Pain Management

In preparation for the coming baby, Sarah and I practiced some pain management techniques last night. She has been doing some practice on her own, but last night was the first time I tried it too. (We've been doing some other practice for labor positions together.) So, one of her books suggested holding an ice cube while you practice. After holding that ice cube for our first 1 minute "contraction", I decided that Sarah was way tougher than I was; I started checking my watch after 30 seconds! The subsequent ones weren't quite so bad.


We practiced three techniques: focused breathing, non-focused awareness, and "edges of pain". It was kind of interesting, they all sort of worked differently. The first two kind of make you not notice the pain as much (and after a little while, that ice cube really burned!). With the "edges of pain", you focus on the pain, how it actually feels, what the details are, etc. With that one, you certainly notice it, but you also realize that it's not actually as bad as you think it is. I can understand how having a variety of techniques might be nice.

It was also interesting that Sarah and I had different experiences with each technique. Some worked better for her than for me, and vice versa. We also tried a few variations on most of them, again, some working better than others.

Totally unrelated: I also finished building my mountain bike back up last night. I've got a bunch of new bits this year (bars, stem, brakes, chainrings, etc), it almost feels new! I rode it around a little bit in my driveway, practicing some of Gene's drills. It got me all fired up to really get out and ride! But, it will be awhile before the trails have thawed and dried out enough to ride on...