The best way to describe the “pain”, from my perspective, is like when you are so constipated and you’re trying to push that out, even just the smallest movement stabs all over. Except with labor it’s “pushing” on its own and you can’t stop it. But the relief that comes with predicting the contractions is helpful. As soon as it stops, you’re back to normal. I go from “omg I made it through that wow” to “ooohkay here we go again”! If you’ve ever been constipated, you can make it! 😅

This is so accurate! Just gave birth two weeks ago with my second baby. I opted for an unmedicated experience similar to my first birth. Being educated and mentally prepared helped so much. For this recent delivery, proper breathing and giving myself almost pep talks help so much. I would literally speak out loud during every contraction, “Come on, girl! You can do this! You’ve got this! Come on, baby. Let’s go! Let’s do this!” Basically being my own “hype-man.” Also my husband’s hand for me to squeeze and his other hand rubbing my lower back helped to. Thinking of the contraction as one step closer to seeing my baby and giving in to that discomfort as a purpose. But having “cheerleaders” or a “hype-person” with you even if it’s yourself is sooooo helpful.

I am about 38 weeks and last night I was struggling with fear. Thank you so much for this video!

So here's my unsolicited advice that Sarah has also touched on in this video and others: Find a support person who will be a good cheerleader, and if you don't like your nurse remember that it is your right to ask for a different one. My back story is that for my 1st baby I coped with pain and was going for an unmedicated labor. I reached a point where I decided I'd had enough and got the epidural. I had an amazing nurse and my birth experience, though not as planned, was more beautiful and amazing then I'd ever expected. So for my 2nd birth I decided I was so happy with how the 1st went that I decided to get an epidural right off the bat. Well a quick delivery and lack of available anesthesiologist for a couple hours led me to have my 2nd baby unmedicated. I was completely unprepared mentally and I had a nurse who in my opinion was lazy and paled in comparison to the 1st. I kept feeling like baby was coming but she wouldn't do cervical checks or get someone who would. She left me feeling like I had a lot of labor left and I felt ignored. My body was telling me baby is almost here and she kept visually checking between contractions and saying I don't see anything. I now know in hindsight I was going through transition and my nurse finally figured this out when my water broke on her shoes. It finally dawned on her that she should be listening to her patient, checked me, saw the baby's head, screamed for help then 1 push and 2 minutes later I delivered my son. I am an EMT and have extensively studied the stages of labor thru my own personal interest. However, during the pain of transition I was not in my right mind. I wish my nurse had checked me (or found a resident who would). I think if she had done so she could have told me how dilated I really was and have encouraged me by saying your almost there, you can do it. I don't tell this tale to scare anyone. I want whomever may read this to understand that labor can go differently then you planned and to prepare mentally for anything. That you can get a new nurse and should if you don't like your's. Listen to your body it's not lying to you. Finally you can do it! Regardless of my 2nd experience I would do it all over again the exact same way to get my son. Don't let your medical team make you feel diminished. If you're going for an unmedicated birth you can do it with the right prep and a good support person. Find someone to support you that knows your wishes ahead of time so they can fight for you if you mentally aren't up to it. If I'd had this advice ahead of my last birth I think it would have been less mentally traumatic. I can say in hindsight as well that your body will know what to do even if you can't mentally wrap your head around it. Mine felt like it was on autopilot and my son practically delivered himself lol.

I must be weird, because I was never afraid of the pain of childbirth- even with my first. Now as a doula and about to have my 4th I’m super excited to be going through the process again in a couple weeks. Like you stated, I know the pain serves a purpose. And even though it IS the most painful thing I’ve ever done, it’s also the most empowering. I always feel like a superhero afterwards 🦸🏿‍♀️. And I like going without the epidural so I can feel everything that’s going on in my body. Great video Sarah, thanks so much for sharing 🥰🙏🏿!

