How do I prepare my home for giving birth?

How can I prepare my home for birth?

If you're preparing for having a baby at home, then it's definitely worthwhile doing a full walk around and walk through to think "Okay, let's make this house baby friendly. What here could a crawling little person stumble upon? Eat? Hit their head onto?"

The reassuring thing is that when a baby first comes home, they are easy to keep an eye on because they're not crawling, they're not walking, they're not running. So you do have a bit of time to baby proof the rest of the house.

In terms of preparing your home for giving birth, you will definitely get a lot of help from the team of midwives looking after you. They will provide you with information and everything to say "Okay, let's have this, this and this" and they will let you know what they bring to the home birth.

Some things to consider will be dedicating a space. If you feel okay, the best would be the living space or a bedroom.

Dedicate that space as your birthing space, then make sure the environment is nice and calm and relaxing. Get your playlist ready to have all your favourite music. If you're into aromatherapy, get it all set up so the space feels nice and calm, comforting and safe.

Ideally, probably downstairs, just in case you do need to be taken outside of the home during labour during birth.

If you wanted a pool or some water birth, then it's worth looking into the inflatable pools, looking at the dimensions and where that would fit in your space.

Make sure you've got phones at the ready just in case you need to call someone. Let's say it's the early labour phase. You've got the phone number of your midwife so you can call them to say my contractions are coming at this rate, this frequency, this intensity.

I think it's time for you to come and come up to see me. And also if you have other birthing partners that maybe are not in the same home as you, making sure their contact details are close by. And just make it comfortable, welcoming for you and your new arrival and safe. The rest your team of midwives will help you in terms of the technical equipment that we need.

We will bring that ourselves and any other things that we will need for the whole birthing process as professionals will bring back, but they will help you in terms of what you can do to prepare your home for your home birth.