Your Birthing Playlist: 49 of the Best Birth Music for all 4 stages of labour

Even people who do not care about music much will hear certain songs and think about specific moments in their lives. It truly is possible to create a soundtrack to your life if you think hard enough about it. Now imagine if there was a soundtrack to your childbirth experience. That would be your birthing playlist or your labor playlist. You could also call it a push playlist.

For the big day, your music taste is important. However, you may start to rely more on the lyrics of songs than listening to the type of beat you would usually prefer to hear.

The Making of a Birthing Playlist

How do you make a labor and delivery playlist?

Music strongly influences how we feel at different times. Your labour playlist needs to cover any kind of feeling you might have during labour. Of course, it will also depend on your usual type of music. You need to consider three things:

 

• • What kind of music relaxes you?

• • When it’s time to motivate yourself, which beats get you pumped up? 

• • What kind of music makes you?

• • When it’s celebration time, what do you like to listen to? 

Birthing music is meant to distract mothers sometimes. Others have strong instrumentals to motivate them either throughout the labour or when it’s time to push. Your perfect delivery playlist will have every kind of music you need for all stages of labour. It will become an important part of any birth plans you have made.

According to Kaiser Permanente Washington, there are 4 stages of labour. They are effacement and dilation of the cervix, your baby coming down the birth canal, the afterbirth stage and then the recovery stage. For each of the stages of labour, you can create a good playlist to go on repeat for as long as you need it to. 

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Below is some of the best music for childbirth. It’s guaranteed to make your playlist as varied as possible and not only will you enjoy it, but your birthing partner will too. 

The Ultimate Birthing Playlist

Effacement and dilation

Contractions begin. This is early labour. From personal experience, I know that these contractions can go on for days before any amount of dilation occurs. Slow and mellow music may not work for every moment of this stage but it is the most necessary kind of music right now. This is when you need the best relaxing music for labour and delivery. Your relaxing labour playlist can be made up of the following: 

1. Rein Me In — Sam Fender & Olivia Dean
2. Man I Need — Olivia Dean
3. If Only I Could Wait — Bon Iver
4. Heaven Song — S.G. Goodman
5. Somewhere in Between — Blood Orange
6. Mine — Tems
7. Raindance — Dave & Tems
8. Orbiter — Noah Kahan
9. The Cure — Olivia Rodrigo
10. Divinize — Rosalía
11. Wildflower — Billie Eilish
12. A Drop in the Ocean — Doves

Time to push

Of course, once your baby is coming down the birth canal, the hard work begins and this is the 2nd stage of labour. It may be a long or short wait to see your baby finally. Depending on your personality, you’ll either need your upbeat songs for labour and delivery or you’ll want a relaxing and calm birth playlist. You’ll need music to address fear and pain: to help you overcome fear and push through any pain.

1. Luther — Kendrick Lamar & SZA
2. Magic What We Do — Ludwig Göransson & Miles Caton
3. Ordinary — Alex Warren
4. Nice to Each Other — Olivia Dean
5. Blue Strips — Jessie Murph
6. Be Her — Ella Langley
7. Choosin’ Texas — Ella Langley

What song do they play when a baby is born? 

It’s time to meet your newborn. Once your baby is through (yay!) I recommend any one of these for your birthing music playlist.

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The afterbirth

There is some potentially hard work left to do as you’ve still got the placenta to deliver. During those 20 minutes or so, you’re on a special high from delivering your little bundle of joy but that doesn’t make you any less conscious of the pain or discomfort involved in pushing for a second time. 

1. Birds of a Feather — Billie Eilish
2. Messy — Lola Young
3. Love Me Not — Ravyn Lenae
4. DtMF — Bad Bunny
5. Sports Car — Tate McRae
6. Where Is My Husband! — RAYE
7. Talk to You — ANOTR
8. Material Lover — Sienna Spiro
9. Boston — Stella Lefty

The recovery phase

This is when you start to fall in love with your baby all over again. A different kind of love because you’re seeing them in the flesh for the first time. You also happen to be recovering from birth yourself. You’ll need some love music for this new found love and some tunes for restoration too. 

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1. Man I Need — Olivia Dean
2. Mine — Tems
3. Raindance — Dave & Tems
4. Heaven Song — S.G. Goodman
5. Somewhere in Between — Blood Orange
6. If Only I Could Wait — Bon Iver
7. Wildflower — Billie Eilish
8. Rein Me In — Sam Fender & Olivia Dean
9. Magic What We Do — Ludwig Göransson & Miles Caton
10. Ordinary — Alex Warren
11. Nice to Each Other — Olivia Dean

A Simple Way to Build Your Own Birth Playlist

If you want to make your own labor playlist, try dividing it into five small sections:

Save the playlist offline if you can.

Hospital Wi-Fi is not always reliable, and this is not the day to be fighting with an app.

Final Thought on Making a Birthing Playlist

A birthing playlist does not need to be perfect.

It simply needs to feel like something you can lean on.

Some songs may help you breathe. Some may make you laugh. Some may make you cry. Some may remind you that you are closer than you think.

And when your baby is finally here, one song may always take you back to that exact room, that exact feeling and that first moment of meeting them.

Did you have a birthing playlist or would you make one for labor?