Interpreting the Language of Labor

People experiencing physiologic labor—meaning labor with minimal medical intervention, such as an epidural—communicate with their healthcare support team in a nonverbal “labor language,” but very little research has been published on this language. Jessica Densmore, MSN, CNM, a certified nurse midwife at Dartmouth Health, aims to make a contribution to the literature.

“The nonverbal labor language includes body movements, sounds, not necessarily words, and other labor cues that people who are experiencing physiologic birth use to communicate the intense sensations they’re feeling and to help them through those sensations,” says Densmore, who is completing her Doctorate in Midwifery from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

For her research, Densmore is surveying and interviewing people who have experienced physiologic birth to learn how they expressed their labor sensations and the responses they received, both positive and negative, from their healthcare team. She is documenting which of those responses were helpful during the labor experience and which were not.

“When I’m in a labor room, I work really hard to minimize distractions during contractions,” Densmore says. “I sit off to the side, lower than the person I’m taking care of so that I’m not a towering presence. I treat that room as their home space and try to be respectful of their needs for privacy in that space.

“People who are coping well in the labor experience tend to have a rhythm to how they move their body and the sounds they make,” she adds. “I observe those rhythms and make sure they don’t need to do anything differently, like get in the bath or shower, or stand up or lie down. I’m watching for what they need based on the cues they’re giving me.”

Densmore hopes her research will lay a foundation for codifying labor language in the future, with the goal of teaching new providers entering maternity care to better interpret that language and understand how they can best support the person in labor.