Music has the power to soothe, to energize, motivate or distract. It can pump you up or lull you to sleep. You’ll be hard pressed to find any fitness class without a driving beat, nor a clothing store without trendy house music. Music is just as useful in the birthing room. It can help set the mood for a calm and relaxed birthing experience, and it can help a laboring mother press on when things get tough.
Unless you want to be at the mercy of whatever is on the TV in your delivery room, I would suggest creating your own mix CD. In fact, I would suggest making two, since it’s hard to predict what kind of mood you’ll be in. Create one mix to calm, and another to motivate or distract. The first CD should feature songs that are relaxing, like spa music. The second CD should have your favorite songs: the kind of music you would get up and dance to or sing along with.
As a side note, the reason I’m talking about CDs as opposed to MP3s is the fact that not all hospitals are going to have something you can plug your MP3 player into. My hospital only had a CD player. Check with your hospital or birthing center ahead of time to see what kind of media you’ll be able to use. You can always bring your own dock for your MP3 player if that is what you want to use.
It’s likely you already own your favorite songs for the upbeat mix. You may or may not have the songs you want to use on your calm mix. Spa music is easy to find. You could easily purchase a compilation at the store (at one of those CD kiosks) or online. If you want to create a mix on your own, however, you can easily sample songs on either iTunes (30 second previews) or on Pandora (full songs, but with less control). You could also search through music sites on MySpace. Once you have your list of songs, purchase them individually online and burn them to a CD or download them on to your MP3 player.