Your hips spreading and other body parts getting out of the way for the baby. These are all true.
Some procedures may cause you pain or discomfort. For example, having to remain in bed for a vaginal exam or while being monitored, this can increase your pain. We'll talk more later about how to deal with pain.
Don't forget about your mind. Yes, how you think and feel can influence your pain levels in labor. If you are tense or fearful you will create more pain. We see this over and over again in a theory that is called the "Pain-Tension-Fear" cycle.
In the "Pain-Tension-Fear" cycle we see that when you are in pain and fearful you tense because your are fearful, which does increase your pain levels. Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy about pain. The more your fear pain, the more pain you are in. So we try to step in and break that cycle any way that we can.
That brings us to a big question. What can we do to break the cycle of fear and pain? Do we have any tools that will effectively deal with the pain?
