[Version originale en français]

Naissance sauvage (Wild birth)

Andréine Bel

In March 1997, during the shooting of a film in a remote village of Maharashtra in India, I was asked to interview Dharubai, a traditional midwife. The souvenir of my own birthing emerged intact in the background as she was reporting the same facts and almost the same gestures as Bernard, my companion. We were not alone any more. Dharubai claimed that all women in her village do give birth in the same way, as women from neighbouring villages and the entire country. I later came to know that 70% of women in India are giving birth with traditional midwives, even though traditional midwifery is far from being established on a unique model.

This interview was the first in a long series of encounters mentioned in my article "Three viewpoints one the praxis and concepts of midwifery: Indian daiS, cosmopolitan obstetrics and Japanese seitai": <http://sante-autonome.info/dais/daicomp.htm>.

As we returned to France in 1998, we browsed the Internet in search for all that might reconnect us to the world of demedicalized, reconsidered, rediscovered -- and eminently subversive -- childbirth. We regularly took part in discussion lists of the English birth movement. In February 2000 we created a French-language list and the "Naissance" portal <http://www.naissance.ws>. A awakening, a need for information, exchange of knowledge and education indeed is taking place in France.

Twenty years after the birth of our son, I have reached a broader and more critical vision. I also know that the medicalisation of childbirth is perceived as the only way for many women, and that this way is the best for them. This testimony does not claim to promote a model, certainly not. Nothing can be generalised with respect to birth. What suits a particular woman may not suit another one; even for the same woman, what is adapted to her one day may not be right next day. Therefore any sort of imitation would not make sense.

My research on controlled and instinctive movement which started with the practice of dance later took me to postural readjustment. This comprehension would certainly not have helped me to have a better delivery, but it enables me today to report it in greater detail with, I hope, some reflection and distance.

This is the story of a wild birth, free of any external violence.

Preparation?

From the start of my pregnancy I was very wary of not paying attention to negative and sometimes agressive talk every pregnant woman seems to attract: you should fear this, you do not know how painful it can be, I endured so much trouble and so on. Therefore we concealed our intention to give birth on our own as this project was slowly coming into shape.

The preparation during my pregnancy consisted in deconditioning myself from a priori statements, whether that they came from others or from me, of old or of modern ideas regarding diet, "preparatory" exercises for the delivery, etc. If there was any method, it was the one that my organism dictated to me. Life, health and the disease had made me discover some unsuspected resources of my body. On top of this, seven years practising regenerating movement enabled me to freely explore how my organism would trade off its efforts towards health: involuntary and uncontrolled movements, symptoms of diseases, instinctive survival reactions and so on. I gradually learned not to be afraid of it any more, understanding in my guts to what extent it was essential to trust these demonstrations and accompany them actively. (see " What is the regenerating movement?" <http://sante-autonome.info/seitai/mouvt-fr.htm> and "Health in question" <http://sante-autonome.info/seitai/about-en.htm>)

I followed only one technical indication, that of a bonesetter whom I knew well since I owe him to be a bonesetter myself. It is about a movement which corresponds to a sensation. The soft massage of a point of the belly, with the tip of fingers doing small circles clockwise. This point is on the left side, at a node of an equilateral triangle whose second node would be the navel and the third the pubic bone. From the 7th month onwards, each time I got nagging pain from discomfort for lack of rest, I massaged this point. It was recognizable by a kind of aspiration and hollow under my fingers. I immediately would feel my baby moving with great pleasure and I knew that I had been too far in tiredness. Therefore I rested more. By this regular and sensitive adjustment of the last months of my pregnancy, I probably avoided any risk of bad presentation of the child. Midwives of Bihar (India) showed me the same point, and its symmetrical compared to the navel, massaged in the opposite direction, to invite the foetus to reposition itself.

My body, more than my head, had all the data enabling me to give birth: it knew my history, that of my parents and grandparents, my whole life experience, both conscious and unconscious, voluntary and involuntary, and my relative capacity of adaptation. While pregnant I had the feeling of things that were taking place in me and this feeling adapted at every precise moment. In the same time, we were not closed to the possibility to go to the hospital, if ever we felt the need.

