In nature, when a laboring animal feels threatened or disturbed, the stress hormone catecholamine shuts down labor. Similarly, when a laboring woman does not feel safe or protected or when the progress of her normal labor is altered, catecholamine levels rise and labor slows down or stops. This column discusses the importance of providing labor support that respects the woman's privacy, protects her from unnecessary interventions, insures her safety, and allows her to trust her inherent ability to give birth normally.

Routine induction at 41 weeks is ritual induction at term, unsupported
by rational evidence of benefit. It is unacceptable, illogical and unsupportable interference with a normal physiologic situation...The ‘evidence’ on which current practice and popularity of routine or as we prefer to think of it, ritual induction at 41 weeks, is based is seriously flawed and an abuse of biological norms. Such interference has the potential to do more harm than good, and its resource implications are staggering. It is time for this nonsensus consensus to be withdrawn.

...poor nutritional balance may be associated with longer and more painful labours, and fasting does not guarantee an empty stomach or less acidity. This review looked at any restriction of fluids and food in labour compared with women able to eat and drink. The review identified five studies involving 3130 women. Most studies had looked at specific foods being recommended, though one study let women to choose what they wished to eat and drink. The review identified no benefits or harms of restricting foods and fluids during labour in women at low risk of needing anaesthesia. There were no studies identified on women at increased risk of needing anaesthesia. None of the studies looked at women's views of restricting fluids and foods during labour. Thus, given these findings, women should be free to eat and drink in labour, or not, as they wish.

There is a quantifiable biological difference associated with undisturbed spontaneous labor and birth. If one is fortunate enough to be present at a great many “undisturbed” labors, those “designer genes” for spontaneity can be observed as naturally advancing process that combines biological and psychological resources to make human parturition mechanically successful, physically tolerable for the childbearing woman and safe for the about-to-be born baby. It is accompanied by a dramatic increase in childbirth-specific hormones – endogenous oxytocins to stimulate uterine activity, beta endorphins (the source of the “runner’s high”) providing for naturally produced, internal (non-addictive) pain relief for the mother. Maternal hormones also trigger adrenal hormone production in the fetus to prepare it to breathe independently and maintain its body temperature after birth.