60 Tips for Healthy Birth - Part 2: Walk, Move Around and Change Positions Throughout Labor

We've updated one of our most favorite series -- 10 tips for each of the Lamaze Healthy Birth Practices, guidelines based on years of research that help you approach birth informed and with more confidence. Be sure to read through each of the six posts -- 60 tips in all for a better, safer, healthier birth experience! 

10 Ways to Walk, Move Around and Change Positions Throughout Labor

1. Learn why walking, moving around, and changing positions throughout labor is important for you and your baby during labor.

2. Limit interventions, like epidural and routine IV fluids, both of which can restrict your ability to move during labor. Find out more about how interventions can impact birth. 

3. Bring a trusted friend, family member, your partner, or doula to serve as your birth support person who facilitates your position changes and offer suggestions for movement that keeps labor progressing, helps baby's positioning, and allows you to rest in between contractions.

4. Find a care provider who supports evidence-based practices for a healthy birth, including staying mobile in labor.

5. Make sure your chosen hospital or birth center encourages people in labor and birth to move around and change positions during labor. You can ask this and other helpful questions on a hospital tour as well as find out from local doulas and childbirth educators. 

6. Request intermittent fetal monitoring (usually 20 minutes out of every hour) instead of continuous fetal monitoring, which is more restrictive for movement and has been shown to increase the risk of more interventions.

7. Labor for as long as possible at home, where you are free to move around as much as you like.

8. If you need to have an epidural, ask your care provider and anesthesiologist about having a lower dose epidural to be able to move and change positions more easily on your own.

9. If you must be monitored continuously or hooked up to an IV (like you would during an induction), you can still get out of the bed! Enlist the help of your support person(s) to help you move around with wires in tow.

10. Familiarize yourself with the many different labor positions you can use to help promote comfort and facilitate labor and birth.