My name is Trish Ware and I am obsessed with all things pregnancy and birth and helping you to navigate with the practical and the magical seasons of this journey called Motherhood. I'm an all day coffee sip and momma of seven and labor and delivery nurse who took her expertise in the labor room and turned it into an online one-stop shop for momma's looking for powerful education and support. I've had the amazing privilege of delivering many babies in my 15-plus year career as a labor and delivery nurse and as a momma of seven. I'm here to help you take the guesswork out of childbirth so you can make the choices that are right for you and your baby and write the birth story of your dreams. So hit subscribe and let's replace your anxiety and fear with complete confidence. Quick note, this podcast is for educational purposes only and does not replace your medical advice. Check out our full disclaimer at the bottom of the show notes. Today's episode is all about third trimester and some tips that we recommend to help you prepare for your best birth experience. So we're going to talk about practical tips, mental tips, physical tips and some just things that you can do to get ready for this sweet little baby who is coming. I want to start with a quote that I love and this is by Amy Adams and she said being pregnant finally helped me understand what my true relationship was with my body. And I want you to really think about that because one of the things we tell our students, I tell my followers is that you need to start getting in tune with your body. You need to start trusting your body, listening to your body, feeling where you are in the moment and fine tuning that what would I want to call it? Do your reception to what your body is telling you. That is going to be so incredibly important when you're in labor and you need to listen to what your body is saying so that you can move into the right position so you can do the right thing for your body because what your body is telling you is going to be different than your friend who had her baby a week ago or a year ago or your mama or your grandma. You really learn how to listen to your body and also educate yourself because understanding what to expect significantly decreases anxiety and also increases your excitement because these last weeks go slow, sister, I promise you they go slow. So the third trimester is weeks 28 to 40 or to delivery. Your full term considered full term at week 37 but the weeks go slow. So what you guys to start really preparing yourself for your delivery and I want you to be preparing yourself for what's to come and some of the ways that I found my mama's can actively participate and if you're like me type a likes to be in control then I'm going to give you things that you can do to plan out your third trimester. So let's talk about some of the things that you might be experiencing physically. So physically you might be experiencing some back pain or maybe pelvic pain, shortness of breath, heartburn, insomnia and you might be experiencing some change when it comes to sex. So some of these things, if you're not the third trimester you're like great, this is what I have to look forward to. Okay, so there are aches and pains and things that happen during pregnancy but one thing I really want you guys to hear me is that there are things you can do to relieve those things. So don't take that old thing that everyone wants to say to you, "Oh, it's just you're going to be uncomfortable. This is normal. This and pains are normal just deal with it. No, do not just deal with it. A lot of my students go to see physical therapists, they go to see pelvic floor specialists and they actively pursue help in getting relief for the physical side of pregnancy which it is physical. You are growing a little human being for heaven's sake. So some of the things that you can do to relieve the aches and pains of pregnancy is seeking out help like physical therapist or pelvic floor specialists talking to your provider. But here are some practical things that you can do for some of the aches and pains as well. So for back pain, having a good pair of shoes, so important. You don't want them, if you've got back pain, you don't want them to be flat. You want them to have a little bit of a heel. You want to use heat and cold on your back. If you go to Instagram to our link in bio, you're going to find a link to Labor Nurse Mama, Amazon recommendations. And we have a whole section on aches and pains of pregnancy. And all of the things that we recommend based on evidence and recommendations from our students and our followers. So heat and cold is one of the things that I recommend for back pain. And we have a great ice and heat pack that you can use around your back. Go to see a prenatal chiropractor. That is really an amazing move for the third trimester. Find someone who can give you a prenatal massage. Go on daily walks. Try yoga, prenatal yoga. Do some stretches and alternate with rest. Now for pelvic pain, you can find something called a serola belt. This thing is magical. Now my students complain that it feels like, especially in the third trimester, it's squeezing the baby, but it is not hurting the baby and it does relieve your pelvic pain. You can wear a pelvic girdle. Again, prenatal yoga, walking, getting some movement, water exercise, a pelvic physiotherapist. Sometimes with pelvic pain, some moms may end up using crutches. That's okay. Now for back pain, I said you do not want flat shoes, but for pelvic pain, you're going to want flat shoes and again, rest. So almost everything I'm going to tell you today, I'm going to be rotating rest into the mix. For shortness of breath, you need to make