I’m 37 weeks pregnant and I mostly fear not being in control of the process, as I don’t trust my healthcare team unfortunately. I’ve been more prepared for my labour this time, more than with my first daughter. I totally survived my traumatic first labour but this time I don’t want it to be “traumatic”, I want to “work with” the pain and with my body to give birth. I loved your video :) the pain in labour is something we need to embrace as a necessary part of the process. I’m afraid of being overly optimistic for my labour this time lool but I generally feel I did not understand ANY of the essential information required to motivate me through it the first time. “The more you know, the less you fear” 👌🏻 knowledge is truly key! I cannot emphasise how much this has helped to reduce most of my fears this time round.

I think the main emotion that comes up for me is sadness due to the only pregnancy I've had so for ending in stillbirth at 20 weeks. I don't want to bring this up repeatedly, but I did want to support you, Sarah, so I commented. Thanks for all you do.

Thank you for this video! It is so helpful to get over that mental block. Remind yourself that it’s normal and ok! Love it! ❤️

I feel excited. Excited for the feeling of knowing the pain will bring me fruit 🤗. Thank you.

I am actually excited about labor. It's something I have always wanted to experience, and I look forward to taking the knowledge I've learned from your videos and applying them to my labor experience.

This is so good! It’s apart of pregnancy. Pain is supposed to happen. Accept it! I was in fear, but, I can now “override,” breathe, and stay open! You’re Awesome!

You are incredible! You helped me get past my birth trauma, and I was able to have the most healing and incredible delivery with my 3rd. Thank you for all you do ❤️

I have been in the hospital on bed rest the last 6 week with Pre-eclampsia. One of my RN’s recommended your videos, and i want to thank you for all the information. Watching the videos have truly prepared me and helped relieved a lot of anxiety and fear. You explain things so clearly, and personable. Tomorrow I will be getting induced and my water broken, as baby girl made it to 37 weeks gestation. I will take the advice and information from this video so I can be mentally prepared for tomorrow. She is my first baby and we are so excited to meet her. Thank you Sarah!

Amazing! Thank you so much this certainly switched my view from start of the video to the end.

I jumping back into watching your content since I’m thinking of having a second child. I am going to prepare this time like it’s a marathon!!!

Thank you for this video. My worries are through the roof and you putting things into Perspective has helped. This is baby #2, 19 years apart tho, and I have two weeks to go. 💜🙏🏽

Currently 20 weeks with baby #6 and I'm wanting to do this one completely med free ‼️. The one thing that comes to mind from previous labors was the void I had due to the epidural from earlier labor till time to push .. I just laid there waiting and this time I welcome the pain and all the feeling that come along with it ... This is our Rainbow baby and it is very important for me to go as natural as possible. I do not want the void I felt with my other blessings.

After having gone through labor once and planning a pregnancy soon, I’m so scared of the pain and being unable to cope. Love this resource.

Just had my 3rd a week ago. My second there was a lot of fear as I ended up getting induced again. But with my 3rd what a world of difference trusting my body, it was so intense but so worth it.

What helped me was staying as loose and relaxed throughout contractions as possible. It made them more intense if I tensed up...keep your mouth loose, shoulders down. Concentrate on relaxing each part of you. Also, breathing, low moans, mantras that help you stay focused and keep the panic away. The contractions, for me, weren't horrible. I cannot stress having a good team on your side and advocating for yourself, too. I didn't and it really impacted my experience overall in the end.

First comment- your lipstick color is amazing on you. Second-What you're saying makes so much sense! Last year I had a miscarriage and had no idea what to expect, the doctors said it would feel like a "heavy period " - which was 100% NOT the case, it was much worse but I think that's because I was only mentally preparing for a heavy period, so when I gent pain that was 10 times worse, I panicked and was afraid and immediately thought something is terribly wrong. All I wanted and needed to know at that point was... this is a normal amount of pain, had I known that, I wouldn't have been in such a panic. So educating yourself makes total sense to me.

I am entering in week 32 tomorrow so like a step forward to this.. Hope everything goes all I'm comfort for all mommies.

