What to Eat and Drink in Labour (+ Labour-Aid Recipe)

Hospital bag packed. Car seat in. Baby clothes washed in the special non-bio. The bit that's usually missing from the list is what you'll eat and drink in labour.

Labour is called labour for a reason. It's hard physical work that can go on for hours (sometimes days), and like any endurance event, how you fuel it matters.

As a doula and certified pregnancy and postpartum nutrition consultant, this is something I talk through with every client. Here's what the evidence says, what to eat and drink at each stage, my go-to labour-aid recipe, and a shopping list of things you can buy in advance and throw in your bag.

Can you actually eat in labour?

For most women with a straightforward pregnancy in the UK, yes.

NICE (the guidance UK maternity units follow) says you can drink during established labour and eat a light diet. The World Health Organization recommends food and fluids in labour for women at low risk, and a Cochrane review found "no justification" for restricting food and drink in labour for women at low risk of complications.

The old "nothing by mouth" rule dates back to the 1940s, when women were routinely put under general anaesthetic with much less effective ways of protecting their airway. Today very few caesareans need a general anaesthetic, and the risk the rule was designed to prevent is now extremely rare.

When researchers compared women who could eat in labour with women who couldn't, they found no extra risk from eating: no more caesareans, no more vomiting, and no difference in how babies were doing at birth. If anything, labours were slightly shorter. Running on empty, on the other hand, can leave you exhausted, which can mean weaker, less effective contractions.

A note: if you've had certain pain relief (like pethidine or diamorphine), have an epidural, or have risk factors that make a general anaesthetic more likely, your midwife may advise drinks only. Every unit is slightly different, so ask about their policy at an antenatal appointment, well before the big day.

What to eat and drink, stage by stage

Your appetite changes a lot as labour progresses, so think of this as a moving menu rather than one big meal.

Early labour: eat a proper snack (or a light meal)

This is the bit where you're still pottering around at home, timing contractions and probably watching a film. Some women lose their appetite here from nerves and excitement, but this is the stage to fuel up while you still can.

Think of what you'd fancy if you were getting over a tummy bug: light and easy to digest. Aim for slow-release carbs with a bit of protein and healthy fat to keep your blood sugar and energy steady.

• Toast or a bagel with nut butter and banana
• Porridge with honey
• Scrambled eggs on toast, or eggs with avocado
• A small bowl of pasta (plain, buttery, nothing too rich)
• Greek yogurt with fruit
• Apple or banana with nut butter
• A smoothie
• A handful of dried fruit and nuts

Drink: water, or warm bone broth, which is nourishing and can help settle nausea.

Active labour: little bites of quick energy

As contractions get stronger and closer together, you'll naturally turn inwards and lose interest in food. Even a few bites of something easy can help keep your strength up.

Now you want natural sugars for quick energy, and less protein and fat. Protein and fat slow down how quickly your muscles can use the energy from sugar, which is the opposite of what you want right now.

• Frozen fruit: grapes, watermelon, banana or blueberries
• A spoonful of honey
• Fruit pouches (yes, the baby ones). No chewing needed, and you can sip them straight from the spout.
• Coconut water ice cubes (more on these below)
• Simple fruit bars with only a few ingredients

Drink: coconut water or labour-aid (recipe below). Both give you electrolytes, which your muscles (including your uterus) need to contract well.

Skip: oranges and orange juice. The acidity can upset your stomach and burns if you're sick.

Have a few different options in your bag. You won't know what you'll fancy, or what smell will suddenly turn your stomach.

Transition: don't push it

Transition (roughly 7 to 10cm) is usually the most intense part of labour, and most women don't want anything at all. Nausea and being sick are really common, and smells can suddenly feel unbearable.

Your birth partner can keep quietly offering sips of water, labour-aid or a labour cube between contractions. But if you say no, that's a no. You're focused, and you don't need to be persuaded.

Hydration: give someone the job

Even when you've stopped wanting food, keep taking little sips between contractions.

My top tip: make one person in your birth team responsible for keeping you hydrated. Ask your partner (or doula, or mum) to offer you a drink after every contraction, or at least every 15 minutes. And pack a full water bottle with a straw, ideally one that won't leak if it tips over. Having someone bring the straw to your lips makes drinking so much easier when you're on all fours or leaning over the bed, and you won't need to sit up to tip it back.

And what goes in must come out. A full bladder can get in the way of your baby moving down, so the same person who's offering you drinks should also be reminding you to go for a wee, at least every couple of hours. If you haven't been for a while, your midwife will usually suggest it too.

