Pain relief during labour is on most pregnant women's minds. Everyone's tolerance to pain is different, and as such our need for pain relief will vary. Thankfully there is a whole range of pain relief options available to women in New Zealand; some are widely available; some you may need to arrange in advance. Remember you may have a substantial number of hours in labour so it makes sense to have a 'toolkit' of pain relief options ready before you go into labour.
Here, Hayley has shares her birth story and describes how she coped with pain using acupressure, TENS and hypnobirthing techniques.
I went into labour on Saturday morning and fairly quickly my contractions worked up to 3 minutes apart and 60 seconds long. My husband had been using acupressure up until this point during contractions but we then decided to try the TENS machine for the first time (my labour started two weeks before my due date so we hadn’t had a chance to try it out!), and immediately felt relief due to the distraction of the currents. I was then able to labour at home and then hospital for the next six hours before delivering our baby girl Ruby using hypnobirthing techniques completely naturally and drug free!
What I mainly found helpful about the TENS machine was actually pushing the start and stop button for each contraction as it gave me something to focus on and also a way for me to feel like each contraction was only for a certain about of time, allowing me to use hypnobirthing techniques to control the pain.
Congratulations on the birth of your beautiful baby and thank you for sharing your story with us Hayley.