Hey friends! Today I wanted to sit down and talk about something I know so many of you are wrestling with - the connection between fear and your labor. If you've ever seen those posts online that say things like "labor isn't painful, you're just scared," I want to meet you in that confusion, because I've felt it too, even with everything I know. I'm breaking down the actual physiology behind the fear-tension-pain cycle - what's really happening in your body when anxiety creeps in before or during labor, and why it's not as simple as those posts make it sound.

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But this isn't just the science - I wanted this episode to feel really practical. I'm walking you through exactly what to do with the fears you already have: how to turn them into a plan instead of letting them grow in the dark, why separating "possible" from "probable" is such a game-changer for your mindset, and how trusting your body's design (and your own breath!) can completely shift how you move through birth. My hope is you walk away from this one not trying to eliminate every fear before labor starts, but knowing exactly what to do with the ones you've got.

More from this episode:

Listen to episode 07: Is Pain Free Birth Real, Should You Want it, and Can You Do It?

Helpful Timestamps:

• 00:00 Understanding Birth Fears
• 05:25 Fear Tension Pain Cycle
• 08:41 How Fear Affects Labor
• 10:30 Turn Fears Into Plans
• 13:49 Possible Versus Probable
• 16:52 Your Body Can Do This
• 18:32 Practical Tools
• 20:30 Reframes And Breathing

About your host:

Lo Mansfield, MSN, RNC-OB, CLC is a registered nurse, mama of 4, and a birth, baby, and motherhood enthusiast. She is both the host of the Lo & Behold podcast and the founder of The Labor Mama.

For more education, support and “me too” from Lo, please visit her website and check out her online courses and digital guides for birth, breastfeeding, and postpartum/newborns. You can also follow @thelabormama and @loandbehold_thepodcast on Instagram and join her email list here.

For more pregnancy, birth, postpartum and motherhood conversation each week, be sure to subscribe to The Lo & Behold podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen!

A request: If this episode meant something to you, would you consider a 5 star rating and leaving us a review? Yes, we read them, and yes, they help keep L & B going! ♥️

Connect with Lo more on: INSTAGRAM | TIK TOK | PINTEREST | FACEBOOK

Disclaimer

Opinions shared by guests of this show are their own, and do not always reflect those of The Labor Mama platform. Additionally, the information you hear on this podcast or that you receive via any linked resources should not be considered medical advice. Please see our full disclaimer here.

Additionally, we may make a small commission from some of the links shared with you. Please know, this comes at no additional cost to you, supports our small biz, and is a way for us to share brands and products with you that we genuinely love.

Produced and Edited by Vaden Podcast Services

Mentioned in this episode:

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Labor isn't painful, you're just scared.

I think sometimes we see that stuff, we hear that stuff, and then we're thinking, "What is that even supposed to mean?" Fear can lead to this elevation of tension.

That elevation of tension can increase the pain that we experience.

You have a path right now because fears can equal a plan.

The more you learn, the less you fear, right?

The more you know, the less you're gonna be scared of things

Motherhood is all-consuming.

Having babies, nursing, feeling the fear of loving someone that much.

Then there's this baby on your chest, and boom, your entire life has changed.

It's a privilege of being your child's safest space and watching your heart walk around outside of your body.

The truth is, I can be having the best time being a mom one minute, and then the next, I'm questioning all my life choices.

I'm Lo Mansfield, your host of the Lo and Behold podcast, mama of four littles, former labor and postpartum RN, CLC, and your new best friend in the messy middle space of all the choices you are making in pregnancy, birth, and motherhood.

If there is one thing I know after years of delivering babies at the bedside, and then having, and now raising those four of my own, it is that there is no such thing as a best way to do any of this, and we're leaning into that truth here.

With a mix of real life and what the textbook says, expert insights, and practical applications, each week we're making our way towards stories that we participate in, stories that we are honest about, and stories that are ours.

This is the Lo and Behold podcast.

All right, you guys.

I wanna do an episode today, I'm hoping it's a short and sweet one.

I know I always say that, and then it ends up not being short and sweet, and that's my problem, not yours.