Images

One day, we went to Paris to meet Itsuo Tsuda. We wanted to ask him for the address of Frédérick Leboyer whose first book published in 1974, "Birthing without violence", was for us the only reference to a vision of the birth in agreement with our expectation. Chance had done things well, because this very Sunday morning Leboyer himself was also paying a visit to Tsuda. Thus we found ourselves, after the training course of regenerating movement, around coffee-croissants. I asked Leboyer which private clinic he would advise me. He answered me that the "Leboyer method", such as one practiced it in France in those days, was a show, and that insofar as I felt in good health and my baby too, I could as well birth on my own. Tsuda commented: "You know, at the end of a certain time the foetus becomes a foreign body for his/her mother. She has no alternative to expelling it. Childbirth is as simple as to have a bowel movement... " This image horrified Leboyer and put an end to our interview. While coming out, he begged me not to take my child for excrement! As we were alone, Tsuda told us: "The problem of Leboyer is that he idealized birth..." He refers to this incident in "Le dialogue du silence" (Paris: Courrier du Livre, 1979, p.132) with this comment:

When we eat food that we desire, it is a pleasure. When we eat by obligation, we don not experience pleasure. When we vomits food which is not appropriate to us, it is also a pleasure, provided that we do not add a negative imagination to it. To evacuate, by stools or micturition, when the need is felt, is a pleasure. To deliver a baby when the moment has come quite naturally, is a pleasure.

It was for us a great teaching, that of not letting ourselves be carried away by imagination, be it positive or negative. For, replacing the usual speech on the suffering and danger of birth by a ready-made picture of beauty and harmony is also to disconnect oneself from one's sensations.

Tsuda's insight proved right. Indeed, "Birthing without violence" is a splendid essay centered on the greeting of the child at birth, which sounded utterly revolutionary for the time. Still, we expected the same sort of enlightened and sense-giving approach to childbirth (from the mother's side). However, 22 years later, "Si l'enfantement m'était conté" (Paris: Seuil, 1996) is a masterly plea for rehabilitated forceps, side episiotomy neither too generous nor too small, Caesarean section as a minor inconvenience, etc. (Read for instance "Technique de l'épisiotomie")

One day of autumn

Our son was born in September 1979 in the small house which we lived in Vasselay near Bourges, with only his parents to accompany his birth.

This beautiful afternoon of autumn, waves began to seize me. For nine months and nine days everything had prepared this moment. For some time, I was in a strange state of concentration, made of quietude and inability to think of anything else than preparing a nest: my zeal to do housework astonished me considerably, sewing and knitting had become a delight...

We walked, we lied down, willing to listen, without impatience. Bernard followed the waves of contractions with his hands in my back or on my hips. He let himself be carried by the swell, flexible with each intonation of this breath which submerged us. I did not hear him think nor did I see him projecting an external glance. Otherwise he would not have had anything to do with me.

Bernard recently wrote:

The father can be a considerable support if he is able, like his wife, "to let go" and to be born to his own sensations. He can share all that because between him and his partner there is no barrier, in particular with respect to the sexual dimension which is in the centre of this event. But I understand that certain women, at certain times, want to live it alone.

Like a valiant soldier, our baby took the first step by breaking the water bag, at least it is the impression which we had. The rhythm of the wave went up and down in several tides, with intervals of rest and sleep.

Several months earlier I had asked Itsuo Tsuda which would be the best position to deliver. He had replied that each woman has "her" position. An seitai expert may be able to determine in a few minutes which position is favourable to which woman. " But for you, you only should take the one in which you will experience a maximum pleasure!" This was the first time we heard the word " pleasure " associated with child delivery.

Like a tree moved by the storm, my back was supported by the wall covered with cushions, my feet and hands were well anchored on their supports. I readjusted this position progressively. If I deviated from the precise position that I had felt appropriate, unbearable and suffocating pain submerged me. By curiosity, I renewed the experiment twice and thus measured the torture which women under control must endure. I gave up doing a third test. Letting my body act, it was a splendid force which seized me, one which was reminding me of orgasm in its power and inexpressible happiness.

The silent night filled up with the thousand sounds of the countryside, dawn was approaching and with it my breath took a strange form. I can say that my astonishment did not have any limit that morning in front of the intelligence of breaths which were seekiing my baby at the bottom of my belly. Each one pushed him towards the day, each one with its own shape, rhythm and force, in perfect agreement with the position of my baby throughout this voyage out of time. I observed... and did nothing but let do, only careful to be available to this intelligence which I saw at work in my body.

No interference came to disturb this state of grace made out of immediacy.

