I Sang Through Labor to Manage the Pain
Turns out, women have been singing, chanting and humming through childbirth for centuries. But can it actually provide relief?
Credit.Lily Snowden-Fine
March 9, 2021
Back in the summer of 2016, when I was about to give birth and enduring one debilitating contraction after another, I was struck with an idea: What if I were to sing through the agony?
With a karaoke YouTube video pulled up on my husband’s phone, I began belting out lyrics to Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” straight from my hospital bed.
“Nibblin’ on sponge cake,” I began singing, uncertain, wondering if I was in some sort of labor-induced mania. I kept going. By the end of “stepped on a pop top,” the waves of torment had somehow diminished. I wasn’t on pain medication, but I felt like I had been transported to a more calm, pleasant place where I wasn’t counting every second of discomfort as I had been. Time seemed to pass more quickly.