But I do hope this is kind of a short, sweet, brief, but good hard-hitting episode about the connection between fear and your labor, right?

There's a lot of stuff that we're seeing right now on social media or maybe as we're googling birth stuff or the whole when you lay awake scrolling at night type thing, where you see these conversations about labor being more painful or being worse because of you, because you're scared of stuff.

And if you haven't seen this, great, because I think I don't know that that narrative is necessarily helpful.

But if you have seen it, I wanna meet you in that kind of those wonderings of, wait, if I'm nervous about birth, which I am, right?

Maybe that's you.

It was definitely me, even with all the knowledge I have, right?

If I'm nervous about birth or I'm a little bit scared or what- like, how am I ruining my own experience?

' Cause I think sometimes we see that stuff, we hear that stuff, and then we're thinking, " What is that even supposed to mean?" Like, how do I take this conversation of, "Don't be scared or your labor's gonna be worse," what do I do with that, right?

that's what I wanna talk about today, and I want it to just feel really practical.

I wanna explain kind of where that's coming from, what that means, what the realities are kind of inside of that conversation, and then give you the what to do with it, right?

So some of these posts you're gonna see, or maybe you have seen already.

They say things like, "Labor isn't painful. You're just scared."

I remember that so clearly.

I saw that one a few months ago on Instagram.

Or I've seen one before where it says, "The reason labor hurts is because you're scared," right?

So this puts a lot of fault and a lot of blame on us.

So I- like, immediately, I don't enjoy, I don't appreciate that type of narrative.

But I also, I do understand where it's coming from, and I wanna explain that to you, the, like, science, the physiology of this, but then give you kind of more practical stuff of what to do with it, as opposed to this idea of pain-free birth, right?

Or if you're scared, you're gonna have a bad birth, so you need to make sure you eliminate all your fear, and that's the way you have a good birth.

'Cause I just don't agree with that.

Now, I just mentioned the word pain-free birth, and I will tell you that I think this is real.

It's definitely a part of this conversation.

I would say the convo we're having right now is kind of the root of that or explains how pain-free birth might be possible.

And then there's more to that conversation.

So if you're interested in pain-free birth or even wanna hear me elaborate even more on some of the stuff we're talking about right now, go to episode seven, and I kinda deep dive that more.

You'll hear a little bit of crossover between what we're talking about here now and then what I talk about in that episode as well.

But you can go to seven, and you're gonna get more, and we're gonna lean into that idea of pain-free birth a little bit more.

But here, we're just talking kind of that foundational ideas, beliefs.

What does it mean when people talk about, "Hey, your fear is impacting your birth," okay?

' Cause we need to understand that it does impact your birth, so I want you to know how The first thing I think that's really important to understand is that fear in and of itself, it's a protective mechanisms in many, many scenarios, right?

And I just think of you sitting there and saying, "Hey, you're a mother. You are a protector." The whole mama bear-ism is a real thing, right?

Like, we protect what is ours.

And so as soon as we become mothers, I would say as soon as we see that pink line, maybe even before we even do, we're just thinking, "How do I protect this thing I'm trying to build and grow and create?"

And then once it's here, how do I continue to protect this thing, right?

And so this idea of fear being inherently wrong or bad as we consider birth, and then even as we consider motherhood and raising them as well, I don't love that, okay?

Because I do think fear can be really valuable, and we're gonna get into how it can be valuable So we're gonna talk about first the physiology of fear and this kind of that part of here's how it's not helpful physiologically inside of your birth, but then I'm gonna talk about how we can utilize this fear, these anxieties, these worries, whatever, and make them valuable, if that makes sense, okay?

So let's get into first this idea of the actual impacts of fear, that physiological impact, and what people are saying when they say stuff like, " Labor isn't painful, you're just scared." Like, what, what does that really mean?

So really what this breaks down to is this idea of the fear, tension, pain cycle.

Again, like some of this other stuff, maybe you've heard of it, maybe you're familiar with it already.

