Prepare Your Bed for a Home Birth

Step 1: Place a clean fitted sheet on your bed. This is the sheet that you will go to bed on after you give birth.

Step 2: Cover the clean fitted sheet with a water proof plastic layer. Examples of things you can use are a plastic fitted mattress cover, an old shower curtain or a painter’s drop sheet. The plastic cover pictured here is a cheap painter’s drop sheet ($2 from a dollar store).

Step 3: Cover the plastic layer with another sheet. Your midwife will supply absorbent underpads to place on top of this sheet to help prevent it from getting soiled.

Step 4: Give birth to your baby!

After the birth, the top sheet and plastic are removed.  The plastic is thrown out and your midwife will provide instructions about how to properly clean the top sheet. 

Then you can climb into the nice clean bed you prepared before the birth, so you can snuggle your baby and rest after all that hard work!