If they don’t want to hear a mom vocalizing and laboring in LABOR AND DELIVERY, then perhaps they should sound proof rooms! There are buttons any patient or family can push if they really need the help of a nurse. Geez! Do they want to gag women too?

Would she have been as rude to the woman if she had an epidural and her family were all cracking jokes and laughing loudly? Hmmm…

Time to get started writing that book about normal birth with “Don’t Panic” on the cover “Chapter one: if you can’t say anything nice/encouraging SHUT YER MOUTH!”
Encouraging phrases:
You are doing so well!
Keep up the good work!
Can I get you something to drink? A warm washcloth? A cool washcloth?

Actually I think this is a great idea… take all these ridiculous things we read here, and create positive examples of genuine support for birthing women. If I had a million dollars I would publish it and send a free copy to every L&D department and OB office in the US. Of course they’d probably toss it, but you never know!

Yay for mom…she was coping in a good way! I recall being stitched and hearing a mom yell when I had my 2nd one. Natural labor is supposed to have sounds.

Would it be OK for a patient to tell the nurse, “Jeez, I can hear your laughing and chattering all the way in my room!”
This nurse should have picked a different job!

Some people are really in the wrong job. Natural labor is noisy. A L&D nurse should know to be encouraging.

Medicated, quiet childbirth has become the norm. That’s why this nurse said that. And that just makes me feel really sad.

When I was pushing my daughter out, without medication, my door was open (the partition was closed) and I was screaming like a banshee.

At my homebirth, we had the windows open because it was a warm, sunny day. I used vocalisation a LOT in the last hour or two, one long, continuous note that rose steadily in volume with each contraction. The next day my neighbour told me I should be an opera singer.

Noble, your comment reminds me of a story in the book ‘The Baby Catcher’. It involved a home birth, open windows, and a neighbor who was working on his roof. When the baby was born, the dad shouted the good news out the window to his neighbor and somewhere along the line, the neighbor commented that he thought there was something entirely different (then again, not) going on and was impressed with the with the dad’s “studdliness”. Too funny!

But…conversely, many people have come to expect active labor in an unmedicated woman to involve loud screaming, so when I had a client who was quietly vocalizing the OB watched her from across the room for 15 minutes and she pushed out the baby’s head without the OB even knowing she was pushing!

I am naturally very quite when I am in pain so labor for me was almost silent. I did repeat ‘oh fudge’ (no, really, I don’t curse) in a quiet moan during some of the back labor. My husband said afterwards “we have to teach you some new words” he apologized after he had had some time to think about it! Women should be expected to be as quite or as loud as they are going to be!

With my second daughter, the epidural didn’t kick in until after she was born (makes me wish I hadn’t gotten it at all) and when I started pushing, I started making a little noise (not much, just kind of some light “Aaaaahhh”s) and my OB basically told me to STFU. (In so many words) He said that making noise would take away from my pushing. In general, he made me feel really uncomfortable during the birth. Good thing the actual pushing/delivery only lasted 10 minutes.

I think really the only reason to discourage women from making noises during labor is that it sounds a lot like sex, which embarrasses them. And that’s about it.