more room. So you want to change positions, stretch your arms above your head and again, prenatal yoga. For heartburn, again, make more room. You need more room for the baby. The baby is compressing stuff up in there. So change your diet, avoid fat ease, foods, oily foods, greasy foods, acidic foods. You're going to change your lifestyle somewhat. So I always recommend keep a food diary, don't eat within a few hours of bedtime, and make sure you sleep on a slant where your head is above your stomach. Now when it comes to insomnia, what I recommend to my students, that third trimester insomnia can be a beoch, but what I recommend is you create a routine, take a long walk in the evening. So your routine may be that you go for a long walk in the evening if it's the temperatures suitable or get on treadmill, something to that effect. Do the forward leaning inversion to untwist all of those ligaments and get everything in the right position. And then add in some relaxation techniques. Now we teach these to our students, focus relaxation, I can't even begin to tell you the benefits of focus relaxation. Now another thing, now this is from someone whose life and business is on social media, but I'm going to tell you unplug. I don't want any social media, no electronics, no TV within an hour of going to sleep. We started this with our seven year old, and it has been a world of a difference. He was so keyed up and was having nightmares coming in and out of our room, waking us up. And we started a new plan that after seven at night, no electronics, no TV, no Xbox, no iPads, no tablets, no Kindles, real books, okay, no Kindles. So we have seen such a marked difference. So I recommend that to my students as well. If you're suffering from pregnancy insomnia, whether it's in the first try, second try, or in the third trimester, I want you to practice no electronics after a certain time, maybe within an hour of going to bed. Dim those lights, maybe light a candle or a oil diffuser, something where it smells good create an environment that appeals to all your senses and then use the stink out of those pillows, girls. And again, we have those on our Amazon shop, different pillows for different aches and pains. For the sex. Now third try, Mr. Sex is totally safe, totally safe. Some of my mamas love it and some of them are like, don't touch me, don't look at me, don't come in the room with me. If you're one of the moms who totally loves it, then you may
experience some dryness due to your hormones so you may need a good water-based safe lubrication and you may find that it's even better than ever due to the increased 40% blood flow. So if you've been hesitant because you got the big ol' belly and the big ol' baby girl go for it. Now if you've been told that you are on bed rest or nothing in the vagina and you're on pre-labor precautions then it's a no-go for you. Alright so now we're gonna talk about being birth ready. So one of the most important things that you're gonna do during your third drymaster now if you're one of my students I have you guys join it any time. We love when our students join in the first try or the second try because we get more time with them because we hang out with them every week via Zoom. We want you to be birth ready. So think what can I do to be birth ready? So we're gonna talk about some of the ways that you can prepare your body and then we're gonna talk about preparing your mind. So one of the big guns is Raspberry Leaf T and a lot of women ask me when can I start drinking Raspberry Leaf T. So there's a little bit of controversy about this. Raspberry Leaf T is a uterantonic. It tones your uterus. It gets that muscle nice and ready. I have worked with a few midwives that I really trust and a lot of them say that you can start at 32 weeks but you always want to talk to your provider first because remember I'm not giving you medical advice. So at 32 weeks you can start drinking one cup of Raspberry Leaf T a day. At 37 weeks you increase to 2 and at 38 weeks you can increase to 3. Now I got sick to death of Raspberry Leaf T. I do not like the taste it's weird. So I would add it to my smoothies and just do it that way. Another thing that you can do is dates prepare your cervix for dilation and soften your cervix and get it ready for your pregnancy. Now a lot of cultures eat dates every day anyway. So dates are safe during pregnancy but what we recommend is starting in the third trimester you can start eating six a day and we have a lot of recipes on Instagram and on the blog to help you tolerate them and actually two of the recipes that I have reels on they are absolutely delicious. So if you find yourself like I was when I was pregnant gagging and not wanting to eat the dates girl head to the reels on Instagram and watch our date recipes especially the Snickers dates and then we have one that has I think it's maybe goat cheese and honey I don't know it's really good though. So you can start doing dates six a day in the third trimester if you're gestational diabetic you're gonna need to vary that some. Another thing is evening primrose oil. Evening primrose oil works by softening the tissues including your cervix. You can start doing this at 35 weeks and you're gonna do one to three per mouth at 35 weeks. At 37 weeks continue the one to three per mouth but now add one to your vagina but here's a tip when you add it to your vagina you're gonna want to take a sterile needle and you're gonna poke a hole in it then you're gonna sit on the toilet put your feet up on your toes knees up in the air and you're gonna put it as far back as you can to get near your cervix not in your cervix but near it your cervix feels like the tip of your nose