Visualisations In Your Mind Or Visualisations As A Physical Entity.

Visualisations are pictures that you hold in your mind and think of during the contractions usually with your eyes closed in a dimly lit room. e.g. Thinking of the sea with waves rising up to their fullest point before crashing down and disappearing into soft ripples over the shore or physical visualizations.

Using visual aids during labour can be a highly effective way of focusing the mind and shutting out the world, as something to focus on as you breathe, release, relax through contractions. They can also be used as part of a ritual to help you cope during labour. Any picture /photograph can be used, as long as it makes you happy and calm when looking at it.

One mother I looked after had a amaryllis plant which had been with her since the beginning of her pregnancy which was her visualisation in labour .another recently drew her own sketches of each phase of labour and one where baby head out and body in and one with body out, and one with placenta out.

If it holds a special meaning for you that can uplift you mentally and emotionally during labour, so much the better.

One of the most successful concepts to come out of The Jentle Midwifery Scheme was The Swirls. These were two pictures that I commissioned from Annie Walsh, an artist friend of mine, to represent the intensity and beauty of birth. They have been hugely popular as visual aids for labour, and women have rated them highly in my antenatal classes.

They are now central to my teaching work at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital and copies of the pictures are currently hanging above the birthing pool on the mainstream labour ward. You can see these pictures and an explanation of their symbolism below.

I think the reason why so many labouring women have found these images useful is that they represent the birthing process. The first picture symbolises the wave of a contraction rising, TO ITS INTENSE PEAK, and then receding AGAIN – a feeling women can relate to when experiencing the intensity of contractions during the first stage of labour, which can help them cope with it.

I always say the first part and the last part of each contraction are entirely manageable it is only the top part I call the “triangle at the top” that requires extra focus and resilience as soon as you get over the top corner of that triangle it is all downwards to the rest and be thankful phase in between contractions.

The second picture represents a mother meeting her baby, and I find that women transfer their focus to the second picture as labour progresses (it is especially helpful over the hump of transition and in the pushing ‘second stage’ of labour).