Most of us doulas help women understand that moving around during labor, as opposed to curling up in a bed, helps labor progress quicker (on the average, 1 hour shorter, according to research) and with better results for baby’s positioning during birth. However, current hospital rooms have the bed as a focal point as a comfortable place, and while a woman is in pain, it can be awfully enticing just to climb in between the sheets and curl into the fetal position (pun intended!).
But what if hospital rooms for birth looked completely different? A pilot study at a Canadian hospital ran with this idea and came up with a pilot study called PLACE (Pregnant and Laboring in an Ambient Clinical Environment). The way the study worked was like this:
Half of the mothers in labor labored in an ambient room, where a portable, double-sized matress with several comfortable pillows was put in the corner of the room in place of the hospital bed. Fluorescent lighting was dimmed, and DVDs of ocean beaches, waterfalls and other soothing vistas were projected onto a wall. A wide variety of music was also made available. The result:
The other half of study participants gave birth in a typical labor room.
“The removal of the standard hospital bed sent a message that this was not the only place a woman could labour,” says Ellen Hodnett, RN, PhD, Researcher at the Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto Hodnett. “The intent was to allow the women the ability to move about freely during their labour, to permit close contact with their support people, and to promote feelings of calm and confidence,” says Hodnett.
Reaction to the ambient room was overwhelmingly positive. Perhaps more importantly were the other findings of the study. Women who birthed in the ambient room:
- more than 65% of the women in the ambient room, compared to 13% in the standard room, reported they spent less than half their hospital labor in the bed
- women in the ambient room benefited from a 28% drop in infusions of artificial oxytocin (Pitocin), a powerful (and painful) drug used to advance slow labors
- women in the ambient room reported they received greater one-on-one attention and support from their nurses
I also wonder: did the women in the ambient room have less requests for pain medication? Less cesarean births? Were their labors shorter? Did they have happier birth experiences? Less postpartum depression? Better breastfeeding success?
At any rate, the room’s design sure beats the alternative:
“This study raises questions about the assumptions underlying the design of the typical hospital labor room,” says Hodnett. “The birth environment seems to affect the behavior of everyone in it – the laboring women as well as those who provide care for her.
Hodnett hopes to further this study with a larger, randomized controlled trial.
View Dr. Hodnett’s study here: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122413904/HTMLSTART
Read her bio here: http://bloomberg.nursing.utoronto.ca/staff/Faculty_Bios/Ellen_Hodnett.htm
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