The passage

The descent was done in a slow spiral. The head of my son went through this crown of fire which had become the opening of the world. Flames tortured me in a few unbearable grips. An arm accompanied the head almost at once, then his bust spouted out.

The cord of life

The father welcomed his son. Small and short cries, some gurglings, then a silence whose only eternity can give an idea; like a frog on my belly, he held entirely under my hands, only his breathing existed. His peaceful face looked at life and was amazed without being astonished. As if he had guessed.

The noise of water that his father poured into the basin, the "Leboyer" bath which we tested, all that was useless and probably we missed experience.

Dried, protected by his vernix that we had taken care not to remove, our baby was still connected to me, 45 minutes after his birth. The blood of placenta conveyed by the cord had had time to carefully ensure the passage of placental breathing to pulmonary respiration while making profit the lungs from a salutary surplus of oxygen.

The father had cut the cord... so that the world could be explored, lived by this child. Already, he was a person who was going to explore life, and whom we would help, follow, and love until the end of time.

From the ligature, Bernard gripped the cord with his fingers and pushed up remaining blood in my direction. The capillary blowing thus caused in the placenta probably helped this one to come out in a few minutes. Two spontaneous uterine contractions were enough to expel it. Bernard looked at the placenta and checked his integrity. He declared that it was perfect.

Accompanying

In my belly, since the beginning, my child had anticipated his discomforts, and they reflected mine. There were initially nauseas. I could touch neither the beautiful roasted white bread, nor the beautiful fruits and vegetables full of chemicals in Delhi. I took rather quickly the decision to suspend my studies of dance and join his father. Nauseas disappeared.

Later, his movements which made my belly undulate were as many remarkable and readable messages. At the time of our visit to the private clinic of Chateauroux, Doctor Ploquin insisted that I try breathing exercises for "painless childbirth". Five minutes of this attempt appeared to be a disaster against which our baby, any foetus which he was, fought furiously for half an hour. Besides, it was our only and ultimate medical attempt.

This person refractory to "good intentions" only allowed the presence of those who did not seek to auscultate me, even in thought. He warned me with great blows of legs of the arrival of importunate people even before they would cross the threshold of the gate. On the other hand, to attend a course of aikido pleased him tremendously, and participants could see from their place the waves he made imitating them. He responded to our hands, our voices, the spectacle of life as if he had seen it all almost better than us.

Just arrived in this world, he was peacefully breathing, with this peach complexion specific to secret wishes. His fingers clutched our index with a surprising force. Lying on my belly, he raised his head with a determination which made us burst out of laughing. His vigorous legs wriggled boldly.

Perhaps by imitation by seeing our she-cat cleaning his kitten, I licked his eyes. Saliva, the best of disinfectants, is refreshing, and the tongue is so soft...

The first day the three of us spent sleeping together. We looked at each other, as any love which is discovered. I would tell him soft words, like all moms of the world, and he would listen. He would listen to our voices.

At night he filled the bed like a mountain in a small plain. We felt very small and he was so large! We listened to our breaths. The beautiful rocking wooden cradle that we had manufactured for him remained unoccupied most of the time...

If I would give him a finger, he would suck it. But he did not seek my breast, even if I presented it to him. The vernix still nourished him by the skin. From time to time I gave him a little water with one or two lemon drops, or with a little sugar (nothing to compare with the sweetened water feeding-bottle).

It is only the third day that he made black meconium that his intestines had accumulated during these months of intrauterine life. Once his intestines were clean, hunger seized him and he was not long to find what was necessary for him of colostrum, then milk. He took my breast when and as many times he wished. I avoided parsley and mint. His father fed me with complete wheat gruel (supposedly free of pesticides and artificial fertilisers), soups with five perfumes (aniseed, fennel, cinnamon, cumin, coriander) and more nor less all things which I craved for.

That same day we called a doctor for the certificate of good health. We had already met this homeopath whose patients came from all over France. He started walking like a deer in the tiny room and exclaiming: "You, people, you have guts! I dreamed all my life to do that for my children but I never dared!" He was turned over so much that he forgot to charge the visit.

When getting up is carried out correctly, the woman rejuvenates thanks to her childbirth. Childbearing is a marvellous opportunity for her to readjusting herself. All her body benefits from a (total r)evolution. Her hormonal system opens out, the balance of the hips is restored if it had been earlier disrupted, her sensitivity and the instinct are multiplied tenfold.

