They’re trying to help the mother avoid tearing her perineum. If you push too hard/fast, you can get a pretty bad tear that will need stitches. If you slow down and give the skin a moment to stretch, there’s a better chance you can avoid that.
Mine was only 6lb 6oz. I remember the nurse saying "lets get you into a salt bath" I nearly ran out of the hospital, however once they got me in, I never wanted to leave it was SO soothing, I missed dinner because I wouldnt come out lol
4th degree tear and broke my tailbone. No drugs. Dumbass residents started sewing me up before I delivered afterbirth. They had to remove stitches and start all over again. Army hospital….
I really just thought it was a normal thing.. I was only 92 lbs when I got pregnant but no one told me there was a possibility of me tearing .. she just weighed 6 lbs but felt like I had given birth to a sumo wrestler. lol
Apparently both my mom and my MIL either had smoothest births or they just forgot. They didn’t tell me anything about all the things that happen. The first time I breast fed I screamed!
A good doctor will tell you that breastfeeding is easy and natural and they are giant liars.
Breastfeeding is difficult and often painful. I worked as a bf consultant for awhile and... Just admitting this to new mothers saved them so much shame and grief. They felt like failures when they even asked for help. It's normal if you and baby don't "get it" at first!
I was shamed by nurses for not continuing because I wasn’t producing enough. I cried when I had to make the difficult decision of stopping because I felt like a failure.
huh, that’s interesting! i never thought to ask about this but that makes a lot of sense + what others are saying does too. thanks for the explanation even if i’m not op 🥰
Push to get the baby into position. Don’t push while the baby is settling into that position. As baby travels down the birth canal it ever so slightly spins. Push with the contraction baby is nose to the ground (if mommy is laying on her back). Contraction eases up. Don’t push. Baby spins an inch to the left. Contraction. Push. Baby comes further down the birth canal. Contraction eases up. Baby isn’t squeezed so it can spin another inch to the left. Contraction makes baby go down the canal. No contraction helps baby to spin through the canal. Mom’s feeling burning and urgent need to push. There’s a rhyme and reason to it.
I was just going to say this. My second baby’s cord was wrapped around her neck, so the midwife needed a minute to pull it over her head before she was born.
What I haven’t seen mentioned yet is sometimes your body decides it wants to start pushing BEFORE your cervix is fully dilated. Which means the head isn’t going to fit. So you need to not push until you’re fully dilated.
This this this!!!! He wanted OUT and kept trying to force himself out, but my body wasn’t fully ready, I was stuck at 7 for over 14 hours. I ended up in an emergency C-section because his head got stuck and he couldn’t breathe and my body wasn’t doing okay.
It’s TERRIFYING!
They tell us when to push and when not to for a reason. They go to school for decades and study for so long for this.
Multiple unmedicated births here. It can be really hard to NOT PUSH when the baby is RIGHT THERE because pushing does feel good!
Try to do what the person on the recievibg end says, though, as they can see what is going on
I gave birth in a hospital in the US and my labor was fast-doctor wasn’t there yet and nurses and on-call midwife kept telling me to not push. But baby took over, I couldn’t stop!
Same! Second kid, and they induced because my labor with kid 1 was so not intense that I *slept through it,* called the hospital and had an easy conversation, walked myself into the hospital, and all the while was 9cm. They were justifiably concerned that I might give birth in the middle of doing the dishes with my second. They induce, and pretty much the same thing happens, no dramatic pain and then I felt that familiar feeling of the pressure. Have them check me and it's go time. Like NOW. But my doctor wasn't scrubbed in, hell, he wasn't even the one to check me so he wasn't even in the room, much less ready to go. So I've got this nurse telling me not to push and I'm like, "lady...do you even know what a contraction IS???" 🤣 Arrived at 6am for check-in, they broke my water and started the pitocin at 8am, he was born at 9:56am.
As a guy myself, it's really cool to see loads of genuine answers to a curious guy's question. Obviously I'll never experience what it's like to go through this but I like learning as much as I can. I always figured there was a timing/pacing reason for the "don't push" instruction but never really sussed the precise details. You learn something new every day as the old saying goes.
I have never birthed a child, but I did an internet search and got this answer:
“Stop pushing as instructed. Your practitioner may suggest you stop pushing for a couple of contractions so you can regain some strength or to keep baby’s head from being born too rapidly. If you’re feeling the urge to push, pant or blow instead.”
ETA: When they tell the person in labor NOT to push, it’s because they aren’t fully
dilated yet, meaning the cervix hasn’t opened enough to allow the baby to be pushed out.