But essentially what the fear, tension, pain cycle is, and this can exist in other places, not just birth, like maybe other places where you're continually dealing with some sort of pain or worry and the way that it impacts your body.

There's some connection there.

But typically we're talking about this when it comes to birth.

And the fear, tension, pain cycle is essentially this idea that when you are hurting or you're scared of something or you're really worried about something, particularly physical somethings when we're talking about labor, when we have these fears and these worries, our body kicks into fight or flight, right?

And most of us are familiar with fight or flight.

We know what that means.

This is the idea of, like, fear, problem, danger.

What do we do?

We run away.

And I mentioned, you know, a lot of times fear is a good thing, right?

And here's it-- this is one of those scenarios, right?

Where you can say, " Oh, sometimes this SNS system, this sympathetic nervous system, this activation, this fight or flight's a really good thing."

You can loop this back to the mama bear thing.

This is like this immediate response to protecting our children or protecting someone we love.

Those are often really good things.

Thank God we have this SNS system that kicks on, right?

So we have this protective mechanism in our body.

It's part of our nervous system.

It's sympathetic nervous system.

There is an alternative or, like, a counter to that.

That's your parasympathetic nervous system or your PNS.

And this SNS, it's a protective mechanism.

In a lot of circumstances, it's helpful.

We need it.

It's what we need to make a good choice, to make a safe choice, to protect, save, et cetera.

Okay?

Now, in labor, the SNS system does not turn off, right?

And so we have this SNS system that can activate when we are scared, when we are nervous, when we have a worry or an anxiety that maybe has had, has been left unchecked up to that point and now it's coming true, right?

Or this idea of, " I was so scared this would happen in birth and now it is," and, "Oh my gosh," and then we, we go into this tumble, right?

And so we can exist in this fight or flight mode in our labor or in specific parts of our labor.

It can kick on during our labor.

What that does when we are in this SNS activated mode is that we have these surges of adrenaline.

We have this surge of tension in our body.

That tension when it's elevated, it can increase our perception of pain.

So that's like bare bones understanding of that fear can lead to this elevation of tension.

That elevation of tension can increase the pain that we experience.

So you can see this kind of direct impact in labor So leading up to labor or birth, we have this idea of unaddressed anxieties and fears leading up to birth.

Like, if right now you've got all these ones and you're like, "I don't know what to do with them," those can lead to anticipatory fear already, right?

And so as labor starts, or maybe as we're moving through your next few weeks before labor starts, there's already this level of tension or adrenaline, this SNS activation at different points, maybe when you're laying up at night Googling like we talked about, where there is this anxiety and fear that's kind of unchecked, uncontrolled.

It's leading to tension, all of this stuff that's not a great place to start labor from, right?

And then let's say we're going into it at a loss maybe, or we're already in a place that's not Quote, unquote, "safe, calm, peaceful, mentally prepared," right?

And so then when we do start to experience X, Y, Z, maybe the painful contraction we're scared of, maybe fetal distress that we were worried about that could happen and now it is, then we can have this increase in tension, we can have this increase in, "I knew it would be bad, it is bad," and then your body gets caught in this fear-tension-pain cycle.

Now, really practically speaking, that fear-tension-pain cycle as it pertains to labor is also important because it can directly physiologically impact what's going on.

So you probably caught I mentioned adrenaline, right?

So when your SNS kicks on, when there's these fears and anxieties kicking on, we have these surges of adrenaline, which typically are not going to be super helpful, particularly sustained over a course of a labor, right?

We don't want that clicking and running this entire time, right?

And so we have that runaway protect, that adrenaline flowing.

It actually can, the tension in the body can decrease blood flow to your uterus.

Hello, your uterus is what we need to be effectively contracting and moving labor along, right?

And then we have that increase in tension in the body.

So there's these physiological things that are happening.

We can have these anticipatory fears and tensions before we move into labor.

Then you can see in labor what I just said, we can have these things that happen during labor.

So all of it can combine, to go back to that kind of bare bones thing I mentioned to you, of more tension, let's say actually more fear, anticipatory fear, more tension as we move into or through our birth experience can equal more pain.

