How to Create a Warm, Secure, and Loving Birth Environment

Did you know that certain external factors influence your internal experiences and emotions during birth?

Your internal experience is something I like to call your “inner birth landscape” and this is what guides your journey to building birth confidence.

If you desire a spontaneous, unmedicated birth (even in a hospital) it’s very important that you grow your awareness of how you would like your inner birth landscape to look and feel, so you can listen to your desires and choose the right external factors for you and your baby.

I invite you to take time to reflect on what external factors will serve your personality, your birth vision, and your baby’s emotional and physiological needs so that you can enter into a more secure and loving experience of labor.

Without reflection or consideration, external factors might negatively influence your birth experience and can inhibit or sever you from your instinctual body. Without allowing yourself to find or create peace externally, and internally, your birthing experience could become one you want to forget rather than a memory to cherish.

Here are some external factors that influence your inner birth landscape:

The people in the environment

The nature of the environment

Expectations to perform

Being observed when you’d rather be alone

Being spoken to

Having your choices questioned

All of these things can build inhibitions and expectations that create fears rather than what birth really needs – which is spaciousness, the freedom to let go, and a respect for your choices.

In order to tap into your mammalian primal drivers, you must feel as though you are not observed, cajoled, coerced, or in any way managed in labour. It is of value and benefit to recognise the influences these things have on your emotional state.

So let’s reflect on the 3 key elements of creating a warm, secure, and loving birthing space that will reduce stress and welcome peace and tranquility into your inner birth landscape.

Hormonal influences and the emotional pathway between birthing babies.

The first key element is finding a place that will help release the shared hormone in birth – oxytocin.

This hormone is often called the hormone of love, of bonding, and of attachment and it greatly influences a mother’s experience of birth and postpartum.

Oxytocin levels increase dramatically in the last few weeks of pregnancy and in an unmedicated birth. It is more likely to be released from the pituitary gland when you are in a state of calmness and peacefulness.

So it is largely responsible for helping you to feel at ease during birth.

Really choose your place of birth mindfully and make sure it’s an environment that has that sense of security so the levels of oxytocin can naturally increase as your labour progresses.

The people in your birth environment

The second key element is to find the people (or as I like to call them, those who witness a mother’s wisdom in the birthing environment) who you would like to accompany you in labour.

Choose people with whom you feel completely safe.

Choose people that will calm you and help regulate your nervous system.

And ask yourself – “Who are the people that understand me the best and that will respect my decisions?”

You should consider these things without fear or guilt based on other people’s expectations.

It’s your birth, your voice, and your choice.

People may be offended when you don’t choose them to share your experience…but don’t let that stop you from creating an environment where you feel at ease.

Personalizing your birth space.

The third key element is personalizing your birth space so that you will feel as comfortable as much as you possibly can.

Reflect on how you would like to craft and curate your environment.

How do you envision it?

Do you want your home comforts? Would you like to have a birthing pool? And would you like it to be set up inside or outside?

At a hospital, learn the protocols and learn how this will influence your ability to create a personalized space.

Ask the hospital staff what you can bring from home and what they already provide for birthing mothers.

I have been to births where mothers create their own sacred space with their own pillows, blankets, music, clothes, oil diffusers, trinkets, and other personal items to create a warm, comforting, and homely birthing space.

This is about you and your baby. Never try to create imitations of the birth environments of others. Your space is unique to you and your baby.

Find a place where you can comfortably settle into your body physically, emotionally, and energetically – so your body can open easily and naturally to give birth.

Remember that, during labour, you can reassess your decisions and change your mind as your experience unfolds. You will know what to do by being aware of how you feel in your body. Your baby will also psychically inform you through a visceral pathway. It will indicate how it senses the birthplace and what it needs.

Also remember the intelligence of the mother-baby dyad has a potent influence through hormones, the nervous system, and other physiological and mammalian birthing functions.

Follow your maternal instinct, listen to your body and baby, let go, create space, and find freedom in birth.