Home Birth Preparation

How to Make a Birth Bed 

1. Take your bedspread/comforter and blankets off the bed. You really do want to keep the bedding as simple as possible. Sheets and easily washable blankets only!
2. Get an inexpensive plastic painter's drop cloth (clear and very thin) from a home improvement store. Some choose shower curtain liners, but I find them far too thick. The drop cloth is so thin, yet protects so much more (is longer and wider).
3. Put a set (fitted and top sheet) of sheets on the bed - a typical set that you would have on your bed for every day use.
4. Over that set of sheets, lay down the plastic painter's drop cloth.
5. On top of the plastic drop cloth, put a set of old sheets you don't mind getting messy. (Some clients even choose to throw this set away after the birth; most wash them.)
6. Use about 10-12 safety pins and pin the entire bunch of sheets and plastic to the mattress, putting a pin every 4-6 inches around the mattress. Don't use pins if you have a water bed or an electric bed! Sometimes it's easier to put the pins around the "coiled" part of the mattress instead of the flatter side parts of the mattress.
   
   The pins are absolutely necessary because they keep the whole shebang from slip sliding all over the place should you climb all over the bed during labor or afterwards. Sheets on plastic is slippery.
7. Your bed is now made. Isn't it lovely?
   
   Now, have plenty of pillows available, including changes of pillowcases.
   
   Warning! If you have $100 pillows, you might want to get yourself some inexpensive labor/birth pillows. The more you try to keep ooze off something, the more ooze will find its way onto what you are trying to protect.
8. Scenario One: You birthed in the bed.
   
   Scenario Two: You climbed into the bed to birth the placenta.
   
   Scenario Three: You climbed into the bed after the placenta was born.
   
   Wherever you fall in these scenarios, eventually, you will have soiled the top layer of sheets and need them changed. We usually wait to change them until mom has gotten up to pee and shower and she can come back to a clean bed, get tucked in with her baby and family and then begin the first nap of the new baby's life.
9. The top (dirty) sheets get tossed into the washer with the first set of dirty towels and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is a blood removal trick we women should have learned when we entered puberty. Dumping a good-sized bottle into the washer with the regular amount of soap is enough to get all the blood out of sheets, towels, washcloths and everyone's splashed clothes. No kidding.
10. Hint: You can use the hydrogen peroxide for carpets, too. Pour the liquid onto the blood and allow it to sit for a few minutes. Use a towel to dab at the stain - don't rub it in. Repeat as needed. We've even used the peroxide on colored carpet without any issues, but use your own judgement. As far as we're concerned, hydrogen peroxide is the miracle elixir too few know about. No longer!
11. NOTE:
    
    This bed making job is NOT a job for the pregnant/laboring mom. This bed making job is for the partner/doula/parents/anyone else BUT the pregnant/laboring woman. I've watched laboring women make their own beds because they were going to hit me if I tried to take over, but unless you support people are being threatened with physical violence, you should be doing this job. Understand?
12. Same with the laundry.
    
    We try to get the first load in unless someone in the family says, "We'll do that" and insists on our not doing it. The new mother is not supposed to be up scrubbing blood out of the carpet, pouring peroxide into the washer with a load of clothes or pulling sheets off the bed before putting new ones on. Her job is to be in the shower or sitting on the toilet waiting for those jobs to be done. Or sitting somewhere else comfy and nursing the baby.
    
    NO CHORES, MOM!
13. Okay, I think that's about it for the bed making instructions. Let me know if you think I should add something. There's always room for improvement!