Okay?

So that is where all of that is coming from.

And then practically speaking as well, specific, specific to labor, more tension in the body, more of that adrenaline in the body, it can lead directly to less blood flow to the uterus.

We can actually have a less efficient or a more, an ineffective uterus, if you will, and you can actually have labor stalls and slowdowns.

So all of that is where this idea of, " You can't be scared because it's gonna impact your birth.

It makes it hurt more.

It makes your birth not go as well," whatever that connection is, right?

That's where that's coming from, okay?

This fear-tension-pain cycle, this idea that when we have fears, when we don't address them well, when we go into labor with them unchecked, I know I've said that vocabulary word a couple times, that it can cause issue, complication, more pain.

Okay?

So that's where all that's coming from.

So what do we do with that?

Because you're probably sitting there, again, saying, "But I am scared of X, Y, Z." And I would tell you, again, that's normal.

I don't know that it's practical for us to actually think you cannot have any fears going into labor What we need to do though is do something with them.

We can't leave them in that unchecked place I keep mentioning.

Okay?

So how are you going to think about fear moving forward knowing, hey, there is an impact here on my birth, and I have a role that I can play here to minimize that impact or to have that impact come from, like, a healthier place.

Okay?

So the first thing I would tell you is you have a path right now because fears can equal a plan.

Those fears, those anxieties, those worries, those are the places where I am telling you you need to start leaning in.

We're not gonna leave those fears free to just grow in the dark, if you will, okay?

We're not going to just ignore them because they scare us too much, or the possibility of them scares us too much.

We're going to try and minimize some of that anticipatory fear, that fear that I mentioned we have before the process even begins, and we do that by learning, right?

So I want you to ask yourself the question, or maybe you're like, "I already know the answer to this question," this idea of what specifically are you afraid of?

What worries you?

What does keep you up at night?

What are the things that maybe you Google and then you're like, "Ugh, I'm down a rabbit hole, and I do not feel good about this anymore, and I can't sleep now"?

Like, what are those things?

And I would say don't stop at the rabbit hole, or don't just simply back away from them.

Change the question from what specifically are you afraid will happen to what would I want to know or ask or do if XYZ happens, if XYZ were to be true?

And that's your path, right?

That's where we start learning.

That's where you get into your Body of Birth course and you go, "Okay, module seven, lesson six, it's all about the fetal heart rate or continuous monitoring or the choice to have a cesarean or not, you know?

And you find those places and you lean into those.

What would you want to know, ask, or do if XYZ were to happen, okay?

Fears and anxieties are normal.

I feel that very deeply, and I believe it from my own personal experiences as well.

Let them be a guide for how you learn.

This is the way you now make your plan to move forward and continue to get educated.

Hey friend, quick pause for just a second.

If you are listening to this podcast because you wanna feel more prepared, more confident, and less freaked out about birth, that is exactly why I created the Your Body Your Birth course.

This birth course will not tell you what kind of birth you should want, and nobody has the right to do that.

It is about helping you understand what's happening in your body, what your options actually are, and how to walk into your birth feeling grounded, excited, ready, instead of overwhelmed and scared.

When you have education like this, everything changes: your mindset, your conversations with your care team, and the birth experience itself.

No more relying on random opinions, okay?

Stop scrolling.

Take intentional action with me and start trusting your body, your voice, and your decisions today.

Head over to www.thelabormama.com/birth, also linked in your show notes, and be sure to use the code podcast at checkout to save 20% and start working towards this better birth for you right now.

Okay, let's get you back to the episode

Okay, second thing.

So as you learn, because essentially I just said get learning, right?

I want you to start separating possible from probable, okay?

Mini little difference in those vocabulary words, but this is huge for your mindset.

Learning about something in birth does not mean it will happen.

Inside of my birth course, there's this gorgeous quote from this perinatal psychologist, Rebecca Manning, and she talks about how when we give you information, it is a, it's like a gift to you.

It's empowering to you.

When we withhold information from you, we're not trusting you to make up your own mind.