Oh Baby lemon lime labour-aid

This recipe is from Oh Baby Nutrition, where I did my pregnancy and postpartum nutrition certification. You can find their original labour-aid recipe and notes here.

Think of this as a homemade sports drink for birth. Electrolytes help your muscles contract and keep you hydrated, and the natural sugars give you energy without any fat or protein to slow them down. Because labour burns through energy so quickly, keep offering it regularly. It's also great for recovery afterwards.

You'll need:

• 2 cups (about 500ml) coconut water
• 1 cup (about 250ml) water
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 tbsp raw (unpasteurised) honey
• ¼ tsp unrefined salt (Himalayan pink or sea salt)
• Optional: a few trace mineral or electrolyte drops

Stir until the honey and salt dissolve, then chill.

Make it ahead: you won't want to be juicing limes mid-contraction. Mix the lemon, lime, honey and salt (and drops, if using) and freeze it in an ice cube tray. When labour starts, pop the concentrated cubes into the coconut water and water and you're done. Or keep the ingredients in and hand the job to your birth partner.

Oh Baby energising labour cubes

The easiest thing you'll make all pregnancy: freeze coconut water in an ice cube tray.

Unlike plain ice, coconut water cubes stay slightly slushy, and they come into their own later in labour when you don't want anything else. A few tips:

• If your tray is deep, only fill each cube a third of the way. Smaller cubes are much easier to manage.
• Once frozen, tip them into a freezer bag or jar.
• Birthing in hospital or a birth centre? Ask whether there's a freezer you can use, or take them in an insulated freezer bag.

Want to mix them up? Add a squeeze of lemon, or blend some watermelon and freeze the juice with the coconut water for a fresh, fruity cube.

What to buy in advance (and put in your bag)

The tricky thing about labour snacks is that you usually don't know when you'll need them. Most of us buy the snacks, eat the snacks, buy the snacks again, eat them again… So the realistic win is packaged things with a long shelf life that you can put in the bag and forget about, without it bothering you that they're sitting in there.

If you do know your date (a planned induction or caesarean), you can be a bit more organised and make things ahead, like a batch of bliss balls for during and after.

Everyone's tastes are different, so treat this as a list to pick from rather than a list to buy. Here's what I'd stock up on, with a few smaller brands I love in the mix.

Drinks

• Coconut water. Cartons or small bottles are perfect for the bag. Look for 100% coconut water with nothing added. Rebel Kitchen's 100% pure coconut water is a good one (Ocado, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose), and Vita Coco and Innocent are in most supermarkets too.
• Bone broth for early labour. Borough Broth Co. is a small London brand making organic bone broths (Ocado, Waitrose). Warm it up and pour it into a flask before you leave home.
• Electrolytes as a backup if you don't fancy making labour-aid. I like Oshun's electrolyte concentrate because it's completely unflavoured, which is a lot easier to stomach in labour than a sweet, fruity sachet. A pump or two goes into water or coconut water.

Quick energy

• Simple fruit and nut bars with a short ingredients list. Nakd's Cashew Cookie bar is just cashews and dates.
• Dried fruit, ideally sulphur-free. Forest Feast (made in Northern Ireland) do a really good dried mango, plus chocolate-dipped fruit and trail mixes if you want something a bit more exciting.
• Medjool dates. Natural sugar in a tiny package (and you might already be eating them: here's what the evidence says about dates in pregnancy). If you want to make them a bit more fun, True Dates do flavoured ones, from cookie dough to sour cola and sour apple. Holland & Barrett stock some of the range.
• Fruit crisps. Nim's Fruit Crisps are air-dried apple, pear or pineapple (Ocado and Co-op).
• Fruit jerky. Snact make 100% fruit jerky from surplus fruit that would otherwise go to waste.
• Fruit pouches. Ella's Kitchen and other 100% fruit pouches are easy to suck through the spout, and nothing to chew.
• Honey. A small squeezy bottle is the easiest to use mid-contraction. Honey sticks are perfect if you can find them, but they're surprisingly hard to get hold of in the UK.
• Nut butter squeeze packs. Pip & Nut do 30g squeeze packs that are the ideal labour bag size. Pair one with a banana or a few oatcakes for early labour.

Something salty (and for queasy moments)

Quick energy in active labour mostly means natural sugar, but it's worth having something savoury too. You lose salt as you sweat, and after hours of sweet things, salty can be exactly what you fancy.

• Salted crackers, pretzels or oatcakes, which are also easy on an unsettled stomach.
• Salted nuts for early labour.
• Ginger chews or crystallised ginger for nausea.

