Partners FAQs
Are your worried that you will feel totally useless, that you won’t know what’s going on and that you will panic, or not be able to cope with seeing your other half in pain and feel that you can do nothing to help her? Then a birth rehearsal can teach you useful practical skills to cope.
Not just another antenatal class
Yoga birth rehearsals are very different from regular antental classes.
For a start, you only come once. Next, this is a practical session
about the physical experience of birth, so you get to move around,
doing walks that ease contractions, helping your partner with pain
relief techniques, including how to make a labouring woman laugh!
So you get an embodied understanding of how you can help during the birth. You also get a nice long lie down in the deep relaxation bit.
Mechanics and engineering of birth
Practical ‘feel it for yourself’ exercises demonstrate the structure and workings of the pelvis - to show exactly how the baby can be born. Practice of birthing positions gives you the confidence to help your partner to maximise the advantages of the open pelvis position to help the baby get out more easefully. Prepare to be amazed.
Support for the supporter
Supporting someone you love whilst they are experiencing the extreme sensations of childbirth can be very challenging - both physically and emotionally. These sessions give you practical skills to provide sustainable support, to assist the laboouring woman at each stage of the birth.
Pain relief techniques
Labouring women are extremely sensitive to the emotions of those around them, so those present during labour can directly affect the birthing progress. In the birth rehearsal you learn simple massage and other practical techniques which help to reassure the labouring woman. Direct feedback on these technqiues can increase the birth partner’s confidence and calmness - thus reassuring the labouring woman and directly enhancing her ability to cope with the sensations of childbirth.
Deep relaxation
Guided deep relaxation helps you remember what you have learnt, gives you a refreshing rest, and time to focus on your unborn child.