Nomadic women need, it is said, a few minutes for their hips to close. I waited for four days... The thermometer was not necessary. At the proper time, the need to reach a vertical position was obvious and compulsive. This fundamental experiment is reported in detail in my letter to Tsuda, with words which I would have difficulty to make so vivid today.

As to our child, when growing older he went through stages of gradual opening. His world was initially his father and mother, then relatives and friends, then the outer world.

In rural India, mother and child are protected from the outer world during approximately three weeks. They are allowed full rest and adapted food. Visits are selected and kept short so that they can spend these privileged days in peace. As far as possible, the child does not leave his family surrounding before she is three months, and ventures away from her place with parents only after six months. I clearly perceived these three stages in my child, long before knowing Indian customs.

14 months later...

Sensitizing

To induce positions, to coach breathing and direct pushes, means inciting the birthing woman to look at herself as a living machine which she must provide with energy by the only capacity of her will.

Involuntary energy has a tenfold power which often frightens the observer.

Two bodies in freedom, two wild bodies, listening to each other, mother and child. In symbiosis, they start childbirth. The mother knows from inside and without analysing it the progression of her baby. Her body at work knows how to rock or drive its hips to correct or compensate for a presentation or a release that would be difficult for her child. Her organism knows how to concentrate and breathe to help the baby in his efforts of progression. It corrects its position with each push to satisfy the baby's needs for breathing and moving. The body has its own stimulants, emollients, pain killers, antibiotics and antibodies. It uses its own keys and resources to regulate itself.

Casey Mankela is a midwife, the director of the Michigan school of Traditional Midwifery and editor of "The Calling". She gave a testimony of her own unassisted homebirth in Midwifery Today (No 52, Winter 1999, p.24-26). She described how she drew in herself resources to face a shoulder dystocia and give birth to her daughter without external intervention. She comments (p.26):

I have been critically called to account for that birth many times by family, friends and even midwives. Eventually I found it easier not to speak any more because the criticism felt like a violation. But now it is time to talk because it is worth talking about. It is and will remain a life accomplishment I never want to forget. I would do it again. This experiment left me a better mother, midwife and woman.

A sane body whose physical and mental intimacies are preserved has an unusual capacity to come out of difficulties on its own. But to make this possible, it should be able to move, contract and relax, get tired and take rest, sleep, work at full swing and above all deliver babies without being inattentive nor disturbed. This body's knowledge is not the fruit of a study. I would even say that it has a chance to work only if we leave the study in the cloakroom. If we makes ourselves available. If we surrender.

All is a matter of sensitizing.

If I am under tension and worry about it as a negative element, I focus on the tension. I will take yoga or deep relaxation courses to dissolve the tension, and to a certain extent I will reach that goal, at least superficially. With the result that what was putting me under tension has been overlooked, and I only succeeded in making my body swallow what was not appropriate to me. I anaesthetized myself with this very thing which tightened me.

Everyday I meet people who spent part of their lives trying to overlook the causes of their tensions, masking them with practices of voluntary relaxation or manual therapies: osteopathy, massage, magnetism... Then the question pops up suddenly: "Where is my sensitivity, where is my life?" That day, a first step has been done.

I thus start again from where I am. I am under tension. I try to find the cause of my tension. If I pay attention to the cause, I at least am likely to solve the major part of the problem. However, letting the tension do its work in me, it will urge my body and mind to find a solution -- inside or outside -- and act accordingly. Moreover, in the future, my organism will become receptive to something that it discovered to be inappropriate. I will thus avoid reproducing harmful behaviour.

If I am tensed during childbirth, because already during the pregnancy..., because my husband..., because my life... my delivery has all chances to take a longer time, to be more difficult, but this won't be a failure of my body. On the contrary it points at its capacity to cope with tension, husband or life.

Listening to this tension will yield answers. Perhaps request the presence of so-and-so, push others out of the room, perhaps forgive oneself or someone else. The body raises or subsides, turns or twists, rocks, shouts, breaks out finally. It breaks its chains. And the child comes out like a rose in the morning, as if all that pain and anxiety had been only a mirage. There is silence, eternity, a nameless bliss.

