What was your 'focal point' for contractions?

[mharling]

At our birthing class today, they suggested bringing a meaningful object or picture to focus on during contractions. I'm curious if you did this and if so, what your object was.

Mary
EDD 4/5/03

[mama2be]

There's actually a picture of mine on Tristan's web site posted today under the lounge. It is under 'birth story'...

My husbnad suprised me with it at the hospital and it is a collage of pictures of the puppies and kitties that we have. I can tell you that it was an enormous help. I picked several pics during different contractions. It meant the world to me, and that he put it together and picked out the pictures was so great!!! The hopsital staff loved it :)...

[Rachels]

I used a candle for awhile, which was great. Then just some fixed points around the room. I also had a blessing box, a litle wooden box filled with strips of paper on which my friends and family had writtten blessings and wishes for the birth and the baby's life. My doula read them to me while I labored in the jacuzzi. That got me through my bleakest point.

-Rachel
Mom to Abigail Rose
5/18/02

[Karenn]

I found I needed more than just something to look at to help me through contractions. In the beginning, I actually played games on my Palm Pilot. So I suppose you could say it was my focal point. (I tried playing gin with my husband, but if I had a contraction during his turn, I'd get mad because I didn't have anything to think about.) Later, I did best trying to make mental lists: Name all of the characters in a complicated novel, name the 50 states etc. My mom still laughs at me because at 7cm when I was FINALLY getting my epidural, I was furiously asking everyone in the room, including the anesthesiologist to help me remember the names of the two factions that had been at war in Rwanda because I was trying to name all the countries in Africa. It sounds silly, but it kept my mind off the pain!

[mamahill]

Ugh, it was my parent's bichon - his name is Louis Charlemagne (pronounced Louie) and he's the sweetest dog ever. At one point, Joel said, "Think of your focal point." But at that moment (I was having pretty severe back labor), I swear if he had walked into the room I would have strangled him. I have never had such cold-blooded thoughts. I think I even seethed through the panting, "Kill... Louie..." Of course, I can laugh about it now. I think I settled on focusing on my bed at home. But when the back labor got really bad and I felt like my back was breaking, which it sort of was doing, I just focused on living through the contraction (don't mean to scare you!). Glad the animals worked for Neve, though!

[August Mom]

Whether you will need a focal point probably depends on whether you get an epidural and how early you do so. I got my epidural shortly after we arrived at the hospital. I took a small stuffed animal and a photo of a baby for focal points but didn't use either. Actually I used almost nothing in my Lamaze bag. I did however, have something like a stress ball that I squeezed during contractions before the epidural and that helped.

[mharling]

Stress ball; what a great idea!! It's on my packing list.

Mary
EDD 4/5/03

[elvisfan]

Before the epi, a framed pic of Elvis holding a shotgun at a party in the formal living room at Graceland. The pic was taken the week ke met Nixon.It's so funny and helped me to keep my sense of humor.

[jaime_n_jay]

I'm not due for another 2 weeks but this morning I decided I would use the baby's 'coming home' outfit. It is so cute and I think it would help me focus on the result of the pain, rather than the pain itself. Whether or not it will be helpful remains to be seen...:)

Jaime
edd 3-19-03

[himom]

I found out during breathing practice that if I kept my eyes closed and did my breathing my mind would wander and I got distracted enough to handle all my contractions. Anything visual actually kept me from being able to work through the contractions. Focal points just didn't keep my attention well enough, I guess.

When things got really bad (during transition) I distracted myself by listening to the news (we had Fox on since DS was born on the first day of last month's orange alert) and listening to all the conversations in the room at the same time. I just kept busy trying to sort out the news anchors voices from the discussions my parents were having with the nurse about her kids and how she ended up living in Hawaii. That took up so much of my attention that it actually worked!

I'm weird, though....I'm one of those people who has to have two or three activities going at once or I get bored. If I'm reading, the TV has to be on, etc.
Jodi
Mommy to Joshua Keoni, 2/8/03