Support & Love Make for Better Births

This is another one of those studies that is going to attract “well, duh” comments. 

What makes a woman happier with her birth experience, healthier after the experience and her newborn healther? Relying on supportive, loving people during the birth and having skin-to-skin contact with the baby immediately after the birth.

Instead of relying on nurses and doctors to come in periodically during labor to see how things are progressing, “continuous support during labor should be the norm, rather than the exception,” say the authors of the study that appears in The Cochrane Library.

That means having someone other than medical staff to rely on.

Having a midwife, doula or an informed and supportive family member with them throughout labor makes women more likely to have shorter labors, makes them less likely to use pain medication during labor and makes them more likely to be satisfied with the childbirth experience than those who follow regular hospital routines of care.

The study also found that women whose babies are immediately placed on their mothers chests or abdomens after being born have fewer difficulties with early breastfeeding and bonding than those babies who are taken away by medical staff to be bathed and swaddled.  

Ellen Hodnett of the University of Toronto and her colleagues recently reviewed 16 studies of 13,391 women comparing supportive care from family members, midwives and doulas with the more routine medical models of care during labor in hospitals.