It is important to create a birth sound environment that is supportive and helpful to the woman giving birth. Salutogenetic birth places allow the woman to use her own voice as an assistant as she travels through childbirth; rooms are soundproof, sounds of nature are introduced, and voices of midwife and the partner are calm, soft and encouraging. In such birth places she is able to express herself in whatever way her soul/mind/body tells her, including through her voice, singing, chanting ... But for the possibility to focus and to connect with herself and the baby, there must first be silence, peace.Newborns are sensitive: they can hear, see, smell, taste; feel touch and pain; sense movement, rhythm, balance and surrounding space; experience satisfaction when breastfeeding and when in direct human contact. They are alert beings: they are especially perceptive in the first hours after birth.Newborns are curious and open, they express feelings, initiate and bring an end to communication, develop relationships with living beings.When the baby is in its mother’s arms, sounds of her body soothe it;like the beating of her heart, familiar to it from when they were growing and developing inside her. The baby needs to listen to the voices of its parents. The baby heard sounds from the surroundings even when in the womb: mother’s and father’s voices, voices of siblings and of other people who kept its mother company. In the birthing room there has to be as much silence as possible. Voices of the health professionals should be calm and soft, noises in the birthing room measured and muted. With all this in mind we are focusing on developing a salutogenetic birth environment, a space with qualities which resemble a safe, warm mother’s embrace.
The salutogenetic birth space: silence, sounds and voices
Zalka Drglin
