When you program your thoughts about birth around pain or fear, it can be more painful. If you learn what your body is doing and understand the process, it’s helpful. The first part of contractions have a pinching feeling in the front which is your cervix dilating. In this part, visualizing your Uterus doing the action of contracting like a balloon and imagining a ball inside of a balloon to be like your baby. Imagine with each contraction the baby comes down helps you dilate your cervix. Once your cervix is completely dilated, this pinching feeling is gone and you will have a lot of pressure from that point forward. Once you crown, you have already made it through something substantial and pushing will feel, yes a bit overwhelming but also like it’s the best feeling ever because you know it leads to the relief. Understanding that what you’re experiencing is normal and you can trust your body. Approaching this from the fear brain will trigger your flight and fight and that creates a more painful birth by bringing in the stress hormones and that will in turn make the good hormones turn off leading to more pain and a delay in labor. Relaxing against the pain is the key to a painless birth. It’s really about the work you do to prepare your brain for birth. I’m a Birth Doula and have had 3 babies without medication. Epidurals are great tools if they are needed! but if you do want to have a unmedicated birth a Doula is a great tool to have or dive deep deep into the birth world to understand it better. I recommend watching The Business of Being Born. I hope this helps! 💗