There is life. Birthing is part of life. Resensitization should start well before childbirth and even before being pregnant. Birthing is a inner revolution, like adolescence, menopause, the approach of death and disease. These are as many opportunities to reappropriate one's own feelings, and spontaneous adjustments that these events cause in oneself

A pregnant woman is not a woman in general, nor an ordinary woman, today like yesterday. She is a woman who has a capacity, a frightening power from immemorial time for the ones who tried to control. "The ones": matrones, midwives, doctors, Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Renaissance, industrial revolution, modernity... Formerly, midwives would stand up on the bellies of birthing women, today in France there are still people who stand on the women's bellies -- I have seen women who went through this torture. Formerly, they did not have today's technology and procedures; had they have had them, they would have used them as well.

To give birth is an involuntary and autonomous process in all "physiological cases", which are the majority. The mother, if she feels doing it, can attend her own birth, receive her child in her own hands and cut the cord, or even leave the baby attached to the placenta till the cord dries by itself, as in "Lotus birth".. A pregnant woman, with all her fragility, handles sensitivity, intuition and premonition like reliable tools for her knowledge and survival. She is in a state of "creation". She is delivering herself, her baby, the world. Provided that one allows her to be free. Provided that she can run with the wolves...

Disobedience

Forty-eight years ago, my mother and I wanted to deliver and be born on a Sunday, out of the daily agitation of the hospital. But the doctor wanted his weekend. He imposed induction on Friday morning, pretending that it would not make a difference. My mother suffered like hell, as an induced woman (indeed, those days, without an epidural), but she told me many times that it wasn't important since life had been stronger than the carelessness of a doctor.

But he had the last word, because he prohibited her to nurse me on the pretext that her milk had been poisoned by drugs. He bandaged her inflated breasts and made her milk dry up with blows of purgative. This day, she developed a tough hatred for medical violence, which was added to her innate aversion for abuses of power of any kind.

Twenty seven years after having matured the event, I delivered my son under the conditions reported here. The suffering of my mother and mine formed the soil out of which I gained my independence which registers today as a duty of civil disobedience.

In the whole world, spontaneous childbirth has become marginal, wounded, disavowed. With it women lost the right to allow themselves and even the desire for exercising this right. Right to childbirth without perfusion, scissors, without technology, free of all obstacles, which gives back voices to women and men, and return birth to its potential. Such is the major claim that this 21st century might well be born with.

Venelles, April 3, 2000

A letter to Itsuo Tsuda

Original version: <http://sante-autonome.info/seitai/mail/o210979.htm>

The following is the translation of a letter I sent to Itsuo Tsuda after the birth of our child T. on 12 September 1979. The letter was published in his book Le Triangle Instable -- Ecole de la Respiration VI (Paris: Le Courrier du Livre, 1980:75-80). Names have been restored to the real ones. Tsuda's comments have been partly reproduced.

21 September 1979

Dear Mr. Tsuda,

T. was born at home. The two of us welcomed him -- the two of us and the entire world. Daybreak and a delicious stream of bird songs were with us to celebrate.

Regular and spaced contractions had started 36 hours earlier. I spent time walking with Bernard in the neighbouring forest. The rhythm of our breathing kept in pace with our steps. T. was setting himself in place and slowly getting ready. We were not in a hurry: he was waiting for "his stars..."

The water bag broke under his own push. During the next three hours, until he was born, slow and powerful contractions neither caused me to pant nor feel over-oxygenated. I was admiring the wisdom of my body and I paid full attention to its rhythm. The inhaling before each series of contractions was particularly surprising: jerking like in a sob, it seemed to "fetch" the baby, coming to the diaphragm.

Bernard was accompanying me in a silent attention, his hands on my belly or my back. At times he slept, but he always kept breathing between the contractions.

After several attempts I found my position: my back was against the wall with a small tilt, heels against buttocks, hands pushing on the bed.

Contractions always remained spaced; we felt that the baby was taking advantage of the rest between contractions to adjust his position, notably the direction of his head during the final push.

As we called him by his name -- a name we had never pronounced -- the decisive moment came. Tsuda had not joked saying that our child would respond to his name rushing out... As soon as his head showed up, before Bernard had time to do anything, his left hand slipped out followed by his arm, and he burst out like a cannonball.

For a couple of seconds he had slow, foetus-like movements, then he cried. I placed him on my belly and he became quiet.

Either we were too unskilled or T. might be "against" Leboyer's method: he did not appreciate the bath, and we did not insist!

Tsuda: The bath, oh the bath! It's one of the things most difficult to explain. Bath as a means of cleaning exists everywhere. Noguchi perceives it as gymnastics for babies, a standstill gymnastics. You must take into account, not only the temperature of water which may vary according to circumstances, but also the speed and duration of the immersion. If you miss anything it's failure. In addition, it must be performed with all the required naturalness and no trace of impatience.