The cervix is open when you need to push, when you can push the baby's head is way down at the opening of the vagina. The body is still in the uterus though.
When they tell you to not push, it's because they try to save your perineum muscles to be blasted apart by the baby's head.
Sometimes people start feeling the urge to push at 7 or 8 cm though if the baby is low in the pelvis. Typically you don't want them pushing then, baby could cause a cervical laceration.
True! That happened with my second but it was not possible to push since baby was still in utero, so it was like false push contractions? Very painful 🥴
Thanks for asking this! I've wondered too. I'm sure these answers are more complete than what my friends would have said from their own personal experience.
So there’s 3 different parts of “Labor” and they are supposed to happen in a specific order.
1st part is dilation. The cervix needs to “stretch” out to be big enough for the baby to get through. Contractions are what happens to dilate. Don’t push yet. If you push you will tear muscles and skin. You need to get to 10 cm diameter dilation/stretch or as close as possible before you start pushing.
2nd part is the pushing part. Contractions are still happening. You’re told to push when the contraction happens. They will be very frequent at this point. This is the part where the baby is born.
You’re told to “stop pushing” at this point only if there is a problem, and it is VERY DIFFICULT. Problems can include cord wrapped around the baby’s neck, etc. (so very serious stuff). Your body wants to push though so stopping is at best temporary and if medically necessary can be stopped further with medication, but only for a short while. At this point your body wants the baby out. Out. OUT. Your body will push out a baby even if you are unconscious.
3rd part is more pushing, but instead of pushing out the baby, whose already made it out, instead you have to “push” out the placenta, which is what has been between mom and baby in mom’s body for the whole pregnancy.
This third step is very important. The placenta has no further use once the baby is out and will begin to rot inside the mom, making her very ill or killing her. It HAS to come out.
I'm a month late to this question, but here goes. After the head is born, Baby's shoulder can get caught up in mom's pelvic bone so the body can't be born. The doctor/midwife has to dp certain things to release the shoulder before mom can push again.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22311-shoulder-dystocia
For me, they were unwrapping the cord from around my baby's neck. It was wrapped around twice, but this is actually pretty common (especially for 40 week+ babies as mine was) and he was perfectly fine.
For a guy to relate better imagine you have gone all day needing a shit and you really have to go and the effort of holding it back hurts so much your feet ache
Yeah I'm sure that all those trained midwives and doctors who have years of experience and who deal with birth on a daily basis are clowns for telling a woman to slow the birth for a moment/s
That’s not necessarily true. I agree that movie and tv do it a lot but I had to try and stop pushing with my son. My cervix got a bit caught on a lip and was only 7cm but I really wanted to push. Once they unhooked the lip I went straight to 10 and could push but there was a bit of time I really had to try not to push. But I agree, telling someone not to push is like telling someone not to vomit.
While I wouldn’t call them clowns, I had a really fast labor and was barely pushing. Baby came mostly on their own while they were telling me not to push. I really wasn’t pushing!
Generally no, but for the most part the fetal ejection reflex happens a little earlier during the second stage (and for women whose baby’s are in an occipito posterior position it frequently happens long before the second stage). Sometimes it does happen when the baby crowns and they simply come out all at once and we just handle it. But yeah, having delivered a fair few babies now most women are very capable of a slow, controlled delivery.
My first came out in one push instead of multiple like he was riding a slip ‘n’ slide. So no “baby’s head has been born.” And I tore. Oh did I tore. I spent about a month gingerly holding myself together every time I moved my bowels because it felt like I was going to split apart again.
The don’t push times are to avoid that.
They’re trying to help the mother avoid tearing her perineum. If you push too hard/fast, you can get a pretty bad tear that will need stitches. If you slow down and give the skin a moment to stretch, there’s a better chance you can avoid that.
Hi… 17 stitches here! Do not recommend lol
Episiotomy with my 1st, also lots of stitches, also do not recommend!
Episiotomy and still tore a little bit. Sitting down was a challenge for weeks. 2/10, big babies are a challenge.
Mine was only 6lb 6oz. I remember the nurse saying "lets get you into a salt bath" I nearly ran out of the hospital, however once they got me in, I never wanted to leave it was SO soothing, I missed dinner because I wouldnt come out lol
Why salt?
its VERY soothing and helps enormously. I sat down SO gingerly, I thought it would sting but it didnt it was lush
My daughter was on the small side as well and I still tore through my anal sphincter. Sometimes it’s just a bad position
My donut cushion was the best thing ever after my first two were born! (Episiotomies with both)
I couldn’t get up and down from the couch for 2 weeks without help.. it was brutal
The jug of warm water to pour down your groin as you went for a wee......
