Skin is the largest organ of our bodies, and touch is a very powerful thing. For your infant, it will be one of their most-used tools for discovering the world around them. For you, it can be the best or the worst part of your labor. Learn how to use the power of touch to your benefit while laboring.
Women who are touched in a loving and supportive way during labor report that their pain is less intense. Touch will give the laboring woman a way to center her concentration and focus her mental energy away from pain. Some women feel overly sensitive to touch during labor and thus do not appreciate a lot of touching. However, a hand to squeeze is almost always welcome to a laboring woman.
There are more in-depth ways that your partner can use touch during your labor. Trust Touch, or TTouch as it is often referred to, is an interesting new approach to starting labor with the power of touch. Developed by horse trainer Linda Tellington-Jones and originally intended to calm animals, TTouch is a learning and healing method based on circular hand and finger movements on the body. It can be used to calm young children and has recently been proven successful in facilitating labor. With your labor partner or husband helping, have them start by using the pads of all their fingers to push on your skin in any given area in a clockwise, circular motion. It is important to actually push on and move the skin, not just to glide over it. Even if it doesn’t help to stimulate labor, it’s bound to feel great, and if it does help to get labor going it’s bound to be very effective in calming you during contractions as well. See these related articles for more:
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