Abstract

This study presents a six session music therapy intervention design for the use of vocalization during labor to reduce the perceived pain of un-medicated vaginal childbirth. Currently, only one childbirth education study is available on the use of vocalizing during childbirth, and with positive outcomes. While music therapy offers an established recorded music intervention for childbirth (music therapy-assisted childbirth), there is currently no evidence of a comparable vocal intervention in the music therapy literature, despite a growing body of evidence-based vocal interventions being used with other populations. In this study, a directed content analysis of 13 music therapy-assisted childbirth texts revealed that the main “problem” of childbirth is the pain associated with labor. Further analysis of these texts as well as 11 obstetrics texts identified numerous risk and protective factors and malleable mediators that may influence the perceived pain of the laboring woman in childbirth. Music therapy, sound healing, and voicework literature were reviewed to target vocal strategies which may positively influence the identified malleable mediators, thus potentially reducing a woman’s perceived pain during childbirth. These findings were combined with the researcher’s professional knowledge and personal experience to generate the first draft of an intervention program design for women and their birth partners where they would learn how to use vocalization during labor to reduce perceived pain. The proposed intervention design will need to be piloted and adapted based on participant feedback, and then clinically tested in order to verify its effectiveness.