Birth environment

One of NCT’s current campaigning objectives for birth is to achieve ‘birth environments designed around women’s needs’. To this end, we launched our Better Birth Environment Campaign in 2003. The physical environment in which women labour and give birth is important. Research for NCT’s campaign found that nine out of ten women surveyed felt that the physical surroundings could affect how easy or difficult it was to give birth. In England, the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services states that ‘All NHS maternity care providers and Primary Care Trusts [should] ensure that birth environments in all settings promote the normality of childbirth’, and that birth environments should allow for mobility and access to a birthing pool.

There are also NCT reviews of evidence relevant to this topic under pregnancy and birth. These were first published in NCT's professional development journal New Digest.