Birthing space?

[sapphire_chan]

Anyone have a picture or good description of a birthing space they set up for themselves? I've got plenty of time, but want to have a good feel for what I want to do and would like to know what other people liked.

[srlpenny]

We will be in our MBR, we have our own bathroom, it had enough room for the fishy pool and it has no toys to trip over in labor.
Generally it is my sanctuary in the house with calming colors on the walls and pictures of very happy times everywhere. Hopefully it'll be good

[EarthsSpiral]

I'm interested to hear what others have to say about this. WE are currently displaced from our home and living with my mom. She has plenty of room, we aren't cramped, but mine and DF's room is upstairs. I'm thinking that climbing 14 stairs while I'm in labor to get from point A (pool in dinning room) to point B (my bed upstairs) will not be fun. Anyone climbed stairs while in labor?

My mom is in the MBR down stairs. I'm thinking about asking her to let DF switch our beds and have us stay down there after 36 weeks. She is going to be watching DS1 during and after labor and then she would be on the same floor. This would also allow me to have a bathroom, bed, and pool all on one floor.

[Eresh]

I did stairs in early labor, but I stayed upstairs once I reached the intense part. You didn't say whether you were planning a water birth or planning to labor in the pool then actually birth in the bed. Now that I think about it, that doesn't really matter. I think I would have liked climbing stairs even less AFTER the birth than during active labor. If I were in that position, I think I'd ask to switch rooms.

[thismama]

I climbed downstairs! It was no big deal, or at least not any worse than any other thing I *had* to do while in heavy labour. Contraction - descend staircase - contraction. First step in transferring to the hospital... getting outside sucked, getting in the car sucked, being in the car sucked... it's better to not have to do stairs if you dont have to but IME it was just a thing that had to be done.

[EarthsSpiral]

Originally Posted by Eresh

I think I would have liked climbing stairs even less AFTER the birth than during active labor. If I were in that position, I think I'd ask to switch rooms.

Exactly. I think I'll ask her, hopefully it will be no big deal.

[sapphire_chan]

I was thinking more interior design.

I'm going to have a sort of birthing suite with our bedroom and that bathroom and my craftroom as my "closet with some old clothes".

I'm wondering what people have done to make things prettier, calmer, what have you.

Right now all I know for sure is that I'll want a bunch of pillows and things draped with one or more sheets. If I decide to get a pool, I'll lay down a tarp under it and drape a sheet over it.

[Eresh]

And lay down bath rugs or towels for climbing into/out of the pool and have towels for drying off.

Remove or turn off phones.

Remove any blinky or LED lights from the room.

Have some kind of set up for dim lighting -- a light on a dimmer switch would be ideal.

Have any music system you're going to use set up.

Remove clocks or have someone assigned to removing / covering them once labor starts.

[ecoteat]

I live in an 18th century house and my bedroom is huge (when we rebuilt the house we made one big room out of 2 small ones, so it's about 14'x30'). Almost everything happened in that room during my labor and birth. The bed is on one end of the room and there's a bench under 2 big windows looking over the garden on the other end. We set up the tub in the middle. It's a dimly lit room by design, so when things started to get really exciting, it was getting dark out and it was really pretty in the room, which was lit with a few small lamps and candles. DH had wanted to build a fire in the fireplace, but the MWs told him a few weeks before dd was born that he'd have much more important things to worry about! The only clock in the room is a zen alarm clock, so that's pretty unobtrusive. Other than the tub and the electric lamps, the setting was probably not much different than it was in this house over 200 years ago, which felt really good to me. Many, many babies were probably born in this house!

[spookymama]

We've got our birth room set up right now in our "spare" bedroom . It's a loft type space, it over looks the huge patio window which you can see the trees if you leave the blinds open.

Now it's mostly filled with birth pool (I didn't realize BPIAB was so.. big)!

I bought a nice nature picture from ikea that is being hung on the wall. I also have a set of very thin curtains from pier one that aren't being used. So we are thinking of putting it along side the picture.. to make it feel like we are more surrounded by nature. Almost like looking through a black and white window.

I am also putting in a shelf above that for the essentials and various birth stuff. The birth cert, the foot print kit, what we are using to cut the cord, any herbs.. etc. All that can not be reached by our toddler.