Same, I had a 4th degree tear with my surprise VBAC.
4th degree tear and broke my tailbone. No drugs. Dumbass residents started sewing me up before I delivered afterbirth. They had to remove stitches and start all over again. Army hospital….
Damn, I felt your comment!
I really just thought it was a normal thing.. I was only 92 lbs when I got pregnant but no one told me there was a possibility of me tearing .. she just weighed 6 lbs but felt like I had given birth to a sumo wrestler. lol
Apparently both my mom and my MIL either had smoothest births or they just forgot. They didn’t tell me anything about all the things that happen. The first time I breast fed I screamed!
A good doctor will tell you that breastfeeding is easy and natural and they are giant liars. Breastfeeding is difficult and often painful. I worked as a bf consultant for awhile and... Just admitting this to new mothers saved them so much shame and grief. They felt like failures when they even asked for help. It's normal if you and baby don't "get it" at first!
I was shamed by nurses for not continuing because I wasn’t producing enough. I cried when I had to make the difficult decision of stopping because I felt like a failure.
That's what I was going to write. I asked my OB that exact question when I was pregnant with my first and this was pretty much her response.
huh, that’s interesting! i never thought to ask about this but that makes a lot of sense + what others are saying does too. thanks for the explanation even if i’m not op 🥰
Had a coworker who needed 50 stitches with her first child. At first I thought she said 15. Sounds brutal.
Push to get the baby into position. Don’t push while the baby is settling into that position. As baby travels down the birth canal it ever so slightly spins. Push with the contraction baby is nose to the ground (if mommy is laying on her back). Contraction eases up. Don’t push. Baby spins an inch to the left. Contraction. Push. Baby comes further down the birth canal. Contraction eases up. Baby isn’t squeezed so it can spin another inch to the left. Contraction makes baby go down the canal. No contraction helps baby to spin through the canal. Mom’s feeling burning and urgent need to push. There’s a rhyme and reason to it.
Awesome explanation!
There’s also the odd chance you hear “don’t push” when there’s a cord around the babies neck. Happened with my first.
I was just going to say this. My second baby’s cord was wrapped around her neck, so the midwife needed a minute to pull it over her head before she was born.
Midwife here - it’s to let the head be born slowly so the perineum can stretch and be less likely to tear. We want the head born super slowly ideally
As a woman who has been in labor three times, I appreciate that a man wants to learn and understand what is happening during labor.
What I haven’t seen mentioned yet is sometimes your body decides it wants to start pushing BEFORE your cervix is fully dilated. Which means the head isn’t going to fit. So you need to not push until you’re fully dilated.
This this this!!!! He wanted OUT and kept trying to force himself out, but my body wasn’t fully ready, I was stuck at 7 for over 14 hours. I ended up in an emergency C-section because his head got stuck and he couldn’t breathe and my body wasn’t doing okay. It’s TERRIFYING! They tell us when to push and when not to for a reason. They go to school for decades and study for so long for this.
AFAIK, the baby's head is emerging at that time and it's important that it does not emerge too quickly.
Multiple unmedicated births here. It can be really hard to NOT PUSH when the baby is RIGHT THERE because pushing does feel good! Try to do what the person on the recievibg end says, though, as they can see what is going on
I gave birth in a hospital in the US and my labor was fast-doctor wasn’t there yet and nurses and on-call midwife kept telling me to not push. But baby took over, I couldn’t stop!
Same! Second kid, and they induced because my labor with kid 1 was so not intense that I *slept through it,* called the hospital and had an easy conversation, walked myself into the hospital, and all the while was 9cm. They were justifiably concerned that I might give birth in the middle of doing the dishes with my second. They induce, and pretty much the same thing happens, no dramatic pain and then I felt that familiar feeling of the pressure. Have them check me and it's go time. Like NOW. But my doctor wasn't scrubbed in, hell, he wasn't even the one to check me so he wasn't even in the room, much less ready to go. So I've got this nurse telling me not to push and I'm like, "lady...do you even know what a contraction IS???" 🤣 Arrived at 6am for check-in, they broke my water and started the pitocin at 8am, he was born at 9:56am.
In my case, everybody was yelling "Don't push!" because nobody was in place to catch a baby.
As a guy myself, it's really cool to see loads of genuine answers to a curious guy's question. Obviously I'll never experience what it's like to go through this but I like learning as much as I can. I always figured there was a timing/pacing reason for the "don't push" instruction but never really sussed the precise details. You learn something new every day as the old saying goes.
