 Currently there are no devices available in the U.S. to protect the pelvic muscles from damage during childbirth. The Materna device takes advantage of well-proven biomechanical data in the fields of sports medicine and orthopedics showing that tissue is viscoelastic, meaning that the more slowly it is stretched the easier it is to stretch. Materna aims to take advantage of this biomechanical phenomena as well as the length of the first phase of labor to reduce the tension in the tissue, slowly maximizing the stretch of the tissue in order to prepare it for a delivery with less injury. There is also evidence showing that reducing the tension in the pelvic muscles could lead to a shorter delivery time, resulting in a less stressful and healthier delivery for the baby 