5 Tips for Extending Birth Invitations

By: Michelle Gilley, CPM, BSM

1. Who to Invite?

   Think about who you need or want to be in and out of your birthing space. This may be friends or family members who are supporting you. It may be someone who has a specific responsibility such as dropping off food, picking up pets or being present for your other kiddos. Deciding who is invited ahead of time will help keep things flowing smoothly and prevent unnecessary traffic through your space. Make it clear who is welcome, who you prefer to be on standby, or who you prefer not to swing by until postpartum.

2. Set Clear Expectations

   Not everyone is familiar with how to adjust their energy to a birthing environment. Communicating your desires ahead of time can help assist your loved ones with meeting your expectations. Let them know what type of environment you are envisioning. Share birth videos to show birthing people changing positions and vocalizing and receiving support during their labor to help conceptualize what you want. Let them know if you are okay / not okay with them posting social media statuses about your progress, texting others about what is happening. Communicate how you feel about online announcements or photo posting.

3. Write a Welcome Letter

   Consider writing a letter to the people you would like to welcome into your birthing space. In this letter you can make requests such as silence so you can focus, keeping the tv off, turning their phones to silent. You might let them know you welcome verbal encouragement and touch or massage. Let them know if you want them to stay in a designated waiting area or if you feel comfortable with them being anywhere. A letter can also include ideas for ways they can support you while they are present as some people are not sure what to do. When you communicate your desires, your expectations are much more likely to be met. And if they are not being met, there is a precedence already set for asking them to exit your space.

4. Plan for Privacy

   Though it should go without saying, it helps to communicate to birth guests in spoken or written form ahead of time that you may want to elect privacy at any point and that this is not a personal issue. Let them know that how you feel may change during labor and request them to be flexible in case you decide you don’t want anyone in the room or house after all. This will prepare them in case they need to leave (with a good attitude) in order to be most supportive to your progress.

5. If You Want to Limit Invitations

   In some cases, birthing families limit who they have at their birth to themselves and this is perfectly okay. A letter setting expectations can still be helpful in this case. Let them know if you will or will not be giving regular text updates. Let them know you will be focused on bonding and breastfeeding immediately after birth and it may be a little while, a few hours or a few days before you are ready to mingle again. Let them know if it is okay to call during your labor or not. Communicating ahead of time might prevent your phone from ringing off the hook or prevent unexpected visitors which could inhibit your focus. All of this is up to personal preference and different individuals/families will approach this in their unique way.

Your Birthing Space Is An Energy Field

By Michelle Gilley, CPM, BSM

Effectively holding space for someone during childbirth requires invitation, communication, observation and adaptation to what is needed moment by moment. Holding space could be the presence or absence of any number of actions. For example, a support person may be sitting silently nearby or they may be providing hands on support. Either scenario may be equally supportive depending on the desires of the birthing individual. When you think about who you are inviting to hold space for you during birth it can be helpful to visualize it. One option is to visualize yourself or the birthing space as having an energy field. 

Ideally someone entering your energy field is guarding, contributing, and energizing that field with what is helpful to or desired by you, the owner of the space. When this functions well, you can picture the energy field or circuit of energy flowing powerfully. When the space holder is not a match for that role you could envision the field of energy being disrupted, stagnant, overshadowed, or disorganized in some way. You can use your imagination to create a picture in your mind that makes sense to you. Maybe the energy field is a ball of energy and it grows or shrinks, changes color or has sound that changes based on the impact. Or maybe the energy field is organized like a grid or maybe it looks like water or clouds or the effect of wind blowing. 

Now imagine the energy of the people you are considering inviting to your labor or birth. What happens when their energy interacts with your energy? Is your energy frazzled, diminished, distracted or does it feel aligned, focused, supported or strengthened? How does your visualization change based on impact? An exercise like this can be helpful when you are choosing support people for your birth. It is normal and common to have complex feelings about who you are inviting. If this has been difficult, a visualization like this might help you put aside decision distractions such as perceived obligation, worry about people feeling left out, previous promises they could attend or what might seem fair or unfair to them. At the end of the day, your birthing space belongs to you. You get to decide who you want to invite to support and invest in your birth experience. 

Below are some incredible images from the NASA Image & Video Library to give you ideas for creating your own visualization.