Music to give birth to…!

Whilst on our “stork walk” or tour of the maternity unit, we were told that each room has an iPod dock and CD player to enable us to listen to music of our choice whilst giving birth, and the midwife asked whether we had put together our playlists yet. I have to admit, I’d not even considered music at all, even as a music lover! However the room did seem very quiet on the tour and I did think I’d prefer some sort of background music.

When I got home, I opened up Spotify, ready to start my playlist. I didn’t get much further!

Such an odd thing to have to think about. What sort of music is best? How long should the playlist be? Labour could be 12 hours or more, don’t want to listen to the same few songs over and over!

I did consider a themed playlist (Salt’n’Pepa’s Push It?!) but figured that would get old very quickly!!

Relaxing music is recommended, but of course what counts as relaxing differs from person to person. Personally, I find stereotypical ‘relaxing’ music such as classical or whale song type music actually frustrates me, so that’s out. I have a hypnobirthing CD but haven’t listened to that yet so have no idea whether that will be useful.

So what’s left? At home I generally listen to indie music. Probably an odd choice, but may be more homely, and easier to have as background music as I’m used to having that on whilst concentrating on something else.

It’s December – what about a Christmas playlist? Too upbeat maybe? Again, I’m not a fan of slower Christmas songs or carols, so they probably wouldn’t work.

When you’re getting everything ready, this is something I didn’t have on my todo list but definitely worth thinking about!

Have you thought about a labour playlist? What’s on yours?