Responsa על שבת 2:3

19. However, the woman herself during labor has not yet entered life-threatening danger, and it is possible that this is what the Maggid Mishneh meant when he wrote "that the pain of the birthing mother and her contractions are like a natural thing for her," speaking about the time of her contractions, when, truly, "fewer than one in a thousand die," as he wrote later, except, his phrasing is not quite correct, as he wrote, "during birth," and earlier used the term "birthing mother," see there. Therefore, we break Shabbat for her in an abnormal way in a place where that is possible, since she is not like an ill person who is already in danger. Further, for any other ill person, we would violate Shabbat for his physical needs, but for a birthing mother, we violate it also to settle her mind. If you contend that perhaps requiring things do be done in an abnormal way will lead to them being not done at all- this is not something that is urgent. And if you contend that it would not provide her with a settled mind- when she knows that they will get her whatever she needs, that will settle her mind. And if you contend that people might come to confuse her case with that of another kind of ill person in life-threatening danger, and do things for him too through abnormal ways- these cases are not similar, since she is not in danger, since that begins only when her womb opens, which happens later. Additionally, according to the Rambam's position in Laws of Shabbat 2:3, "regarding other types of ill people, we do not violate Shabbat using women as intermediaries, so that they will not view Shabbat lightly." In that case, for birthing mothers, since we would in an ideal case want the Shabbat violations to be done by women, since all the needs of birthing mothers were done by women in Talmudic times, it would be appropriate for them to do them in an abnormal way, to indicate not to learn from this case to other ill people.