when you're pregnant that's just a little inside early run delivery nurse tip. Now at 38 weeks you can increase the one inside your vagina to two. Here's another tip do it at night before bed and wear a pad because this stuff gets messy. Now another thing that's really smart for you to be getting birth ready is eating a smart healthy diet and staying hydrated. People ask me all the time, "Trish, what can I do to have a better labor? What can I do to prevent tearing? What can I do to get my body ready? Eat a healthy diet, eat a healthy diet. I'm gonna say that over and over again. One of my good friends Ryan, she's the prenatal nutritionist and we work together a lot. She is incredible, totally recommend taking her membership I think where you can get recipes and she guides you on what a smart diet looks like and I'll link to that in the show notes. Staying hydrated is another thing that I cannot stress how valuable that is. It is so valuable to stay hydrated. I can't tell you how many times I have mama's come in and preterm labor or come in in labor and the pain is out of control and it's all due to being dehydrated. That is a real problem in pregnancy so please drink water, drink healthy drinks but especially water while you're pregnant. Okay another thing you can do to get birth ready is curb walking. Now curb walking is opening up the pelvic inlet and moving the baby down to get the baby engaged into the pelvis and the way it works is that you're engaging the baby by rocking the pelvis. Now you want to do this after you have dilated a little and you want to get things moving along. What it does is it gets the baby's head engaged into the pelvis and the head then presses on the cervix which releases oxytocin which speeds up labor and gets you into labor so it's like a perfect addition to getting birth ready. Another thing you can do is stair climbing. Stairs are insanely good prenatal cardio workout so if you are doing stairs you're gonna get your heart pounding your lungs expanding and it's a fantastic lower body workout which helps strengthen those muscles in your legs which you're gonna be using to carry the sweet baby around for the rest of the pregnancy and then you're gonna be using them during labor to do squats and do different moves. So you can start doing that in the third trimester however you want to always talk to your provider. I'm gonna say that till I'm blue in the face. Another thing that I recommend now for all my mama's listening this is not just a third trimester thing. This is a first second third trimester thing unless you're at risk for preterm labor or you have an incompetent cervix. Don't do it. But this one is deep squats. If you were to ask me what is one thing I can do throughout my whole pregnancy physically to get ready for birth I'm gonna tell you getting down into a deep squat like a yoga squat. Not a squatting with weights. We're talking about sitting in a deep squat position. So it engages the baby and allows the baby to get into an optimal position. That's no brain or right? It also prepares your pelvic floor and your pelvic floor muscles. Getting them more in tune for birth and also lessening the chance of having a significant tear. The deep squat also decreases pain, labor time and it can also decrease the need for cesarean because it's using gravity. Gravity is your very best friend during labor. It's using gravity to help the baby descend until the pelvis. So it's gonna open up your hips, it's gonna open up your pelvis and it's gonna help you also. You should be when you're in a deep squat you should be able to locate and relax your pelvic floor muscles and it can also help with back pain, lower back pain. So that's an extra benefit. Now with deep squats what I recommend to my girls as soon as you find out you're pregnant I want you sitting in a deep squat. By the end of pregnancy I want you to have it worked up to where you can binge watch a TV show while you're sitting in a deep squat. Now if you find the in-third trimester your balance is off and wackadoodle which it will be then use a couch, use your partner, use the wall to balance your body as well. You can even do a deep squat in front of like your coffee table and put your hands on your coffee table. Now another thing we recommend to our students is nipple stimulation. Now there's a midwife that I read some studies she did and really researched her. She's incredible. She's a really low rate of transfer to the hospital. She has a really low rate of C-sections for her patients and one thing that she did induction, she has a low rate of induction, medical induction is she recommends to her clients to start doing nipple stimulation around 38 weeks and what she recommends is they do 15 minutes on take a six minute break, 15 minutes on the other breast starting at 38 weeks do that once a day and that is not putting you into labor. It's prepping your body for labor because remember we're talking about being birth ready. Now for a natural labor induction we do teach nipple stimulation in calm labor confident birth and in the V back lab. That's a little more detailed. Another thing you can do to get birth ready is the Ford leaning inversion and again I have a video on this on Instagram and I'm gonna link to all these videos in the show notes. This releases your tight ligaments, untwist your ligaments and makes more room for the baby to get into optimal fetal positioning. You're gonna want to do this once daily for 30 seconds, roughly taking three to four breaths while you're doing this. After 30 weeks you can do it and if you have a baby that's breached you can do this several times a day, then do the breach till then do the open knees chest and you can find all of that on spinning babies. I'll link to that too. Boy I have a lot to link to. Don't do the the breach tilt or the open knee chest unless if the baby's head down you don't want to do those. So you can do the Ford leaning inversion but not the last two. And if your baby is waiting to descend or rotate or staying at a zero station you can do a Ford leaning while you're having strong contractions in labor that's just a side note but you always want to have someone with you to spot you per se when you're doing for leaning inversion because it is a pain in the rump or pain in the head is what you will find. Now you can do it also during early labor but you know
