Birth Positions

Birth positions in most hospital settings are not a matter for the laboring mother to decide. This is one of the tragedies of modern medicalized labor and delivery. A woman who is able to move around and choose her own positions throughout the labor process will have a much healthier delivery.

One of the reasons for this is really simple: a happy mother means a happy baby. The more stressed a laboring mother feels, the more likely the baby will experience distress as well. As long as the baby is connected to the mother, all of the mother's brain chemistry and blood chemistry will effect the baby.

When mothers are allowed to move around at their own will, they often take what you might think of as unexpected poses. Some women seem to take yoga poses like cat and cow or like the child pose. Some women find parts of labor most comfortable in a position that looks like they are on their knees praying. Others prefer to crawl into a tiny ball. It is not uncommon at the time of actual delivery for women to find it most comfortable to be in a near upright position, squatting down so that the position of their body helps to push the baby out.

It is extremely rare for a woman left to her own devices to pick the most common position in medicalized childbirth, laying flat on her back with knees pulled up. In fact, this might well be the most dangerous, least comfortable position possible.

Many hospitals today have learned at least something from the natural birth movement and the logic of indigenous women's birthing techniques. As a result, many have beds that make it possible for the woman to be seated partially upright during labor and delivery while still giving nurses and doctors easy access to the woman's body. However, that is still not enough.

The fact that the bed may possibly allow a woman to get into a comfortable position does not mean that the woman has the opportunity to say, "This is how I want to be right now." In fact, in hospital birth rooms it is usually the nurses telling the laboring woman what position she ought to take. Instead of trusting a woman's instincts and knowledge of her own body and the clues of comfort and discomfort that she feels, the professionals take over all control of the situation.

Birth positions really shouldn't be the choice of a doctor or nurse or necessitated for the proper functioning of computerized monitors. They should be the natural choice of the woman who is bringing life into the world through her own body.