How and Why to Use Music During Labor
I think most people can agree that music plays a large role in our lives. From working out, to driving, to just passing the time by, music accompanies many different activities of our daily routines. But did you know that music can also be used to create a more empowered and comfortable birth experience? Here are 14 ways music can help during labor.
1. Music helps pass the time during early labor
There’s a lot of emotions that can occur during early labor- excitement, nervousness, impatience, the list goes on. Early labor can also last a while, which may just serve to heighten each of these emotions more. Here is where music can help. Listening to music during early labor gives your mind something to do. Losing yourself in the music can be a helpful distraction. You could sing along to empowering or silly songs, you could dance alone or with a partner, or you could use it to give yourself a grounding moment for meditation or prayer. There’s so many possibilities of how to use music during early labor!
2. Music can distract you from discomfort
It’s no secret that labor can be uncomfortable. Some people choose to deal with this discomfort medicinally, but others choose to go with an unmedicated birth or double down and have both medicine and pain-reducing comfort measures. Through the gate control theory of pain, music produces a desired stimuli that in turn reduces the perception of undesired stimuli; labor pains, in this case. All of that to say, psychologically, listening to music reduces the amount of discomfort one might feel.
3. Music can help drown out hospital sounds
Hospitals are loud. Voices from the nurses, doctors, patients, and visitors mix with the sounds of monitors beeping, people moving around the halls, equipment being moved around the halls, elevators dinging, and many other sounds to create a cacophony of noise. This is clearly not the most conducive environment for staying relaxed, and it can actually slow labor down. If you choose to give birth in a birth center or at home, you won’t experience this to quite the same extent, but it is still worth noting that ambient noise will always intrude in some form. By playing music, one can drown out these extraneous noises to create a more relaxed atmosphere. We have yet to discuss music choice yet, but for this purpose, using gentler music might be the better route to go.
4. Music can help deepen connections with the baby or birth partner
Lullabies are practically ingrained into our culture. But did you know that they actually promote bonding with the baby both when they are in and out of the womb? By singing or playing familiar music (music that has often been present throughout your pregnancy,) your newborn will have something they recognize to ease their transition into the world! Additionally, music increases the production of oxytocin, which creates positive feelings. In turn, this helps with bonding. Similarly, if a birth partner is present, music can also encourage bonding with them. Slow dancing to love songs or even just laying together while music is playing both serve to increase oxytocin levels.
5. Music can help regulate breathing
Giving birth can be stressful. With all stressful things, there can be moments where one might start to feel anxious. Taking slow, deep breaths is a common strategy used to help ground and relax. But how does music fit into this? Using slow, predictable music with long phrases will typically inspire entrainment and subconsciously cause one to start taking slower breaths to “match” the movement of the music. When done intentionally, the move towards slower and more even breathing can be compounded. Using music to regulate breathing also provides a more gentle reminder to slow breathing than having someone directly instruct you when to inhale and exhale- further promoting relaxation.
6. Music can lower heart rate
Similarly to how music can help regulate your breathing, it can also help lower your heart rate. By listening to and focusing on relaxing music, one can keep both their heart rate and blood pressure down, both of which have positive effects on the birthing parent and the baby.
7. Music can help you manage stress
So we know music helps regulate breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure. It also affects hormones that increase and decrease stress (more on that in a moment.) By listening to music with relaxive qualities, one can effectively keep their vitals lowered to a more relaxed range, which can help speed labor along. Familiar music (though more aggressive music genres may be contraindicated as they can actually raise heart rate) can also be a big help because it provides a familiar stimulus to hold on to when everything else might feel a little unknown, which in turn helps manage stress. Who wouldn’t want a faster labor?
8. Music can influence hormone production
I briefly touched upon this earlier, but music affects hormones. Music increases the production of oxytocin, which not only creates positive feelings but also helps labor along more quickly. Music also increases the production of beta-endorphins, which work towards pain management. Additionally, music can decrease the production of catecholamines, which is a “fight-or-flight” hormone. Catecholamines can slow down labor, so music can help more labor along more quickly on this front as well.