I've also got a cooler set up. It has all our chux pads inside, the birth pool liner, a few towels. It's not pretty.. but it's functional!

We did another search for birth art this weekend and came up empty handed.. Probably I'll end up collecting a few inspirational sayings or things help me.. print them out or craft them somehow on the wall.

You'd think I'd have more done at 38 weeks, but nooooo.

[Belleweather]

I birthed downstairs in our walk-out family room. It's a big long room (maybe 15x25) with a fireplace on one wall, a short hall to the front door of our house on the other, and stairs to the upstairs against the back wall. There's a bathroom off a short hallway in the middle, opposite the front door.

I hung curtains over the hallway to the front door. We turned the track lighting toward the wall so the lights were dimmer. We have a futon couch that we put down and heaped with pillows and blankets, and then we set the birth pool up in the middle of the room. We left the windows (there are two, by the fireplace. They're small) open, and I could see the snow falling while I was in labor. That was nice. I'd planned to make a fire, but my labor went WAY too quickly for that to happen, so I didn't get to birth by firelight. :

People look at me weird when I tell them I had my baby in my basement, but it was really nice to feel so safe and encircled by the earth when I was birthing. It was really grounding. Also, it was a nice place to birth because it's a part of our house that we don't use much so I could have everything set up the way I wanted it and know that it was ready whenever I was -- no stressing out about getting the room 'set up' or anything. And it was a good signal to my body and my birth team that when I was "ready to go downstairs" this was serious and the baby was coming.

Originally Posted by EarthsSpiral

I'm interested to hear what others have to say about this. WE are currently displaced from our home and living with my mom. She has plenty of room, we aren't cramped, but mine and DF's room is upstairs. I'm thinking that climbing 14 stairs while I'm in labor to get from point A (pool in dinning room) to point B (my bed upstairs) will not be fun. Anyone climbed stairs while in labor?

I just COULDN'T climb stairs once I was into active labor... I had to stand at the bottom and yell up for my DH who was napping to come down and help me because I couldn't imagine picking my legs up that far.

[almadianna]

i ahve a room next to a window, with thick curtains in case i want darkness.
a table set up in a corner with any things that we might need or want to have on hand.
pool in the middle of the room over a tarp.
pile of towels and blankets under the table on the corner.
light with a dimmer and a small night light in an outlet.

[treehugginhippie]

Subbing to get more ideas. So far I know I want candles and very dim lighting (thinking a string of holiday lights). Some relaxing music playing.

[ColwynsMommy]

There are very few places we can up our birth pool (2nd floor worries), but the one we've decided on is luckily right in front of our altar. So in addition to all the goddess imagery we already have there, I'm also planning on making a few sculpture pieces from clay or salt dough, along the lines of the exercises from Birthing from Within. My parents live downstairs and my mom's most important job in early labor is to take the kids out to the grocery store and make sure we have enough food to feed everyone, and to also pick up a bouquet or two of fresh flowers. Hopefully I'll have enough time in early labor to decorate the altar, otherwise my mom or my sister can do it.

The space is right in between our dining area and living area, so there's a table for birth supplies (we have all our stuff stored in a small stack of rolling plastic drawers), and couches for 'spectators' to sit in. Both the bay window and the sliding glass doors will have curtains in case I want darkness, but I'm really hoping to labor and birth during the day. My youngest was born at night and it sucked being so tired already.

I'm hoping to maybe labor on our deck, too, which overlooks our backyard with the big maple tree, our garden, etc, and our deck will be filled with container veggies and flowers. I'm really feeling like I need to be surrounded by nature.

I need to figure out what I want to do with my bedroom in case I decide to push in/near bed, which is definitely a possibility. Right now we're in the decluttering/cleaning stage, but to be honest, I'm thinking I won't care much about decor when I'm actually pushing.

[lilylove]

I made a birthing space in the nursery, which is just an adjacent bump out of our bedroom. I like birthing in small spaces so I picked this room with that in mind, as it's very small. I closed the drapes to make it feel even more cozy and because our old house is drafty, I put in a space heater. We had the birth pool and a couple pieces of furniture. There was barely room for my mw (and her things), her assistant, and my Dh. We had one small table lamp, so it could be sort of dim. I think Dh had to give the mw a flashlight.