About a minute after Bernard had tied the umbilical cord following your instructions, the placenta was born in three contractions. I did not raise my chest. I lied down near our child and I stayed there for four days.

These were four days of complete peace and care with the sole intrusion of a friend, a homeopathic doctor who was a bit invasive with curiosity and applause... We called him as late as possible for the inescapable health certificate. He noticed that I had a small torn and gave me the formula of a herbal preparation that quickly allowed it to close perfectly. We also massaged infection points [on the arms, according to seitai] with the effect of draining pus to the wound that cleaned in two days.

I breathed out slowly. The next inspiration was the starting point of a gyratory movement, as if my chest were being screwed and unscrewed from my pelvis. My breath became calm and so to say unnoticeable.

My chest went down to the back very slowly, without the help of hands that remained in front with my head to maintain the balance. As I was almost lying down, my whole body started shivering, then I lied down entirely with both legs half folded. My knees opened slowly. When my legs became quiet my right hand placed itself above the tear done by T. when he was born, and it closed it, making me entirely new, so to say a virgin.

Bernard had assisted me with hand-breathing and checked that nothing would come in the way of my movement. At one point, however, he released his attention for one second to pick up a dressing gown that had fallen down from the bed, unaware that it was touching my left knee. This gesture disturbed my rest and a short movement started in my left leg. My "frustration" caused by the unrest entirely dissolved once the "new-born movement" again shook my entire body. I stayed lying on the bed till the next morning. The sciatic nerve of my left leg remained sensitive for a whole day. At present I feel everything has come back into place.

Tsuda: a very short moment of inattention was sufficient to cause a great disorder in Andréine who was in a very sensitive state. If I may figure out the scene, the shock caused by Bernard's brisk movement probably took place while she was inhaling. A shock during exhaling wouldn't cause such a mess. Andréine was trained enough to eliminate the effect in a single day thanks to her movement that was setting off on its own. When I think to the general lack of care with which women are treated, manipulated and fiddled with during this period of their lives, I am not surprised that they have to undergo consequences.

My first walk was resembling that of a child who learns how to walk. At each step my foot was moving up and the leg was moving forward on its own. I was in an unstable balance: I was learning the art of walking...

I couldn't refrain a shudder in my back thinking for a second that it would have been so "easy" to miss all I had experienced, only by doing things "the way everybody does." Now I understand why so many women loose their impetus after birthing, as if their child had drilled a hole in their womb.

A few reactions

Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2000
Robert Wolff

I sent out a letter to a very dear friend, almost exactly my age, who is dying from emphysema. In my letter I described my present state of being, a few days/weeks after a series of mini strokes. I can tell something has happened in my brain, but am not at all sure what. My consciousness seems the same, and yet... The most puzzling facet is that I have lost two weeks of memory.

And in the return packet of mail I received your long letter in french. It solved one of my doubts - I have no difficulties reading French! So my brain must still be be functioning as before. Or maybe not as before, but well enough.

My favorite word in French has become "sauvage". When my dear daughter-in-law went to Paris last year to visit her sister, her brother-in-law had only one word for her! Ma soeur sauvage - by which he meant uncultured, not-French. It gave her quite a inferiority complex. I told her it was an honor to be 'sauvage', that it meant not plastic, not artificial. I cherish the sauvage at my house. This is the season of the orchids that bloom in all splendor now. I like the word sauvage!

Her own experience with naissance Americaine was traumatic enough. They made her feel as if she was doing somehing wrong, that they had to do a C-section.. I talked with one of the attending nurses who told me that any midwife would have been able to rotate the foetus sideways to facilitate a natural birth. A few weeks later when the group of mothers who had given birth at about the same time met for a party she was embarrassed to go, thinking she was the only one who had given difficulties - on the contraire, she found out that ALL had had cesarian births.

(Read Robert Wolff's "What it is to be human", "Spiral" et other inspiring essays: <http://www.wildwolff.com>)

Disclaimer

The information contained in this paper is not a substitute for professional medical advice. The authors' contention is to address ethical and social dimensions of birth attendance. A thorough and well-documented discussion of obstetric care may be found in books by Henci Goer, notably Obstetric Myths Versus Research Realities -- A Guide to the Medical Literature, London: Bergin & Garvey, 1995. [On-line purchase]

All pictures © Bernard Bel