It's like, "Hey, you're gonna be too nervous. You're gonna be too scared, so I can't trust you with this." Like you're not an adult, right?

We're not doing that.

I'm not handling you with kid gloves.

It's a disservice to you, and it disempowers you, right?

And so we're gonna talk about the possibles.

We're gonna talk about all the possibilities, but we are going to separate them or tell our mind, work through it as we learn that possible doesn't equal probable.

So we'll give accurate information.

Inside of the course, we talk evidence, we talk reality, we talk all of that.

We're giving accurate information, evidence-based information, practical lived experience information, but we're not turning the possibilities into a prediction for your birth, and that's such a huge mindset shift, to separate possible from probable.

So I want you to continue to learn and lean in with that mindset.

That is the way that we are doing this moving forward.

If you've heard of it, The Down to Birth podcast, but, you know, don't listen to them.

Just listen to my podcast, right?

The Down to Birth podcast is great.

I love listening to it.

They had a quote a while ago on their Instagram, and it was about someone who had shared with a midwife about what she wanted for a third baby.

She wanted this joyful, empowering experience.

She basically said that.

And then the midwife's response in her experience had been, "Oh, well, you know, third babies are wild cards." And there was this immediate desire to temper expectations, right?

To almost lean into, "Just so you know, all these bad things could happen, so I just want you to be sure about that."

And they had a quote, The Down to Birth podcast had a quote on their post, like in the next slide on this, you know, in this little story set, and it basically said, " Focus on the birth you're hoping for, not the one that you're afraid of," right?

Because there can be this tendency for us, and I'm including this, I am not perfect here, to temper your expectations, right?

And be like, " Yes, you can do this, and we want this.

Also, don't forget this could happen." And so sometimes we lean too hard into the possibilities or the probabilities instead of just saying, " This is possible. It is not probable, so let's lean into what you're hopeful for," right?

So all that to say, I just want you to walk through this with this mindset that possible does not indicate probable.

A potential risk factor does not indicate reality, okay?

We wanna look at these numbers and understand that they could happen, but nothing about you learning about them or knowing your options about them indicates they will happen.

Knowledge is just power.

Cheesy, but true, right?

So this knowledge that we're learning about the possibles simply turns you into a more empowered patient.

That's gonna be the game changer for your birth.

Okay, the third thing.

Your body is built to support you in this.

So we're talking straight physiology right now, this physical part of birth.

The reality is, is that bodies are built to do this.

We have these incredible pelvises that shift and move.

We have this incredible uterus that knows how to contract.

It's strong.

It grows huge intentionally, shrinks back down after birth intentionally.

This design is incredible, right?

The tissues that are meant to allow baby through that might tear, they also heal beautifully.

Like, these systems are really, really cool.

And you could say, "Oh, it is probable," right, to go back to what you just talked about, that the system won't work, right?

And we can look around and know that the system is not always perfect.

But we're still going to rest in what we know is Overall, true.

The system is built a certain way.

You're not asking your body to do something that it is not made for when you ask your body to have this baby, okay?

So we're leaning into that.

Going back to that SNS cycle, I said, "Oh, adrenaline, these things can surge during labor. That's not helpful." Guess what?

Your body also puts out endorphins and feel-good hormones to support you during labor.

This is so cool.

It doesn't happen at any other pain process.

It's like this specific labor process where your body is talking to itself, and things go up to the brain and say, "Hey, we need endorphins.

We need support.

Help me get through this painful experience," and your body delivers, okay?

So we just need to understand that physiologically speaking, this design is really cool.

It's really good.

It's intended to work, and it is intended to support you.

So carry that in while you think about, "Ooh, I'm so scared XYZ might not happen or might go wrong."

Also, or I would say even greater, the body is designed to do this and has really, really cool things that kick on and support you in doing this, okay?

So we're just not going to forget that.

So that brings us to the, okay, cool.

We're, we've got… We're thinking through how do we change our mindset, or what are some things that can kind of support me as I go, "Okay, I don't wanna just be scared.

What do I do?" Now, here's what we can actually do, right?

