelvic, legs, or all?
Tension increases how much oxygen is being used and leads to more rapid onset of fatigue and decreased oxygen to the uterus, which leads to a buildup of lactic acid. Lactic acid causes pain in muscles, leading to increased pain and pain perception. This then triggers the increase of fear, and the cycle goes on and on!
UNDERSTANDING THE PREGNANT BODY: Anatomy and Physiology (what it is and what it does!) Now I understand this may be more than some may want to know, but to those who want to understand how the body works continue reading.
PELVIS
Late pregnancy
Some of you are likely in late pregnancy now and it is often thought of as a waiting game. A state of waiting........like we are waiting and waiting and at some point IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN! Everyone asks you right, is it happening, is it time?
What is really helpful for us to understand is that pregnancy is actually a gradual transition into labor!
If we understand that, this will help you to feel more confident and calmer and help this period of pregnancy go more smoothly.
The best position for the baby to pass through the pelvis is with the head down and the body facing toward the mother's back. This position is called occiput anterior.
Not that you need to memorize this, but I find it interesting to know that there are different types of pelvis’s, each with it’s own benefit!
The gynecoid pelvis is thought to be the most favorable pelvis type for a vaginal birth. This is because the wide, open shape gives the baby plenty of room during delivery.
The Android pelvis. The narrower shape of the android pelvis can make labor difficult because the baby might move more slowly through the birth canal
The Plattypelloid pelvis is bigger from side to side than front to back so babies shimmy down when they give birth.
Anthropoid pelvis is a diamond shape -bigger front to back than side to side. So depending on the size of the baby, baby may shoot through like divers. LOL. You know when you hear those stories when they were 39 weeks pregnant, moms sneezed, water broke and suddenly pushed, and baby flew out. That is almost always because someone had an anthropoid pelvis, because the structure facilitates a fast exit without a lot of need for turning around.
MOST babies will need to go through a 3-point turn process:
They come down, meet pelvic floor and turn, then they come out and have to turn for the shoulders and then the remaining part come out.
It’s amazing how many people are most nervous about rapid deliveries. However, most of us will go through a longer process allowing the baby to move.
JOINTS:
Pelvis actually becomes quite unstable when pregnant. Normally the pelvis doesn’t move around much when walking.
Then what happens when your pregnant? Your joints in your pelvis relax due to relaxin hormone in pregnancy and you have a lot of these hormones at the end of pregnancy. You will see this when you go to get out of the car and you feel like you just left your pelvis behind!
All of these Joints are unstable to allow the babies head to come down for birth, but it can be very uncomfortable if you are trying to pivot, climb stairs quickly, leap, or lunge.
Everyone is different. Some have tight ligaments, and some have looser ligaments. That’s important to know! You can’t really control that! Ever notice how some people can carry really heavy grocery bags and after you put them down, the arm feels terrible like everything is separated, but other people are fine? Same with your pelvis.
Some people when they walk will feel like they have 3 pelvis’s, and some people won’t notice at all.
Why is this important to know? The way you can use this information is to know that certain positions will allow you to open your pelvis more. For instance; Squatting or bending over surfaces can give your baby 1-2 cm more room! So plan on doing some squats if you can during labor.
People always talk about gravity and gravity IS important!
But gravity can’t do all of it, you still need to help it.
There are positions to help baby move into your pelvis and put pressure on the cervix. Squatting is one of them, using the birthing ball is an excellent device to help, and the Hula Hoop Maneuver is another. The hula hoop, If you think about the maneuver of the hula hoop and imagine this with the pelvis, if you move it around, you create openings in the pelvis. Good research about this maneuver and lots of people do it all the way through labor and it makes them feel more comfortable and helps the baby move down too.
SO that’s the pelvis, which is basically the bony tunnel the baby is going to come down through.
Now Lets talk UTERUS
Not every uterus is created equal and that is why it is difficult for some women to become pregnant or why others cannot carry a pregnancy to term.
