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Article Summary
Your partner, your mum and your best friend can help make labour a positive experience.
One of the best ways to make labour a positive experience is to have people with you who to meet your physical and emotional needs. These might include your partner, your mother, or your best friend.
However, you also need an independent labour-support person, to stay with you and provide expert professional support. Many societies have such people, usually women, who are trained to help women through labour. In the UK your midwife should fulfil this role.
The Benefits of Continuous Professional Support
What Midwives Do
The Benefits of Continuous Professional Support
Throughout history, mothers-to-be have had women helping them during labour and birth. Recently studies around the world have documented what women have known for centuries: labour support benefits for both mothers and babies. Among these benefits are:
- shorter labours
- less anxiety and tension
- less need for pain medication or anesthesia
- fewer complications
- decreased interventions such as forceps or Caesarean births
- more positive feelings about labour
- greater self-esteem and sense of control
- stronger bonding between mother andbaby
A good midwife supports your wishes for your labour and birth. She understands the physical and emotional aspects of labour and provides you with the information you need as your labour progresses. She's nurturing and comforting, and she's well versed in techniques that can help ease the pain and discomfort of labour. For example, she might suggest a new position, offer a massage, or lead you through a special relaxation technique like patterned breathing.
The most important part of labour support seems to be having someone who will stay with you all through labour. It does not seem to matter who this is so long as they can offer that reassuring presence. Most UK maternity units can offer this sort of one to one midwifery support.
Ask about support in labour when you visit your delivery unit and emphasise in your birth plan that you want to have continuous support by your midwife if at all possible.
Remember a midwife is not meant to replace your partner or friend. They are in addition to them. If you have no partner with you this sort of support particularly important, but it is also valuable for women with a family member already present.
