Awareness is where you bring your full focus and attention to the present moment, using all your senses including your intuitive component. It's an extremely powerful tool to use in your everyday life, but even more so during labour.

Labour is challenging at the best of times, especially in a hospital setting with unfamiliar personnel and hospital guests, a multitude of noises, unusual smells, and just the discomfort of not being in your own home or bed. However, you can use 'awareness' during your time in hospital in various ways that can assist with a natural labour.

When contractions start, bring your full attention to your body, breathing, pain, and baby - totally zone into yourself and your baby, and have everything else around you, focused secondary.

Work out what feels right for you, what makes you comfortable, and how you can work through the pain. Your body knows what to do, as long as you give it the time, space, acknowledgement and action. If you need to walk, sit, soak in a bath, get a massage, need hot towels, roll on a fit/swiss ball, hold onto your partner or a labour team member - this is your time, so just let go, ask for whatever is needed and just go for it.

Talk to your baby - let your baby know what's going on, ask your baby to help you during the process, and reassure your little one. This is even more important if you need to have a caesarean. What's also great is that whilst you're talking to your baby, at the same time you're talking and reassuring yourself.

Use visualizations to get through the labour. This is an extremely useful and powerful tool if you use it in a positive way. Why? Because the power of your mind helps shift every cell in your body, including those brain cells that might be holding onto fear, negativity or the "I can't do it" mentality. It gives you a different focus and therefore a different outcome. Get creative and use visualisations to your advantage. I visualised my perineum opening to the size of a football field whilst delivering my baby, and she just came through the birth canal easily, smoothly, with little effort and reasonably quickly.

Rather than perceiving pain as something negative, horrible, unpleasant, and hurting; see it as fun, spiritual, empowering, strengthening and easy. Say to yourself and visualize that you can handle anything, that your body is designed for this.

Laugh, smile and give thanks to yourself and birthing team (between the teeth gritting) during the labour as that relaxes all your muscles. It helps dealing with the pain.

Breathe into the contractions, through the pain, or areas in your body that is experiencing unease or discomfort. Breathe heavy, shallow, loud or slow - breathe the way you feel works for you.

Scream if you have to. We are mammals - so we have animal tendencies. Animals scream through labour. So scream or make whatever noise you choose to assist through the labour.

Let go of all inhibitions and be free to do whatever feels right. Pregnancy and labour is all about letting go - our fears, beliefs, perceptions, history/past, habits, stories… whatever. It's amazing what can come up during your labour. If you hold on - especially your fears and beliefs that aren't actually working for you, then that's when some difficulties can arise. If you're holding on, then that tension will be reverberated right through your entire body including that birth canal that the baby has to come through. So work through whatever is going on and work on letting go. Try to do a lot of this work prior to your labour. There are many books, therapists and workshops that can assist with this.

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