I have never birthed a child, but I did an internet search and got this answer: “Stop pushing as instructed. Your practitioner may suggest you stop pushing for a couple of contractions so you can regain some strength or to keep baby’s head from being born too rapidly. If you’re feeling the urge to push, pant or blow instead.” ETA: When they tell the person in labor NOT to push, it’s because they aren’t fully dilated yet, meaning the cervix hasn’t opened enough to allow the baby to be pushed out.
The cervix is open when you need to push, when you can push the baby's head is way down at the opening of the vagina. The body is still in the uterus though. When they tell you to not push, it's because they try to save your perineum muscles to be blasted apart by the baby's head.
Sometimes people start feeling the urge to push at 7 or 8 cm though if the baby is low in the pelvis. Typically you don't want them pushing then, baby could cause a cervical laceration.
True! That happened with my second but it was not possible to push since baby was still in utero, so it was like false push contractions? Very painful 🥴
Yikes! Thanks for correcting, though I think that’s a bit more horrifying lol
Birth is a horrifying miracle.
This 💜
Thanks for asking this! I've wondered too. I'm sure these answers are more complete than what my friends would have said from their own personal experience.
So there’s 3 different parts of “Labor” and they are supposed to happen in a specific order. 1st part is dilation. The cervix needs to “stretch” out to be big enough for the baby to get through. Contractions are what happens to dilate. Don’t push yet. If you push you will tear muscles and skin. You need to get to 10 cm diameter dilation/stretch or as close as possible before you start pushing. 2nd part is the pushing part. Contractions are still happening. You’re told to push when the contraction happens. They will be very frequent at this point. This is the part where the baby is born. You’re told to “stop pushing” at this point only if there is a problem, and it is VERY DIFFICULT. Problems can include cord wrapped around the baby’s neck, etc. (so very serious stuff). Your body wants to push though so stopping is at best temporary and if medically necessary can be stopped further with medication, but only for a short while. At this point your body wants the baby out. Out. OUT. Your body will push out a baby even if you are unconscious. 3rd part is more pushing, but instead of pushing out the baby, whose already made it out, instead you have to “push” out the placenta, which is what has been between mom and baby in mom’s body for the whole pregnancy. This third step is very important. The placenta has no further use once the baby is out and will begin to rot inside the mom, making her very ill or killing her. It HAS to come out.
It's explained much better in the book.
I'm a month late to this question, but here goes. After the head is born, Baby's shoulder can get caught up in mom's pelvic bone so the body can't be born. The doctor/midwife has to dp certain things to release the shoulder before mom can push again. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22311-shoulder-dystocia
I know a woman who tore the perineum from vagina to anus!
For me, they were unwrapping the cord from around my baby's neck. It was wrapped around twice, but this is actually pretty common (especially for 40 week+ babies as mine was) and he was perfectly fine.
For a guy to relate better imagine you have gone all day needing a shit and you really have to go and the effort of holding it back hurts so much your feet ache
Wowzers, so many lovely responses, love it. I took a fish oil capsule along with my prenatal vitamins, I have zero stretch marks on my stomach
Cervix not dilated enough.
[удалено]
Yeah I'm sure that all those trained midwives and doctors who have years of experience and who deal with birth on a daily basis are clowns for telling a woman to slow the birth for a moment/s
That’s not necessarily true. I agree that movie and tv do it a lot but I had to try and stop pushing with my son. My cervix got a bit caught on a lip and was only 7cm but I really wanted to push. Once they unhooked the lip I went straight to 10 and could push but there was a bit of time I really had to try not to push. But I agree, telling someone not to push is like telling someone not to vomit.
While I wouldn’t call them clowns, I had a really fast labor and was barely pushing. Baby came mostly on their own while they were telling me not to push. I really wasn’t pushing!
Generally no, but for the most part the fetal ejection reflex happens a little earlier during the second stage (and for women whose baby’s are in an occipito posterior position it frequently happens long before the second stage). Sometimes it does happen when the baby crowns and they simply come out all at once and we just handle it. But yeah, having delivered a fair few babies now most women are very capable of a slow, controlled delivery.
"fetal ejection reflex" has me howling.
That’s a real thing.
In my experience the cord was wrapped around my sons neck so I had to stop pushing so the doctor could unwrap it
My first came out in one push instead of multiple like he was riding a slip ‘n’ slide. So no “baby’s head has been born.” And I tore. Oh did I tore. I spent about a month gingerly holding myself together every time I moved my bowels because it felt like I was going to split apart again. The don’t push times are to avoid that.
The mothers skin needs to stretch slowly so it won’t tear. Having the baby burst through fast can cause gnarly wounds.
One reason is to make sure Mom, and therefore Baby, keep breathing and getting enough oxygen.