The Power of Comforting Touch During Labor

How should you touch a laboring person during contractions? How should you touch them in between contractions? Should you use both hands? Should you lean in? How fast should you go? Why is touch helpful at all? Yiska Obadia has answers. Check it out!

What we talked about:

• Why is touch helpful at all?
• The guiding principles of massage during labor
• How to touch during contractions
• How to touch in between contractions
• Why slow is important
• “Feel for the grooves”
• Make sure to ‘complete the stroke’
• Taking care of your body, too!
• Use both hands = I’m all in
• Practice, practice, practice!
• The jiggle (my personal favorite)
• How shaking helps regulate the nervous system

Related resources*:

• The Gate Control Theory of Chronic Pain, by William W. Deardorff, PhD, ABPP
• Using a Doula for Pain Relief, Evidence Based Birth
• Oxytocin, Psychology Today
• The original gravity blanket and some (more affordable) weighted blankets
• The “Fear-Tension-Pain” cycle, Birth with Confidence
• Childbirth Without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth, by Grantly Dick-Read
• Continuous support for women during childbirth, Cochrane

Related Birthful episodes:

• Flowing with Your Birth Hormones
• Learning about Birth Doulas

Courtesy of Yiska Obadia

About Yiska Obadia

Yiska Obadia is an experienced birth doula, massage therapist, acupuncturist, and childbirth educator. She is the author of Comforting Touch for Birth: A Guide for Doulas and Expectant Parents and lives, teaches, and practices in NYC. For more information about her work, visit www.yiskaobadia.com.

You can download Yiska’s comfort measure checklist here. And check out a bunch of free videos on her website. She also has a Comforting Touch for Doulas page, with info on trainings and a link to download the Comforting Touch guidebook.