E122: Your Body and Your Baby Communicate Through Hormones In Labor

Birth can look like a simple sequence of contractions and dilation, but underneath it all is a powerful hormone conversation between parent and baby. We pull back the curtain on the hormone dance of birth, focusing on oxytocin and cortisol, plus the adrenaline surge that shows up when labor gets real. With two bodies working as one system, the chemistry matters, and it explains so much about why labor can feel smooth one moment and overwhelming the next. 

We talk through what oxytocin actually does in physiologic labor, why it supports effective contractions, and why it thrives in conditions that many laboring people crave: privacy, calm, dim lighting, and emotionally safe support. Then we reframe cortisol as more than “just stress,” looking at how a normal rise helps both parent and baby prepare for the intensity of transition, pushing, and the first moments after birth. We also touch on how Pitocin differs from brain-released oxytocin and how interventions and interruptions can affect the body’s natural rhythm. 

From there, we connect the dots to the birth environment as a real third factor in the room. Feeling watched, unsafe, or unheard can elevate stress and make it harder for oxytocin to build, while respectful words, steady reassurance, and supportive touch can help the body keep working. After birth, we highlight why skin to skin, eye contact, and early feeding are more than “nice extras” and how they help regulate temperature, heart rate, and bonding. 

If you’re preparing for labor, supporting a loved one, or working in birth spaces, this is a practical, science-grounded guide to protecting emotional safety and supporting the physiology of birth. Subscribe for more evidence-informed birth education, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more families can find the support they deserve.

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Show Credits

Host: Angie Rosier 
Music: Michael Hicks 
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood 
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker

Transcript

Welcome And Big Idea

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Andy Roger, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Hello, my name is Angie Roger, and I am the host of the Ordinary Doolo Podcast. We are happy to have you with us here today. For today's topic, I'm excited about it. I guess I'm excited about all the topics. But today's topic is one that I find pretty fascinating. And it explains a lot. It helps us realize a lot about childbirth, actually, and and and how it happens, why it happens, the ups and the downs of it.

Birth As A Hormone Conversation

SPEAKER_01 1:12

And I want to talk about the hormone dance of birth, right? So birth is all about hormones. And we've got oxytocin, of course. We've got cortisol, right? So things that drive labor, things that respond to the drive of labor, and kind of the interplay of those things between a mom and a baby, because we've got two people there experiencing hormones who are very well connected. So let's dive into that. This is absolutely fascinating to me. It happens beneath the surface of labor and delivery. And a lot of times we're not even really aware of it. It's not something we can see necessarily or see the reasoning behind all of it. A lot of times we think of labor as the uterus, which is a muscle, contracting, the cervix opening, right? Dilating, thinning, opening. But it's also that whole process of labor is an intricate hormonal dance, kind of a conversation between the mom and the baby. These two cute humans who are so incredibly connected at this point, of course. And the two major players in this dance are the hormones oxytocin and cortisol. So cortisol, we know is kind of a stress hormone, right? That doesn't have a very good rap about it, like that's kind of a bad hormone. Well, oxytocin, on the other hand, is the opposite. It's like a love hormone, right? So we have these two opposite things that are swishing back and forth during labor. And it's pretty nuanced how it happens and how it has to happen, how it's built and designed to happen. So in physiologic labor, so physiologic labor is what the body knows how to do. It's what the body, the process it's gonna go through. Um, both hormones actually have really important roles to play. So we're gonna talk about how they interact and how the mother and baby communicate, literally on a chemical level during labor and how the extenuating circumstances or the environment around this um dance of hormones matters so much, right? Because that can have an effect

