The Hormones of Primal Birthing: Endorphins

Endorphins

What are endorphins?
Endorphins are hormones, the body's natural pain-killers, reported to be 10x stronger than morphine. They give an overall feeling of well-being and can make a person feel "high". Another way of looking at the altered state produced by endorphins is that they take a person into the "alpha-state", which is a dreamlike state between being awake and asleep.

What do endorphins do in childbirth?
Endorphins can be responsible for "painless" childbirth. If not painless, they can make pain an irrelevant factor or make it so that any pain that does occur doesn't equal suffering. The more endorphins produced, the better the mother will feel. She will find herself in a dreamlike, suggestible state, and easily able to surrender to everything that is happening within and outside of her. Endorphins also contribute to a euphoria felt in the mother after a natural/physiological birth.
Endorphins produced by the mother pass through to the baby, enabling a kind of "pain relief" and a sense of well being for the baby through labour. A high level of endorphins at birth will also ensure that the mother's breastmilk will contain higher levels of endorphins, resulting in a more dreamlike entrance into the world for baby, and generally a calmer demeanour.

How are endorphins produced?
Generally speaking, endorphins are said to be produced as a result of pain and stress. In childbirth, the stretching of the cervix triggers release of oxytocin, which in turn causes further contractions, which in turn causes more production of endorphins. If nothing interrupts this cycle, endorphin production can continue to increase throughout much of the labour.
The body can be trained to respond easily to endorphins. For this reason, engaging in practices during pregnancy that cause endorphins to flow can make those endorphins more effective during labour.

Is there any way to increase endorphin production in labour?
Many of the most "successful" labouring techniques serve to increase endorphin production, for example:
- vocalization/chanting
- rhythmic movement
- hydrotherapy
- hypnosis/self-hypnosis/guided meditation (eg. HypnoBirthing)
- other forms of meditation, such as candle gazing
- music
- acupressure
- various breathing patterns (done carefully so as not to cause hyperventilation)

What interferes with endorphin production in labour?
Anything that causes the mother to use her rational mind rather than her primal mind can remove the mother from her altered state, such as looking at a clock, routine exams, etc. If this occurs, it’s nice to have a quick “trigger” to put mom back into that state again.

Adrenalin, the fight or flight hormone, can interfere with endorphin production. Adrenalin production is heightened if mom feels she has to fight during labour, or if she is not comfortable in her surroundings. For this reason, it is a good idea to make sure that you have a care provider who you are on the same page as, and to do what you need to in order to feel comfortable in your surroundings (ie. hospital tour prior to the birth so the surroundings are familiar or home birth if that option feels safe and is available). Fear of the process of birth can also cause surges of adrenalin, as can tensing up to fight against the pain.

Pitocin (artificial oxytocin) used to induce/augment labour does not stimulate the pituitary to release endorphins because it doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier.
Epidurals also inhibit endorphin flow.


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