The normal uterus looks like an upside-down pear, with thick muscular walls, a single cavity and a narrow cervix connecting to the vagina.
It is quite fascinating to think how your ovaries produce the eggs that travel through the fallopian tubes and once the egg is fertilized it implants itself in the lining of the uterus.
The uterus sits between the bladder and rectum. So as the baby grows the uterus stretches and nourishes the developing fetus. You may notice your hips widening as your uterus expands. (Unfortunate this is a bad thing because most of us do not wide hips, on the other hand they help with birthing babies). This will help accommodate the birth of your baby.
Your uterus grows from about the size of a pear to the size of a watermelon. Truly miraculous.
You may hear of a bicornuate uterus, which is a heart shaped uterus or an irregular shape that looks like it has two sides. This is rare to have, but if you do, you would be considered a high-risk pregnancy and your doctor would have you monitored more often.
The uterus has lots of layers of muscles and the bottom line is it is a really big muscle, but it’s unlike any other muscle in your body. And if you understand how it works, this will help you in labor. This is an area in which you have SOME control.
Most muscles in the body can contract and retract. However, the uterus can contract like a regular muscle but also retracts from the bottom up. Gets out of the way so baby can be born. It goes from a doorknob shape to essentially a pancake.
Amniotic Sac
Inside of your uterus your baby is staying warm within the amniotic sac that is filled with amniotic fluid. The amniotic fluid is made up water from the mother’s body however, by around week 20 it is replaced by fetal urine. The amniotic sac also contains vital nutrients, hormones, and infection fighting antibodies to protect the fetus.
You will also hear the amniotic sac called membranes or your bag of water. This is a thick wall sac that surrounds the fetus and keeps them safe throughout your pregnancy.
Now let's talk about when your Uterus starts to Contract.
Polarity – Effective contractions
There is really great research with all mammals that when you distract people or put them in high light environments or have them talk a lot, a lot of people will not achieve good polarity.
Polarity is not achieved well in bright lights, loud voices, and distraction. Leads to “Stall Out” - This is why the birthing environment is so important. – Quieter environments and darker lights – these helps facilitate polarity by increasing oxytocin, which makes your uterus run well!
In the last 25 years or so we have seen a large increase in augmentation with synthetic oxytocin because someone “Stalled”. There has been a lot of research on this as well, but everyone agrees that when you are talking, timing, hanging out in bright lights, the uterus won’t be able to function as well as it should. So think ahead about wanting a quiet environment, don’t be talking or on your phone a lot and you want oxytocin.
Oxytocin is the love hormone and is stimulated by cuddling, kissing and being around people you love, listening to the voices of people you care about, all the things that make you feel calm and relaxed.
PARTNERS
Partners, YOU are the most important person in the room to mom during the birthing process. It can be hard when everyone is calling asking if it is happening yet and wanting the latest updates. So the partners job is to help facilitate the environment.
Help oxytocin flow by being close to her. Hold her, sway with her, tell her a joke, kiss her. All of those create surges of oxytocin and help labor progress.
Make sure you are setting the mood. Think of it like if you were on a date, how would you make the environment be relaxed and increase the bond? Set up the space the same way! Dim the lights, bring battery-operated candles, make sure the room is a warm temp for mom, maybe use essential oils or freshener to make it smell nice. Maybe you would have some music playing. These are all great ways to set up your birth space. It can be challenging in a hospital setting, but imagine you are setting up a date in the hospital and make it as comfortable as possible.
Help her feel safe, protective and comfortable doing whatever she needs to do to make her body relax and do what it should do.
You also want to be in tune with her emotions. Try to help her remain calm and positive, but make it okay for her to experience exhaustion and doubt. Often times she will cry, and that is okay. This is a release for her. So if you see her battling emotions, ask her how she is feeling and let her feel those emotions, but then point her in a positive direction and encourage her.