9. Music gives you control over your environment
During labor, you may not have a lot of control over the environment around you- especially during a hospital birth. This can cause feelings of disempowerment and slow down labor. By playing music playlists (including ones that have a central theme such as empowerment) that you have chosen during labor you are directly controlling a large part of your environment. This little bit of control can be extremely helpful in staying calm and strong during what could possibly be a stressful or scary time.
10. Music can create a more relaxed environment and help promote relaxation
There’s a reason the musical score is such an important part of movies and television shows. It subconsciously helps inform us of how to feel. This concept can be emulated during labor as well. By playing music while in labor, you are effectively “scoring” your own labor experience. By utilizing specifically-chosen music, you can cause the whole atmosphere and mood of the room to be much more relaxed. Even in the midst of a particularly bad contraction, the music will hold the space to keep things as calm as possible.
11. Music can empower
This goes hand in hand with the idea that music can influence emotion (more about that later.) Listening to music that evokes strength or peace can cause the listener to begin feeling these emotions themselves. It’s almost like the music becomes your own personal cheerleader! Additionally, labor and delivery can be a hectic time where one might not have much control over their environment, causing disempowerment. By choosing what music is being played, some of that sense of control is restored as the individual has now taken control over the auditory stimulation that everyone in the immediate area is exposed to. How empowering is that?
12. Music can influence emotions
As previously said, listening to music with certain emotional qualities can influence emotion in a certain way, and listening to empowering music can create a sense of empowerment in an individual. Similarly, listening to peaceful music or joyful music can help influence feelings of peace or joy.
13. Music can accompany any action to strengthen the effect of comfort measures
As the name implies, comfort measures are steps taken to create a more comfortable birth experience for the birthing parent. This could include activities such as laying in a tub of water, bouncing on a birth ball, receiving a massage, or rocking in a rocking chair. It also includes different positionings- such as laying on one’s side or strategically placing pillows around and on one’s body- to help ease discomfort. Music itself is a comfort measure, but it can also be combined with other comfort measures to increase their effectiveness. For example, using music with a meditative tone while laying in a tub of water will help to compound the relaxive effect the action of laying in the tub has. Using music with some gentle forward movement while either rocking in a chair, taking a walk, or bouncing on a birth ball will naturally guide one into and support the physical movements.
14. Music can reinforce memories of the birth experience
Have you ever listened to a song and instantly were reminded of a time in the past when you heard the song? Many people have! Music serves as an auditory cue in a similar way to how smelling specific scents can take you back to a certain time. So if you are wanting to reinforce memories of the birth experience- specifically the moment of birth- then using a chosen piece of music can certainly help! By hearing the piece of music during such a profound moment, future listens to the song can “transport” you back to the moment.
Music really is an extremely powerful tool! It should be noted that when using music to assist during labor and birth, the music needs to be relatively loud. It can’t take a background role and be softly playing in the corner of the room where no one can hear it. Yes, you should be able to comfortably talk over the music. No, you shouldn’t have to strain to hear it. Consider using the music volume at your favorite restaurant as a baseline and tweak the music’s volume from there.
It was briefly touched on in this article, but the genre of the music is extremely important to consider. It goes without saying that using fast and brash music during the transition stage might be contraindicated, but there are many facets of music (timbre, tempo, rhythm, dynamics, texture, form, etc.,) that should be taken into consideration in order to best support the labor events in realtime. Utilizing a Soundbirthing Music Therapy Assisted Childbirth Specialist takes the guesswork out of this and gives you access to dozens of playlists to use in tandem both with all the stages of labor and immediate postpartum period and a large variety of common comfort measures.
Want to learn more? Melody Music Therapy is certified in Music Therapy Assisted Childbirth for when the birthing parent wants the music therapist to attend the birth and actively manipulate the music to support birth events as they happen and also Birth Music Consultation for when the birthing parent and birth partner want to learn how to use music through this method for themselves.