News flash: giving birth hurts. Your partner and you don’t have to just accept that and suffer. It’s important to find ways to help your partner through labor pain, and there are many common strategies to do so. Here are a couple that we found helpful:

1. Mindful Breathing

In the realm of meditation, mindful breathing is a technique meant to keep your attention away from negative thoughts and feelings while focusing on your breath and a couple sensations at a time. There are apps and paid services you can get that will lead you and/or your partner through guided meditations. But you can also write (or find online) your own script to read Mom to help her detach from negative physical or emotional feelings.

Help her relax by narrating things like, “think about what your back feels like against that chair” or “lift your head up like it’s on a string, pulling your spine up with it.” Focusing on certain feelings or observations of surroundings helps to take the mind off of the pain and discomfort, even if only for a little while.

2. Counter Pressure

When I get a really bad headache, one of the most helpful things for me to do is put one palm on my forehead and my other palm on the back of my head. Then I squeeze my head between my hands like a vice grip. It sounds sort of painful when you describe it, but it’s actually very relieving (and it’s not like I’ve got incredible muscles with the ability to crush my skull). It’s sort of like taking an oval shaped object and forcing it into a circle by pressing on the two ends furthest from each other. Overall, it relieves the tension.

This concept of counter pressure is very useful when trying to combat labor pain. Here are a couple of techniques recommended to ease the pain and tension in Mom’s lower body.

• Squeeze her hips from the sides.
  • Similar to my weird headache anecdote, this technique attempts to release tension in the pelvis by trying to make its shape more circular than oval-like.
• While she’s on hands and knees, press down on Mom’s tailbone.
  • This is the 90 degree variation of the hip squeeze, but you’re leveraging the floor and your own body weight to maximize the pressure instead of relying on your arm strength.

3. TENS Machine

TENS stands for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation. This device has a variety of use-cases, like workout recovery or general soreness, but people working in L&D know that it’s a common labor pain reliever.

You attach pairs of sticky pads to the skin surrounding the area that needs relief. Then when you turn the machine on, electrical signals are sent between the pads through the body, creating a massage-like sensation. Most machines have a variety of settings to adjust the intensity and rhythm. Over time, you’ll need to replace the pads as they lose their stickiness, but they’re easy to find on Amazon. Here’s an Amazon affiliate link to the TENS machine we bought ahead of the birth of our son (as part of the Amazon Associate program, I earn from qualified purchases).

Help your partner through labor pain by putting the pads on her lower back, one on each side of her spine. If your TENS machine has the ability to have 2 pairs of sticky pads (4 total), stick the other pair to the middle of her back, one on each side of her spine. It’s a good idea to practice this ahead of labor because you are NOT going to want to be scrambling to figure the machine out leaving Mom to deal with the pain in other ways. Do a couple test runs to figure out the right locations and settings to have the most ideal impact when the big day comes.

4. Massage

Massage Mom wherever and whenever she wants: shoulders, feet, back, neck, you name it. If she asks, do it and do it well. It will help her feel better physically, but it’ll also help keep her focus on something other than contractions. A key thing to remember though: make sure she actually wants you to massage her. Don’t invade her space if massage could make her feel worse, physically and emotionally.

A popular technique involves focusing on the hands.

• Apply pressure at the base of one of Mom’s fingers, basically squeeze it.
• Slowly slide your hand toward the tip of her finger.
• Pull all the way through the tip of her finger and off, making sure it feels like you’re taking the tension with you.
• Repeat on all of her fingers on both hands.

In a weird way, it’s like pretending Mom’s hands are like udders and you’re milking the pain away.

These are just high-level descriptions of a couple of options of how to help your partner through labor pain, so I recommend finding what options speak to you and digging deeper. You can find a lot online, and you can check out our recommended books here.

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