HealthPartners - Preparing for childbirth

HOW YOUR BODY PROCESSES PAIN It’s important to understand how your body communicates with your brain when it experiences different types of positive (soothing) and negative (painful) sensations. Basically, there are two nerve pathways that deliver sensations to your brain to be processed. The Gate Control Theory of Pain reflects how positive sensations reach your brain first because they travel on a larger nerve pathway than negative sensations. Here’s how this works: • Larger nerve pathway – Very quickly delivers soothing sensations from the body’s skin to the brain, including touch, heat, cold, scents, sounds, and pressure • Smaller nerve pathway – More slowly delivers painful stimuli to the brain, including burning, aching, and sharp pains • Your brain – Can only interpret signals from one pathway at a time so the faster, larger pathway (soothing) generally receives priority over the slower, smaller pathway (painful) How to manage labor pain using this information • When a contraction starts, you and your labor partner should immediately start doing a comfort measure (relaxation, breathing, heat, touch, etc.) that you’ve practiced • The soothing sensation triggered by your use of this comforting technique will reach your brain first, overriding the pain message sent by the actual contraction

GATE CONTROL THEORY OF PAIN

COMFORT

PAIN AND

Overview: Labor Pain • Learning to release fear and tension and let your uterus do its job can make a huge difference in your overall birth experience. • When you experience a painful stimulus (contraction) and a soothing sensation

(comfort measure) at the same time, the soothing sensation will reach your brain first.

Chapter 3: Pain and Comfort

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