Those were kind of mindset shifts and changes and different ways to think about fear.

Now I wanna give you some practical what do you do.

So the first is, no surprise here, the more you learn, the less you fear, right?

The more you know, the less you're gonna be scared of things.

And so you do need to lean in, and we kinda already talked about this when I said, "Hey, don't back away. Don't leave things in a void," right?

But the goal doesn't have to be pain-free.

You don't have to walk away from this going, "Okay, I cannot have fear. I cannot have fear." That's not what we're talking about here, again.

But I want you to start speaking things out loud.

I want you to speak them out loud to a birth partner.

We're not gonna leave fears hiding in the dark.

You know, sometimes I think, like, oh, if my kids are scared of something or they don't talk about it out loud, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

The anticipation gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

My two oldest daughters, they just flew on an airplane alone to see their grandparents for the first time, and the anticipation of saying goodbye and leaving us was so much bigger for my youngest of those two girls than the reality of it was, right?

Because it's like this thing that was growing in the dark, so we just kept talking.

We just kept talking about what could happen, what it would look like, what were the good parts, focusing on the goodness, focusing on the hope, right?

And the actual reality of it, she got in the car after saying goodbye to me, and she was with her dad, and she says, " Gosh, I'm so glad that was over.

It was way worse, you know, to think about saying goodbye than it was to actually say bye to Mom."

And that's it, right?

That's a perfect example of we're not leaving things in the dark to grow and to fester.

We're gonna talk about them because often that anticipation can really hurt us.

And so we wanna move through it so that we can handle the reality even better, even healthier, even stronger, okay?

So we're gonna learn more, we're gonna speak things out loud, we are not going to back away.

So education, birth course, get inside your body, your birth.

Lean into those specific scenarios of, "I'm scared of XYZ," and then we flip it, right, and we go, "What do I wanna know?

What would I wanna ask?

What would I wanna know about my options in those scenarios?"

So that you know if they were to happen, okay?

Second thing is reframing.

I want you to start practicing literal reframes in your head about certain things.

So for example, "I am terrified I'll need a C-section." This is common, right?

"I really want a vaginal birth. I do not want a C-section." And this can be a big fear for a lot of you moving into birth.

So what's the reframe here?

" I am hoping for, planning for, and prepping for a vaginal birth.

If a C-section becomes the safest option for me, I wanna understand why." We're going back to what we talked about prior, right?

"I wanna know what to ask in that moment, and I wanna know what the recovery looks like."

So we're not leaving that fear in a void.

We're also recognizing that possible does not mean probable, right?

We're not making the jump to, "If I learn about this, it's going to happen." But we're also saying, " Hey, I'm gonna show up the most empowered version of myself, and these are the things I would wanna know in that scenario if it were to happen."

Okay?

And so that's where learning, learning, learning, right?

Because that's where we fill the gap, right?

That's where we fill that reframe.

I wanna know, if that's the safest option, what to ask, what my options are, what I might be thinking or feeling, and then you would be able to make choices, right?

So learning, learning, learning, learning.

Another quick reframe, just to give you another example of this.

" I'm scared an epidural will cause a cascade of interventions." Right?

Valid fear.

Okay?

We talk about that all the time in the birth world, and that's a true thing.

You can Google images of cascade of interventions and see these possibilities as we start to make different choices in our labor.

But what's the reframe here is, " An epidural can change things about my labor." Possible.

It doesn't have to be probable, right?

We don't have to say, "It will," and, "This will happen." Okay?

So you can see where we keep doing th- coming from that mindset, right?

So I'm going to look in best times to get an epidural.

What does that timing look like?

What are other pain tools to use as well on my way to potentially choosing that?

And what interventions might come next after an epidural?

So you can know what question to ask, know what your options are, and know what decisions are.

So you can look at the chain of interventions, images that you might see online, and you'll th- see things like the possibility for fetal distress, loss of mobility, right?

'Cause you're in the bed.

Stalls or slowdowns- Maybe Pitocin to kind of counteract a potential stall or a slowdown.

Continuous monitoring once you get epidural.

