Talking cervixes: How times materialise during the first stage of labour

Abstract

The clock occupies a prominent position in many feminist and midwifery critiques of the medicalisation of labour and birth. Concern has long focused on the production of standardised ‘progress’ during labour via the expectation that once in ‘established’ labour, birthing people’s cervixes should dilate at a particular rate, measurable in centimetres and clock time. In this article we draw on 37 audio‐ or video‐recordings of women labouring in two UK midwife‐led units in NHS hospital settings to develop a more nuanced critique of the way in which times materialise during labour. Mobilising insights from literature that approaches time as relational we suggest that it is helpful to explore the making of times during labour as multiple, uncertain and open‐ended. This moves analysis of time during labour and birth beyond concern with particular forms of time (such as the clock or the body) towards understanding how times are constituted through interactions (for example, between midwives, cervixes, clocks, people in labour and their birth partners), and what they do.