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MU Women’s and Children’s Hospital Offers New Low-Intervention Birthing Program

  MU Women’s and Children’s Hospital gives expectant mothers more options for delivery with a new low-intervention birthing program. Wednesday morning the hospital held a ribbon cutting ceremony for new birthing rooms, becoming the first in mid-Missouri to offer low-intervention options.

“We have a very deep birthing tub. There’s a very large shower that is not restricted by walls. You could labor in there. A birthing chair. There’s mats. There’s birthing balls. There’s a swing so that you can hang from the ceiling and take pressure off of your lower back,” says Medical Director Courtney Barnes.  

She said the rooms are designed to be more relaxing, with cool color schemes, a large couch and a regular double bed without stirrups or guard rails.

A trained midwife will accompany the mother in the birthing process, but Barnes says, there will be very minimal medical intervention.

“If you just have an un-medicated labor and a delivery then they don’t need that much at all from us so mainly what they need in those circumstances are just support during labor, suggestions on different positions to labor in, sort of non-intervention interventions if you will.”

She says if an expectant mother decides she wants an epidural or more medical attention, those options are still available in these new rooms.

The low intervention birthing program at MU Women’s and Children’s Hospital aims to provide all the comforts of home with the safety net of easily accessible medical attention, blood banks, operating rooms and technology in the case of an emergency.  

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