Oxytocin And The Conditions It Loves

SPEAKER_01 3:07

as well. So oxytocin, let's talk about this hormone oxytocin. It's a connection hormone, it's a love hormone, um, and it's a hormone of labor. And then it gets into other things as well after that with breastfeeding. But oxytocin is largely responsible for contractions. That's what is kind of driving the process of uterine contractions. It's also responsible for bonding. A lot of women feel very bonded to this baby long before labor begins, and that's good, that's normal. Um, this hormone's been in their body for a long time. It also um helps with feelings of safety and connection. So that plays into the environment, who's around you, who's supporting you, what kind of space physically are you in. And then, of course, breastfeeding and milk release after birth. So it's this kind of really cool um script all the way through pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum that oxytocin is very much a part of. It's a huge player. So it is produced in the hypothalamus, released by the pituitary gland. Nobody controls this, right? Well, I guess we do with a pitocin drip in a different kind of way, but it's not the same as having oxytocin actually come out of the brain, because that's how it happens, and it thrives under certain conditions. Like we can have a really great release of oxytocin under happy conditions. So this would be like oxytocin really loves privacy, not like uh abandonment or anything like that, but privacy, right? So a comfortable um privacy not feeling watched, a calm sense is also gonna enhance oxytocin. Lighting, believe it or not, comes into play. We're not in harsh lights, but dim lighting, um, it might come into playing. It also comes into the fact that we're feeling emotionally safe, so that those around us um are the appropriate people around us, we're feeling their support and their reassurance from all the people. So it's kind of fascinating because these are often the exact things that the laboring woman instinctively wants during labor. She wants appropriate support, she doesn't want to feel watched, she wants a calm setting, dim lights. So we're not in a harsh environment, not in any way, not emotionally harsh, not physically harsh. Well, we don't want to be anyway. Ideally, we shouldn't be, right? So if you think about um animals out in the wild who are giving birth, they oftentimes find a private place, a place that's safe from predators. Um, it's a calm place. They often go into labor and give birth at nighttime. Dim lighting right there. Um, they feel, I don't know if they feel emotionally safe, but they feel safe from predators. Uh, maybe they're in a a little thicket of trees. Um, and as far as support goes around them, I'm not sure if they have deer doulas or anything like that or elephant doulas. Actually, elephants kind of do have doulas. Um, but they they have that support and reassurance because they've set up an element of safety, right? So laboring person very much um oftentimes turns inward, especially as labor progresses more. There's kind of an inward focus where we're not getting a lot of um uh feedback from her, not a lot of conversation. So they become much more quiet. They like to avoid bright lights, loud sounds, too many questions. They just get pretty focused, right? Like on point focused. They might seek rhythmic comfort, they might seek touch comfort, or quite the opposite, they may not um want to seek touch comfort, but the body is creating conditions um on a really pretty cool physiologic level that helps oxytocin to flow, right? So it's eliminating distractions, it's creating comfort. Um, and that safe space is sometimes incredibly internal and and it has external values as well, um, as far as the environment goes. But as the oxytocin is on the rise, contractions become stronger and more effective. So that's oftentimes oxytocin is going up, contractions are becoming more efficient. We're getting towards the end of labor in most of these cases.

Cortisol Helps Baby And Mom Cope

SPEAKER_01 7:10

All right, so now let's flip to cortisol. How is this at play, right? If you just think about childbirth, like um you may have a different picture in your mind than I do, um, or than your friend or your neighbor does, right? Some people look at birth as, oh, it's terrible, it's awful. Um, they're looking at the cortisol approach to it. Other people look at birth as, oh, it's amazing, it's wonderful. They are on the oxytocin team and they're looking at it through that lens. So talking about the cortisol um perspective of this, cortisol is part of the body's stress response system. It's normal, right? It's super normal. It's a hormone that is, it's a stress hormone that we're gonna feel it has negative impacts on the body, but it also plays some pretty good roles as well for safety, um, for survival, things like that. So while chronic stress can absolutely interfere with labor, cortisol itself is not the villain here, right? It is actually needed. Both mother and baby are experiencing together a rise in cortisol during labor for lots of reasons. Now, um moms can probably who have anyone who's been in labor can say, yeah, I felt stressed. Yeah, I felt the impact of that. I was feeling the intensity of labor. Um now we don't get to ask babies how they felt, right? Like we're not hearing that story. But we got to remember the babies are in this as well. So for the baby, cortisol, um, as they feel stress hormones, they're gonna physically feel um some different things that day, right? Um, and it helps prepare their lungs. It kind of, you know, steals them against what's ahead, but helps prepare their lungs for the breathing they're gonna have to do immediately after birth. It also supports alertness after delivery. So um another hormone comes in, adrenaline, right? Which um helps them transition really well as their anatomical and physiologic processes shift very, very quickly after birth. It also helps the baby transition into life outside the womb. So that's um all their senses, right, are super shifted, super alert. They're seeing lights for the first time, they're seeing um, they're hearing things much more acutely, they're breathing, they're smelling, they're gonna be tasting all their senses or waking up in a pretty quick order. And then we look at the other player here, the mother. So cortisol for the woman and adrenaline provide an energy that helps her focus during the intense parts of labor. So we've got oxytocin driving labor, and the response is cortisol and adrenaline helping us cope with labor. Um, and there's an actually an incredibly intelligent physiologic dance going on here because birth is such demanding work. The body is actually responding appropriately, exactly how we would want