You're gonna see these things, and you go, "Okay, these are possible," again, not probable, right?

And so I'm going to learn about these possibles instead of just saying, "I'm scared an epidural's gonna cause this."

Okay, acknowledge that an epidural changes the possibilities, so lean into those possibilities, okay?

We're never saying this is going to happen because XYZ.

We're just saying there are possibilities in labor, and so we wanna understand them so that we know how to respond when we're inside of them.

Going back to that quote I mentioned and obviously butchered, there's this idea again of we're empowering you to show up, and we're trusting you with information.

That is my job is to say, " I'm not letting some sort of scary thing.

I'm not gonna withhold that from you because you can't handle it.

Yes, you can, and I'm gonna trust you to be able to handle it so that you can show up better in your birth." Okay, last thing.

Third practical thing, learn how to breathe.

And the reason this is so important is 'cause we talked all about the SNS and the fear-tension-pain cycle.

Guess how you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest, if you remember, like, high school science, right?

The one that calms, the ones that chills you out, the one that helps you make better choices, particularly in a s- scenario that might otherwise be tense and you're feeling a little out of control.

Breathwork, breathing.

This can be true as you prep, as you lay there in bed tonight scrolling whatever it is that you don't wanna happen and how do we stop that.

Breathwork.

Calm that body down.

Activate that parasympathetic nervous system with deep inhales, exhales.

During that contraction, you breathe before you're able to make a choice, right?

That is, like, the root of the root.

The foundation of the things is the ability to breathe and to calm down the body, to remind yourself you're safe, and then make a decision or to say, "What's going on? Hey, what are my options? What are my alternatives?" Right?

If you're not in charge of this kind of integral part of yourself, your breathing, you are going to struggle, if be able to at all, kind of make decisions from a really calmer, peaceful, sound place, decisions you're proud of where you go, "Okay, I had the wherewithal in that moment to think and then to act."

Okay?

So practically speaking, learn about breathwork.

Learn how to breathe.

You can practice this.

You can practice it at home through labor.

There's patterns.

We have a full module of lessons about patterns of breathing, what those look like, progressive relaxation that's all about breathing and relaxing the body.

You can do those things right now while you prep because then when you're in a scenario where you might need to use them, your immediate response will be, "I know how to breathe. I'm gonna calm myself down, or I'm gonna calm this space down, and then we're gonna have this discussion that we need to have or make a decision that we need to make."

All right?

That's it.

That's what I got for you.

If you take one thing from this episode, I do want it to be this.

You do not have to eliminate every fear that you have about birth before you give birth or before labor starts.

That is not my goal for you, though I do think that could be a goal, and you can listen to episode seven, like I said, for more on that.

The goal is you just need to understand where the fear's coming from.

What are they?

We call them out.

We bring them into the light.

Get the information that you're missing about them, right?

So what are the information gaps you might have or misunderstandings that, that you might have?

And then you remind yourself that possible does not mean inevitable, right?

Okay.

So we're not saying everything that we consider is then going to happen.

We can focus on that joyful experience.

We do not have to temper our expectations, okay?

We just understand that there are unexpecteds or possibles, and we're gonna lean into them so that we show up the most empowered version of ourselves.

So we're to change the way we think about fear.

Now you understand, hey, it has a role.

It has a significant role.

Here's how it can impact me.

We're changing the way we think about it, right?

And then we're going to learn more in that idea of the mindset shift that's happening, right?

We're gonna learn more.

We're gonna breathe 'cause it's so, so important.

You're gonna reframe how you're thinking about things, and you're gonna recognize and acknowledge, yeah, birth can be unpredictable.

It can be a little bit hard, but it can 100% be an incredible experience.

We are gonna frame it that way.

We're gonna lean into it that way, okay?

The shift where you take your fears and your worries and you make them actionable, like with everything we talked about, we're making them actionable and we're making them smaller.

That is the shift that changes everything for you in this fear and labor and birth conversation

Thank you so much for listening to the Lo and Behold podcast.

I hope there was something for you in today's episode that made you think, made you laugh, or made you feel seen.

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