What are “anchors” and how can they support my pregnancy and labour?

In this blog we will identify what anchors in pregnancy are, how anchors in pregnancy can support your birth preparation and labour. We will explore if anchors work in pregnancy and labour and share a few ways that anchors can help you in your post partum period.

What are Anchors in pregnancy?

Anchors are basically ways of stimulating your senses that help you FEEL safe, relaxed, loved and calm. ALL the FEELINGS that you need to both initiate and keep labour going. These feelings come from a clever cocktail of hormones - oxytocin, beta-endorphins and little bits of cortisol and adrenaline to!

So if we are seeing, smelling, tasting, hearing, feeling all the time then why do we need to focus specifically on “anchoring in pregnancy” (stimulating the senses in pregnancy) We live in a really overstimulating world! We have got pretty good at tuning out of our senses or ignoring them just to get through our day without melting down. Consequently we generally do not follow our intuition with ease any more.

Creating anchors to stimulate your sense in pregnancy

In pregnancy we want to be stimulating our senses as much as we can to encourage feelings of relaxation, love, and safety so that during labour you can use those anchors or stimulus to maintain those feelings which in turn will help you to surrender to an intuitive birth.

Let me give you an example. You are in early labour, your contractions are getting much stronger, maybe even getting closer together and you think it is time to go to hospital. Your bedroom smells of a space that you deem safe, it is dark and quiet. As you transition into the car it is day time, it smells of whatever car air freshener you picked up from the garage and the radio is playing 5 live sport. All of a sudden your contractions ease, the sensations reduce, you no longer feel like birth is imminent.

Your primal self is ALWAYS scanning searching for clues that danger is coming. It goes back to our cave women days where angry bears were hiding outside of our caves to eat us on the daily! 

So in order for labour to continue to unfold we need to, as best we can, keep our senses stimulated in a way that activates our para sympathetic nervous system. We could do this by spraying the car with your favourite scent, or closing your eyes, wearing an eye mask and paying music that you love in the car on the way to hospital.

How to use anchors in pregnancy to support your labour and birth?

For me I listened to meditations EVERY NIGHT from the first day I found out I was pregnant with Beatrice, it is a practice I continue to use now. 

I used a particular candle to journal or practice yoga to a few times a week in pregnancy. The smell of this candle just hit all the right notes for relaxation for me and its on my Christmas list this year! You can check it out here it is so dreamy! https://www.sweetbeeorganics.co.uk/products/intention-candle?srsltid=AfmBOorB-5ErOfwFxdkC-Kc3gM3oT2RmHVeGRKXtdCOu7JktQxjvXkaB

I brought a fleecy blanket as soon as I found out I was pregnant that was bright yellow. (for some reason I felt like I carried yellow inside me throughout the whole of my pregnancy with Beatrice) So I would look at and touch this blanket every day in my final trimester. 

I spent time in the bath and shower practicing diaphragmatic breathing and moving my body, swaying. (As a yoga teacher it will not surprise you that my sense of feeling is deeper than just touch I need movement

I also had a particular song that imagined I would birth Beatrice to. It made me feel insanely powerful just listening to it. 

Do anchors work in labour?

YES I listened to meditations in early labour, I used the shower to move and mobilise during active labour, the blanket was the first piece of fabric to touch Beatrices skin as you can see in the image. I didn’t listen to the song but it was in my head when I pushed Beatrice down and out into the world. My brain associates the song with that moment. 

So there you have some anecdotal evidence of how powerful your senses or anchors are in labour. You might not even use them in birth but if you use them to initiate the parasympathetic state enough during pregnancy. If you use your senses to regularly initiate feelings of tranquility, calm, safety and love in pregnancy. Then your body and your mind are going to feel MUCH happier to enter this state in labour.

To travel inward is a scary thing if you don’t regularly do it. And birthing is a deeply intuitive act. You need to dig deep down to navigate it, to find the answers with-in. I promise you have them your nervous system knows what to do to birth your baby but you need to practice stimulating this primal, animalistic part of you because it is not something we use daily anymore as we press the button on the coffee machine or fire up the car with the radio on full volume. If you want a way to connect to your parasympathetic nervous system when ever and where ever you like then you can access my my online pregnancy yoga and birth preparation course here. 

How can anchors help after birth?

As you can see from my personal experiance above some of the things you do to set anchors in pregnancy may become practices that you use for self regulation in your post partum period.

One thing I struggle with is sleep. Neither of my children are great sleepers and I used to not be able to sleep or even rest in the day.

I use my anchors now to support deeper rest when I can. Particularly when Beatrice was small I would often return to bed after taking William to school and put a meditation on while I fed Beatrice. I had no intention to sleep but it was a wonderful way to gain rest when I needed it most and stop the guilt I often felt for “doing nothing”.

I also use my candle to help my journal and yoga practice. The smell of intention by Sweetbee organics is JUST the best for me to aid relaxation and mind, body connection. 

Anchors can be really helpful but you need to be using them from AT LEAST week 20 of pregnancy if not longer. We need our brain to know that it is safe when it is stimulated by these anchors it’s similar to creating a habit. There is some useful information about how habits are formed in this blog post here. How long does it take to form a habit? | UCL News - UCL – University College London 

If you are in the final 10 weeks of pregnancy don’t panic you can still use anchors to support your birth process you maybe just need to dedicate more time to stimulating your senses and relaxing more frequently throughout the day or night and for longer periods. I have TWO free meditation tracks here that help you to really draw inwards and connect to your body.

Anchors are one of the most helpful tools in self regulation! I highly recommend you begin using at least one in pregnancy and hope that it supports you long after your baby is born into motherhood.