I feel excited to give birth whenever I have the chance a second time, but also apprehensive! My first was born 6 hours from the start of regular contractions and they began at 7 minutes apart 😬

With my second, I almost feel like my pain intensified to “un-copeable” once I was in the hospital. I could not cope with it as much as I did when I was at home. Then I got the shakes really bad. I shook my way through labor deliver and up until 30 minutes after birth. I forgot how to push correctly and i was a mess. I felt so defeated after birth and that I didn’t do a good job. My nurse looked me dead in the eye and said are you kidding ?? You just gave birth to your baby! You did great! It wasn’t how my first went at all but regardless my baby arrived the way it was meant to be and 1 1/2 years later he’s a little spit ball of a little boy.

VBAC: Currently feeling anxious, excited, ready but not ready at 35 weeks.

I'm 36 weeks right now so this video is much appreciated! Over these last few weeks, I've been changing my mindset about labor. It comforts me to know that my body is not actually being harmed during labor. However, I have been really struggling to develop a positive mindset towards the transition phase of labor. I think that's mostly because when baby is coming through your birth canal & out of your vagina, you are experiencing injury. So my mindset "you're not actually being hurt" doesn't apply.

YES the your breathing techniques helped me so much especially with my second birth, i remember with my first i would hold my breath when i would get contractions and it was horrible! 🤦🏻‍♀️ thankfully i had both my boys healthy and natural 💕

I took your classes for my first son who is almost the exact same age as your nephew - it was so fun following along on your sister’s journey since I felt like we were at the same stages at the same time. My first labor was an unmedicated, natural birth as I had hoped for (yay!) but something I didn’t think about was the car ride to the hospital after laboring at home for 19 hours. When I got to the hospital, I was dilated to an 8. This was great, but the car ride to the hospital was excruciating. How do I mediate this next time? Go to the hospital early? Attempt a home birth with a midwife? I want to labor at home because hospitals feel so sterile and pushy, but I dread that car ride next time! I would love your take on how to make that transition less horrible.

37w + 2d today. Baby dropped a week ago. This is our second baby. I’m just excited that I’ve already started dilating this time. Last time I labored for 5 hours making no progress with intense back labor. Can’t wait to meet our princess❣️

Worried at first, then proud after :)

Neither one of my labors hurt but I got an epidural because I was afraid that it would begin to hurt more like everyone warned me. The second time I was already 8cm on my own...

I’m not pregnant. Not even an adult. But I am terrified of giving birth but I rlly wanna be a future mother. Hopefully this helps

03/01/2022: I never experienced the pain to be as dramatic as I was lead to believe it was.... Yes it hurts. But its amazing how my body went into an auto-pilot mode, I was focused and felt empowered. It was a good experience for me. However, I didn't labour hard like some poor women do for long hard hours or days... I cant knock someone else's pain tolerance. I'm onto my second birth any day now... so ask me in a few weeks how tough I am lol 😆 😅. ... I'm hoping for another good experience 🙏.

In the next coffee and questions can we talk about vulgar varicosities. Do they go away or will they linger? Do they get worse with every pregnancy? Anything I can do to help or prevent other than perineum ice packs? I feel like I have a bowling ball in my pelvis. 3rd baby and don't know if its something that I have been doing wrong with each baby.

Due in the next 5-8 weeks and I'm terrified.

I dont like calling labor “pain” pain. I think using the word pain alone makes it scary and causes fear and tension. During labor i did not feel pain, but i did feel the power in my body. I was able to cope with surges for 3 days unmedicated by putting that in my mind. Labor was difficult and exhausting but not painful.

I'm expecting a baby in aug 28 give or take, and im so nervous for this first time pregnancy and labor. I can almost accept that ill be in pain, i just cant accept screaming like a demon and looking and sounding awful i just cant seem to allow that for myself😅

When I think labor I think complex & intensity of all emotions , very big highs . A lot of crying a lot of laughing a lot of excitement a lot of fears .

I am due March 5th so only 5days from now, I am literally so terrified, but this video and many more of your videos have helped me get over the fear obviously the fear is still there because I'm going to be pushing a baby out of such a small hole lol but I'm absolutely excited!

