Multigrain bread or crackers, whole-wheat pasta, brown rice, and oatmeal are good sources of fiber and offer carbohydrates that will provide energy during a long labor. These can often be combined with your protein source and create a nutritious meal.
Drugs called tocolytics (pronounced toh-coh-LIT-iks) can be given to many women with symptoms of preterm labor. These drugs can slow or stop contractions of the uterus and may prevent labor for 2 to 7 days.
Labour can sometimes be slower than expected. This can happen if your contractions are not coming often enough, are not strong enough, or if your baby is in an awkward position. If this is the case, your doctor or midwife may talk to you about 2 ways to speed up your labour: breaking your waters or an oxytocin drip.
Your digestion slows down in labor so you definitely don't want to eat a ton, but do take the occasional bite of something easily digestible for some quick energy.
The best foods for labor are easy to eat and digest, filling, and energizing. That also means avoiding foods that are high in fat, greasy, or spicy, since these can be more difficult to digest.
During pregnancy, drinking water is one of the most important ways in which you can protect your baby, because adequate hydration helps prevent premature labor... Water helps both you and your baby. Here's how: Dehydration can trigger uterine contractions, which in turn can lead to premature birth.
In one research study, pregnant women who slept less than six hours at night late in pregnancy had longer labors and were more likely to have cesarean deliveries. Another study reports that the sleep you get in your first trimester can affect your health in the third trimester.
Researchers have found that skipping meals and going for long periods without food increases your chance of early labor. Your best course of action: Eat at least five times a day. (Aim for three meals and two or three healthy snacks.)
Healthy women with low-risk pregnancies should no longer need to fast during labor, according to a study by the American Society of Anesthesiologists in fall 2015. In fact, the researchers noted, a light meal actually may help women keep their energy up during childbirth.
Sit on a birthing ball
According to Brichter, sitting on an exercise or birthing ball in neutral wide-legged positions prepares the body for labor by increasing blood flow, opening the pelvis, and encouraging cervical dilation.
Side-lying release
Not only can this position be used to help engage the baby into the pelvis and to encourage cervical dilation, but it can also be used during labor to help ease discomfort.
Regular massage therapy with a registered massage therapist, licensed to work on pregnant bodies, will help promote muscle relaxation. You'll reap the benefits of these sessions during labour as your body and muscles will be able to relax, and loosen, more quickly, in between labour sensations.
There are a number of possible causes of prolonged labor. During the latent phase, slow effacement of the cervix can cause labor time to increase. During the active phase, if the baby is too large, the birthing canal is too small, or the woman's pelvis is too small, delivery can take longer or fail to progress.
Perhaps one of the most well-known theories is that eating spicy food can bring on labor. But is there any truth to it? “Spicy food causes some degree of gastrointestinal distress, which can sometimes stimulate uterine contractions, but it probably won't bring on labor,” says Babcock.
Lie down tilted towards your left side; this may slow down or stop signs and symptoms. Avoid lying flat on your back; this may cause contractions to increase. Drink several glasses of water, because dehydration can cause contractions.
This may be because practice contractions can be triggered by hunger or dehydration. So eating or drinking something can sometimes quell them. True labor pains, by contrast, do not lessen until delivery.
The study assessed sleep of 131 women in their ninth month of pregnancy. Study findings showed that women who slept less than six hours per night had an average labor of 29 hours compared to 17.7 hours for women who received seven or more hours of sleep per night.
As labor gets closer, hormonal shifts and pregnancy-related discomforts can worsen insomnia. However, while insomnia may signal that labor is drawing closer in some cases, the absence of insomnia does not mean a person will not go into labor soon. Not everyone will experience this symptom.
Because labor is complicated and hard to study, scientists can't say for sure that stress causes preterm labor. However, there is an association. In other words, studies show that mothers who experience more stress are more likely to go into labor early, so stress increases a mother's risk of premature labor.
Another study showed that pregnant women who ate 6 dates a day for 4 weeks before their due date had a shorter first stage of labor and their cervix was softer before delivery. Eating dates in late pregnancy has also been shown to lessen the need for oxytocin, the medication used to start or speed up labor.
Eating pineapple or drinking pineapple juice has not been proven to induce labor. Pineapple (and its tropical cousin papaya) contains the enzyme bromelain, which is believed by some to soften the cervix and trigger contractions, but no research has shown that bromelain or pineapple actually have this effect.