Natural Birth Techniques

When you're in labor, our team can coach you through healthy exercises using special equipment, including peanut balls, birthing balls, squatting bars, labor stools and more. We encourage movement as one of many options to enhance comfort during labor and to help your delivery progress.

At the Family Birth Center, you have options to manage labor pain with natural methods and epidural alternatives — as long as it's safe for you and your baby.

We offer natural, unmedicated labor pain management options, including warm water immersion therapy (hydrotherapy) in our birthing tubs.

Even if choose or need to have an epidural, our obstetric anesthesiology experts specialize in effective epidural pain relief without loss of sensation or mobility.

If your cervix is not dilating (opening) enough to allow a safe vaginal delivery, your physician or midwife may advise cervical ripening to help prepare you for labor. At the Family Birth Center, we offer multiple options to dilate the cervix or induce labor, including medications — such as dinoprostone vaginal inserts (Cervidil), misoprostol (Cytotec) and oxytocin (Pitocin) — and cervical ripening balloons.

What is a cervical ripening balloon?

Using a catheter (a thin, flexible tube), a physician or midwife passes a small balloon through the vagina and into the lower uterus (cervix). As the balloon is filled with saline, it applies pressure that helps to dilate the cervix in preparation for labor.

Discuss options with your care team.

Our experts can help you understand your personal options and offer evidence-based insight to help you choose the best approach for you and your baby. For some patients, one method is effective, while others may try more than one option.

When possible, a safe vaginal delivery is always the first option — even for some women who have had up to two prior cesarean births (C-sections), with TOLAC/VBAC. Yet under certain circumstances, a C-section may be the safest delivery option for the you, your baby, or both of you. Whether you deliver vaginally or by "gentle" or "natural" cesarean, our team commits to remaining attentive to your priorities as you experience your child's birth.

With little evidence supporting its benefit as a birthing practice, our experts rarely perform episiotomy. If you can safely deliver without an episiotomy, our team will support your preference to not have one.

Our specialists delay cord clamping at birth to maximize healthy blood flow to the baby from the placenta. Waiting to cut the umbilical cord — at least 30 seconds or until pulsations stop — is an evidence-based practice associated with many benefits for newborns, including healthier circulation, lower iron deficiency anemia rates and lower jaundice rates.

Delayed cord clamping may also mean less blood loss for you. At the Family Birth Center, you can even start skin-to-skin (kangaroo care) before the umbilical cord is cut.

We encourage immediate bonding after vaginal and cesarean deliveries. At the Family Birth Center, we routinely follow evidence-based best practices, such as skin-to-skin (kangaroo care), rooming in (couplet care) and early breastfeeding.