Im both excited and super scared to go through labor again. Im a lot more scared to have a csection again. I want to have my baby naturally. Scary. Labor hurts to but im actually kind of excited to feel it all again. My last baby was a scheduled csection. My first baby was natural. 9 years ago. Baby is due may 22. Im excited and scared

I'm on pregnancy #2. 37 weeks along. And I'm more scared of the pain this time around because I know it's coming. I know about the level I might have. I went completely unmedicated and natural with my first birth and things progressed quickly but I was in a lot of pressure/pain because my waters didn't burst. Once they were broken, I had her in 10 minutes and the worst of the pain was gone. So that's interesting. It didn't help that the hospital forced me to labor and deliver on my back, this time I'll be advocating for myself a lot better and hopefully can help myself and the pain. I didn't know breathing techniques or anything. I just kept being bombarded by nurses talking about giving me meds and eventually had to yell at them to shut up and stop acting like they were gonna slip me drugs. After I had her they tried giving me pictocin in my IV without my consent saying (once I ripped the iv out of my wrist because they kept trying to force it) "it's for your placenta so your body still knows to contract" 🙄 the amount of fearmongering and misinformation that is spread for new mommas is so sad.

My contractions felt like I was being sawed in half. The pushing stage was much easier to deal with.

I'll be honest, I don't think I ever really "feared" the labor pain. My first was born face up, had several heartrate decels (needed internal monitoring, and I ended up getting an epidural preparing for the likelihood of having an emergency csection but after the epidural he stabilized thankfully), and was actually kind of crooked (his head was pointed more towards my hip the whole time I was pushing). My OB tried so many things to manipulate him to the correct direction but he was so uncooperative that once his heartrate started to decel again she made the decision between emergency CS (with him already engaged and more than an hour into pushing) or just literally reaching in and turning his head and pulling him out (obviously it was more guiding not pulling but in my pain riddled deliriusness that's not what it felt like lol). So after going through that birth and never even second guessing the fact that we'd have more I basically thought, if I can make it through a labor as traumatic as that then I can make it through another. Spoiler alert: my next 3 babies were much easier and the pain was really easy to cope with after that lol.

For a mom how would she have her baby

im more scared of the pushing phase.. somehow cant keep calm and had to scream on my 1. delivery...haha

Can you make a video about being scared of c sections? I was told I have to have one due to placenta previa and everytime I think about it it terrifies me and I can’t think straight and dive into a panic attack. I had an amazing labor and delivery last time but I’m deathly afraid this time and it’s almost making me hate my body because it couldn’t do one simple things

I heard water births help lessen the pain. Someone also said chewing on ice..

I've had 2 babies by induction. The pain was so horrid I caved and got the epidural. I did NOT want one either time but my vision was blacking out from the pain I just couldn't keep going. I want soooo bad to be able to do it all natural but my body doesn't want to expell babies before 40 weeks so I've ended up with pitocin each time. Praying this time I go into labor on my own and I can labor at home. But when I get to the hospital I'm so worried that I won't be able to handle the pain again especially knowing the epidural is available...

Before: I FEEL NERVOUS FEARFUL BUT ANXIOUS AND EAGER TO MEET HER(1st baby&I've always been scared to give birth it seems like such a scary thing)

Could you do a video on being scared of dying during labor? I fear hemorrhage, I fear needing a c-section and I fear death. Is this a common fear? and how to I address it?

I feel scared!

What I felt after labor is strength powerful educated intense mama bear energy

Scared of another long hard painful labour

I feel anxiety about labor pains

I ain't scared of the process of giving birth I'm afraid of how badly I'll hurt feelings until I get an epidural

I'm getting induced on Friday....i don't know what i feel lol

I think the fear most women have isn't of contractions.. it's squeezing a whole human out of your vagina. Maybe in the moment it turns out that labor pain is hard, but it's like the fear of your vagina tearing and shite like that that are terrifying...

I took her seriously up until the bloopers.