So you may not want to do that. Okay, so let's think of some other ways that we can prepare to be birth ready. So if you're in one of my birth classes or you follow me on Instagram, you'll know that I am a subscriber to the fact that birth is 90% mental. And your mental and emotional state is really important. We all have this picture in our mind about how labor is going to go, how we're going to cope and what we're going to do. But I'm going to tell you right now, if you're thinking I'm just going to wait and see, like I have a wait and see attitude or you're expecting your epidural to be your savior during labor, you're going to be very unprepared for the pain of labor. If you think that your high-paying tolerance is going to do it all for you because you handle pain so well, but you go into labor with a high-paying tolerance without knowledge of the realities of labor, you're not going to do so well. However, if you go into labor educated, understanding how intense it might be, you've prepared your body, you prepared your mind for managing the pain intentionally, not haphazardly, you're going to be super surprised at how much pain you're going to tolerate before you need extra help or before your threshold is reached. And understanding helps you to realistically prepare for labor, to have realistic expectations. And I teach in all my classes that we can actually raise our pain threshold for the pain of labor prior to stepping foot into the labor room. And I have classes on this, I have free workshops on this, send me an email,
[email protected], I'd be happy to talk about ways that you can practically raise your threshold for the pain of labor. It's actually incredible. As you're prepping your body, you have to learn birth. Yes, I've told you already, our instincts are invaluable. They are ridiculously important, but you need to understand what's happening. You need to understand what's happening inside of you, around you so that you can work through your baby's journey of coming into this world as it unfolds. This is so important. So some of the things that we teach our students are breathing techniques, relaxation techniques, positions that you like and work with. We talk about staying up and moving, movement is important. And then we also coach your partner to be the best birth coach possible so that they can help you stay in control during each stage of labor. Mama, I cannot emphasize how important it is to empower yourself. You have to be educated. You have to understand the different things that we offer, the different interventions, opposing cons of each, when they're useful, when they're not, when they're out of convenience or curiosity. We tell our students, nothing out of convenience or curiosity. When you are educated, when you're mentally prepared, you're going to feel more confident in making decisions about how you want to deliver your baby. And you won't be coming to me with birth trauma. Birth trauma is often related to feeling out of control. It's related to just leaving all the decisions to someone else and then wondering if they were the right ones. And then you leave that birth room with a whole bunch of what ifs and regrets. This birth of this baby, you get one chance. So we recommend that you take a birth class. Birth class is reduced fear of the unknown and it helps you focus on the joys and the experience without worrying about the things you can't control. Because if you understand it, if you've picked out a good provider, if you trust your care team, if you trust your support, then taking the classes will help you feel prepared and you'll be able to be a part of the decisions instead of having them made for you. This is important. So next time we talk about third trimester, we're going to talk about signs of labor. So I hope you're super excited about that because I love it. We're going to talk about when to go to the hospital. I have different rules for if you're a first time mom or you've already had a baby and we're going to talk about movement and why it's so important. Remember, you are getting birth ready. You're preparing your body. You're preparing your mind. You're preparing your emotions. You're preparing your partner. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I love about talking about getting birth ready. We're going to do a bunch more in this little shorty series. Have a great day. As always, hit subscribe, write a review, tell me what you loved about this episode and tell me what you want to hear more of. And I will see you next Friday. Bye for now. Hey, mama. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the birth experience with labor nurse mama. We talked all about your life after baby. And I want you guys to remember that not only is that sweet little baby being born, but the new you, the mommy you, is being born. So take care of yourself. Take a minute to do something that you love. Have a fantastic day. Hit subscribe, write a review. And as always, I'll see you again next Friday. Bye for now.
PodcastTranscript AI