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Adopting a lying down position rather than being upright in the later stages of labour for first-time mothers who have had a low dose epidural leads to a higher chance of them delivering their baby without any medical intervention, a study has found. Professors Peter Brocklehurst and Christine McArthur , as well as statistics lead Pollyanna Hardy, of the University of Birmingham, and their colleagues within the Epidural and Position Trial Collaborative Group were behind the randomised controlled trial involving 3,093 women who gave birth across 41 UK hospitals between October 2010 and January 2014. The aim of the BUMPES trial, funded by the National Institute for Health Research, was to investigate whether adopting an upright position in the second stage of labour in first-time mothers who have a low-dose epidural would lead to an increase in the number who had a spontaneous vaginal birth - without the need for forceps or suction. The results of the study, in which women were randomly allocated an upright or lying down position (lying on the left or right side) during the later stages of labour were published today in The BMJ. The study found that there were fewer spontaneous vaginal births in women in the upright group (35.2%), compared with women in the lying down group (41. This represents a 5.9% absolute increase in the chance of spontaneous birth in the lying down group. In the UK, around 30% of women choose to have an epidural as it's the most effective form of pain relief in labour.