Dry mouth and fresh breath

• Lip balm. Gas and air can leave your mouth and lips really dry. Keep a lip balm in your bag (if you've packed a nipple cream or ointment, it usually doubles as one), and keep your water bottle and labour cubes within reach.
• Mints or gum. After hours of heavy breathing, or being sick, you'll be glad of something to freshen up. Peppersmith make natural mints and gum.

A little treat (live a little)

If a handful of Percy Pigs or Candy Kittens is what gets you through, pack them. Quick sugar is exactly what your muscles want in active labour, and how you feel matters too. A bar of good chocolate counts as well, and it's lovely afterwards with a cup of tea.

For the freezer (if you're labouring at home first)

• Frozen berries and grapes. A bag of shop-bought frozen berries is perfect. For grapes, wash, dry and freeze them on a tray, then bag them up.
• Pip Organic lollies. Little organic fruit ice lollies from the freezer aisle (Ocado, Waitrose). These are one for home, not the hospital bag: keep a box in your freezer for the early hours of labour.
• Coconut water cubes and labour-aid cubes (above).

Pack a cool bag (the bit everyone forgets)

If you're giving birth in hospital or a birth centre, put everything that needs to stay cold in one cool bag with a couple of ice packs, so you can grab it on the way out of the door instead of remembering five separate things mid-contraction.

• Your frozen bits: labour-aid cubes, coconut water cubes and anything else from the list above.
• Any colostrum you've collected, labelled with your name and the date. It's so easy to leave behind in the freezer at home. Ask your midwife whether the unit has a freezer you can use.
• A clean, lidded tub for your placenta, if you're planning to keep it. If it's part of your plan, it's one less thing to scramble for.
• Snacks and drinks that are nicer cold.

If you've ordered Milk it frozen cookie dough during pregnancy, the gel packs from your delivery are perfect for this. Pop them back in the freezer when you unpack and they're ready to go.

If you're staying in afterwards

You don't know how long you'll be in for, so pack a few home comforts too: your favourite teas, a small carton of oat milk if that's how you take it (the ward probably won't have it), and some proper snacks for after the birth. Hospital tea and toast is iconic, but it won't keep you going for long. What to eat after birth is a whole other blog post, and it's coming soon.

Don't forget the birth team

Get your birth partner to pack their own snacks, and make sure they're low-smell. Labouring women often become very sensitive to smells, so the cheese and onion crisps can stay in the car.

Your partner needs fuel too, especially if it's a long one, and making sure they've got what they need is part of their birth prep. The last thing you want is them heading off to the hospital café and leaving you on your own. Something substantial and non-perishable is best: sandwiches made on the way out of the door, oatcakes, nuts, cereal bars, bananas, and a flask of tea or coffee.

In fact, it's good practice to get your birth partner to pack the whole bag, or for you to pack it and then have them repack it. That way they know exactly where everything is, so when you ask for your lip balm after an intense contraction, they can find it.

The short version

• Most women with a straightforward pregnancy can eat and drink in labour. Ask your hospital about their policy in advance.
• Early labour: a proper snack with slow carbs, protein and fat.
• Active labour: bites of quick, natural sugar, plus coconut water or labour-aid.
• Transition: sips only, if you want them.
• Give one person the hydration job, and pack a water bottle with a straw.
• Buy your snacks in advance and freeze your cubes.

Want to dig into the sources?

• NICE guideline NG235: Intrapartum care (2023). Eating and drinking in established labour.
• Singata, Tranmer & Gyte, Cochrane review (2013). Restricting oral fluid and food intake during labour.
• World Health Organization: Intrapartum care for a positive childbirth experience (2018). Oral fluid and food intake for women at low risk.

Birth prep of a different kind

Milk it is a small bakehouse in Cornwall making lactation cookies for new mums. Every recipe was developed by me, a doula and postpartum nutrition consultant, with ingredients like oats, flaxseed and brewer's yeast that are traditionally used to support breastfeeding. They're proper bakery-style cookies, not a chalky health bar.

Stock the freezer with Milk it frozen cookie dough before baby arrives. Eight pre-portioned dough balls that bake straight from frozen, so once you're home you can have fresh, warm cookies in minutes, without anyone having to get the scales out.

👉 Shop frozen cookie dough

Or pop a box of freshly baked Milk it cookies in your birth bag. They keep for up to 10 days, and they're the perfect treat once your baby is in your arms. (These ones are just for you.)

👉 Order Milk it cookies

Written by Mel Mckechnie: doula and pregnancy & postpartum nutrition consultant

This post is for general information and isn't a substitute for personalised advice from your midwife or doctor. Always check your hospital or birth centre's policy on eating and drinking in labour.