Balance Matters And Pitocin Disruptions

SPEAKER_01 9:56

it to. So the way that we dance between the two is labor is not just about maximizing oxytocin and eliminating cortisol, right? Like that's not the main goal there. It's about balance and how these two go back and forth with each other. Labor often works the most efficiently, the most comfortably when oxytocin is dominant, letting oxytocin drive that. Now, do we interrupt this a lot with pitocin? We sure do. Um, and that that takes away some of the brain, again, hormones in the brain, which would be endorphins, that takes away some of the brain's natural response when we're like giving it artificial um hormone, if you will, ox oxytocin is just uh, or pitocin is a derivative of oxytocin that's synthetic, um, then we can interrupt some of this awesome interplay. So that does happen a lot. We can deal with it for sure, but understanding the delicate and pretty fascinating dance between hormones is important. So early labor um often works when oxytocin's driving everything, works best when there is a calm environment, right? There's gonna be some rhythmic, um, there's just a natural rhythm to labor, right? There's rhythmic contractions that are happening every, I don't know, seven minutes, eight minutes, ten minutes, whatever that might be. When also the mom and her support team is feeling safe. Um, that might be their their physical surroundings, right? It's gonna be the people around them, um, the actual objects around them, it's gonna be the environment around them, what's the vibe around them and undisturbed. So if we have a lot of interruptions, we're like um knocking on the oxytocin door a lot with cortisol, right? If we're interrupting things. So we as we drive that rhythmic process and the rhythm picks up speed and we get to the transition part, um, which is followed shortly after by the pushing part. We often see a temporary rise in adrenaline and cortisol, right? That's the most difficult part of labor. That's the most intense part of labor driven by these stress hormones. A lot of people we find are saying, Oh, I can't do this anymore. Hear that a lot. Um, I'm done. I, you know, I don't know how much more I can do. And often, as is so so much often the case, is there's not that we're at the end. There's not a whole lot more to do. Your body kind of takes you to the edge of what you can do. So this surge of adrenaline cortisol can actually help tap into some energy and prepare both mother. Remember, baby's on the inside experiencing all this as well, but prepare both of them for that uh event of birth, the actual emergence of the baby, right? So the body is super smart. Both bodies are super smart in how they work together because the baby is part of this dance too, right? Um, the baby, we have to recognize, is not passive in this process. They're not just in there hoping that they turn the right way and hoping that they um, you know, move down the birth canal the right way. The baby is actually responding as well. Their body, their brain, is releasing hormones that interplay with the mom's hormones, and there's a constant physiologic communication happening between both the mom and the baby. So there's hormone signals and responses, um, which lead to pressure changes, right? As we get close to the end of labor, there's nervous system responses, which is sensations felt, um, how hormones respond. And the labor process is something that mom and baby are doing together. And we have to remember that. Sometimes it's it's hard to remember that um the baby's not just a little passenger that we're waiting for to show up.

Transition Surge And The Baby’s Role

SPEAKER_01 13:35

So after the birth process, right? So we could, I think we can say the emergence of the baby is the most intense portion of this whole thing. That's when um we're the most stressed, if you will. The cortisol is the highest, adrenaline is the highest. Um then that if anyone who's had a baby realizes that huge shift that changed after that baby is born, right? So many people call it a huge sense of relief, the biggest relief of my life, physical relief as well as emotional relief a lot of times, and a relief of intensity. So after that birth, immediately oxytocin continues the connections, right? So doing skin to skin. This the surge of oxytocin is going to quell or calm the surge of cortisol and adrenaline that we just had. Um, the baby needs that, right? The baby needs the cortisol, the baby needs the oxytocin. The mom needs that. What a great reward. Having eye contact with the baby, breastfeeding, touching the baby. All of that is gonna bring oxytocin balance back after the stressful event of birth. So these experiences help hormonally help to regulate the baby's temperature, heart rate, attachment. We know all the awesome magical things that happen about skin to skin, the emotional bonding that will happen. Oxytocin is part of this relationship from the moment we we

After Birth Relief And Skin To Skin

SPEAKER_01 14:54

lay eyes on the baby, which is kind of cool. So then I want to shift it to we've got mom, baby, there's a lot of interplay there. And both of those things can be impacted by a third party, which would be the birth environment, right? That's the people that are around, the support that's around, um, that's the place, that's how that's um interacting with mom and baby. So we understand when we understand how these hormones work, um, we can see kind of why environment matters so much in labor and how um it can facilitate or disrupt the process that's going on. So a laboring person who feels watched, who feels observed, who feels nervous, who feels unsafe, who feels afraid, who feels diminished, um, who feels unseen, unheard, imagine what that does to the cortisol levels during the process, right? When oxytocin is supposed to be building, and then but we put a whole dose of cortisol in there, um, which is inhibiting the labor process, like the progress of labor. So someone who is feeling that way during labor may have difficulty kind of manufacturing that flow that supports the whole labor progress. So sometimes throughout the labor process, we get quote unquote stuck somewhere, right? Um, a lot of times, like I know as a doula, I'm gonna look at like what's going on with the baby position? Like, how can we move physically, move the baby um past where they are? But a lot of times it's we're stuck, maybe not physically, but like emotionally. So taking a moment to observe the situation, the environment, like how can we promote safety,

