I wanted to share a nice quote from Sheila Kitzinger:

“A woman who is enjoying her labor swings into the rhythm of contractions as if birth-giving were a powerful dance, her uterus creating the beat. She watches for it, concentrates on it, like an orchestra following its conductor.”

Rhythm played an important role during my first labor as one of my primary coping tools was humming a song repeatedly–the intensity of the humming increased with the intensity of my body’s work.

During my second birth, which was very rapid, it felt less like a “dance” or a meolody to follow and more like a train that was speeding by very rapidly and in order to stay “with it” I had to “run fast” (mentally) and hop on for the ride!