Husband Coached Childbirth - Robert A. Bradley
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Extract from Dr.Bradley's website
Natural childbirth is based upon a simple fundamental
principle. Every animal on God's beautiful earth that falls
in forty feet of water swims, except the one non-instinctual
and somewhat stupid animal known as homo sapiens. You have
to teach them what to do in water or they will drown. Every
animal gives birth to its young spontaneously. You don't
drag gas machines and caudal needles out into the woods
when a mother fox, wolf, sheep, you name, is having a baby.
But human animals have to be taught to give birth. They do not know how to conduct
themselves in labor. They have to be trained. One of the fundamental principles
we go into in great detail is that of using the natural position which the woman
assumes during sleep for relaxation during the first stage of labor. Therefore
he studies this late some night when she doesn't know she is being observed.
There are many variations of arm and leg position. Some ladies cuddle with their
arms underneath them and they use two pillows for their head. Some sprawl in
a running position and use no pillow at all. Some like a pillow under their raised
leg.
One thing we find consistent - all lay on their side. I have never found a husband
whose wife lay flat on her back with eighteen pounds of uterus on top of her.
But he didn't have to tell me that because I grew up in the country. If you ever
go out and find an animal lying on its back with it's four legs extended heavenward
and a uterus full of babies on top, go home and get a spade and come back and
bury it.
I blush with shame for my beloved profession because only eighteen years ago
when I first started in practice I saw restraints slapped on women to hold them
flat on their back because it was more convenient for the nurse to get the fetal
heart beat. Let us pray that the medical profession awakens to the fact that
patients are human beings. Despite the fact that in teaching natural childbirth
we help them understand instinctual behavior which humans must learn, we do no
consider our patients as animals. We try to consider them as total individuals
with a body, a mind and a soul. Natural childbirth is the comprehensive obstetrics
which include recognition of all three of these
Key Phrases from book
true natural childbirth, grandmother
treatment, unmedicated mothers, pelvic rocking, unmedicated
births, iced orange juice, heavy uterus, daddy pictures,
birth room, labor coach, previous babies, prenatal education,
vaginal mucus