Environment And Emotional Safety

SPEAKER_01 16:36

um, promote calmness, how can we up-level that oxytocin that should be at work here and um minimize the cortisol, which is gonna be present, but we don't want to make it any more than we than it is. So it doesn't mean labor still can't unfold, unfold pretty beautifully. Um, but when we have a lot of interventions, and that could be medical interventions, that could be emotional interventions or interruptions is another way we could look at that. If we have a lot of um emotional blocks where we're just not feeling supported, that definitely can have an impact on labor. So emotional safety matters. It totally matters. How we speak to, how we address, how we approach the laboring woman has a huge impact on um the hormone dance that's going on inside. So support is a big deal, right? Support in all the factors. That's touch support, that's um emotional support, that's you know, that comes into play with the lighting, um, having people be heard, having a voice, respect, feeling respected, feeling heard is a huge deal. Because birth isn't just physical, it is actually very neurological, right? And hormonal and emotional, right? Those things all play into the emotions of it, um, as it's a deeply, deeply human experience.

Support Over Perfect Birth Plans

SPEAKER_01 17:57

So to gently kind of reframe how we could look at that, um, you know, sometimes people hear, you know, as we hear this hormone dance, they they're looking, they're seeking for the perfect birth and what that should look like. The calmness, the um, I don't know, the confidence in it, the perfect support, um, a partner who doesn't say all the right things, um, a physiologic process where nothing goes awry, there's no hiccups along the way, there's no speed bumps, a medical staff that's absolutely perfect, and everything they say and everything they do, that's a lot of pressure, right? That's a lot to ask. Um, but the goal is not perfection, right? The goal is support. Um, support for a specific situation, which we know can change um pretty quickly. So even in complicated births, finding those moments of connection. So whether that's from your nurse, from your doula, from a partner, even when things feel chaotic or scary, um, providing reassurance. Um, as it's kind of, I feel so fortunate as a doula, that's always my job. My job never, ever, ever changes from providing emotional support and reassurance. Um, sometimes that comes in the form of other people. Sometimes it comes with a calm touch. Um, but emotional safety is always a doula's number one priority. Um, while this medical staff, they'll drop that like a rock if they have to, right? Because they're looking at the medical safety of both mom and baby in the cases where they need to, right? But emotional safety still matters profoundly on how the birth experience is experienced and how it's remembered and how those hormones interplay into that, right? Um, so the body is always responding to the care it's being given, to the emotional care, to the physical care that it's being given. So hopefully, in settings that are um largely out of our control during labor, we're not sure who our who our medical staff personnel are gonna be, we're not sure how labor's gonna go. There's a lot of unknowns, there's a lot of things innately in birth that could take us away from that oxytocin bubble that it's nice to be in, where we have a calm environment, appropriate support, respect, um, the physical environment is comfortable, safe, you know, um, dim lights and we're appropriately supported. So uh there's a lot of things to knock us out of that for sure. So having a plan to stay in that, um, setting yourself up with appropriate support can be very helpful. So remembering the birth isn't just about mechanics. It's not, it's not just about the baby getting into the right position. Um, it's not about the baby, the cervix dilating and opening. It's about chemistry, right? It's about the interplay uh on a chemical level that's happening between mom and baby and impacted by everything around it. Um, it's communication, right? That communication on that lower level, that intimate level between mom and baby, and the communication from the team to that dyad, we call it that both of those bodies. It's real, it's a relationship. And all the factors that come into that relationship and how that mom and baby are being supported. So it's a pretty remarkable hormone interplay and dance that happens between mom and baby, and it prepares both of them for the enormous transition ahead. Like they need that bonding time, that click, we're each other's person, right? Um, and we're here for each other's survival a lot of times. The more we understand this and kind of realize what it could be like, the more we can approach it, approach birth, the whole process with the appropriate respect, support, um, and absolute awe for what the body is designed to do. I think it's absolutely fascinating the dance that goes

Share This And Connect With Someone

SPEAKER_01 21:38

on. So thank you so much for being with me here today. Um, if this resonated with you, please share it with someone who might be preparing for birth or working in birth spaces. Um, but this is a it's a pretty cool dance, and as we can we can definitely um impact it as we make positive impacts in the birth space. So, in the meantime, um please. Please reach out and make a human connection with someone, a stranger, someone you know, someone you don't, someone you love, someone you just met. But we are important to each other, we need each other. Please make out and make a good human connection today, and I'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Episode credits will be in the show notes. Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.