During labor, a partner or doula presses inward on both hips through each contraction. Birth workers have used the technique for decades, and it is hard to sustain by hand for hours. Ondela is a wearable device that holds that pressure so they don't have to.
Ask anyone who has been through a long labor about the hip squeeze and you usually get the same answer. It is the thing they remember, and whoever was doing it got exhausted. Applying firm, even pressure to both hips through contraction after contraction is genuinely hard to keep up by hand, and it occupies the one person the laboring mother most wants free.
Ondela is a wearable device that applies steady, adjustable inward compression to both hips — the same motion a partner, doula, or midwife would apply by hand — and holds it consistently so no one has to. The wearer or their support person controls how much pressure, and when, contraction by contraction.
The squeeze keeps going for as long as you want it, without asking anyone to hold it through the night.
Offload the part of the work that wears out your hands, wrists, and back across a long labor.
Hours of hands-on staff time each birth, handled by a device that gets cleaned and used again.
Ondela is an early-stage company. Two working prototypes have been built and the design is with a contract medical device engineer. Patent pending.
Before anything goes to production, we are asking the people who would actually use it — doulas, midwives, birth center directors, and parents — what works, what doesn't, and whether a device like this belongs in a birth room at all.
If you work in birth and want to weigh in, that is genuinely the most useful thing you could do right now. Write to travis@ondela.co and I'll send you the survey.
Occasional updates on the build. No spam, and you can leave any time.
Prefer to just email? travis@ondela.co