Preggies do it on their own.

While we’ve raised the issue of midwifery before and questioned how necessary hospitals really are when it comes to natural childbirth, a recent study has found that coaching during labor may be unnecessary, even possibly harmful.
The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology published the study in their January issue, which was conducted in at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. It was there that they split 320 pregnant women into “coached” and “uncoached” groups. In the end, the only variation between the two groups was that the coached women endured thirteen minutes less of labor time than the uncoached.
So where does coaching become potentially harmful? Some months later, the women who were coached during childbirth had less bladder capacity and more overactive bladder muscles than the others. These symptoms may potentially contribute to incontinence.
While the researchers didn’t conclude that coaching is truly dangerous for women, they have said that letting them “labor down” — otherwise giving them more control over the pace of the delivery — may be used as a potential alternative.