the natural caesarean: a woman-centred technique
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008Jenny Smith, a founding member of the Jentle Childbirth Foundation has jointly written a paper on Natural caesarean along side, F Plaat and NM Fisk. Here’s the abstract from the article, the full article can be seen here.
Although much effort has gone into promoting early skin-to-skin contact and parental involvement at vaginal birth, caesarean birth remains entrenched in surgical and resuscitative rituals, which delay parental contact, impair maternal satisfaction and reduce breastfeeding. We describe a ‘natural’ approach that mimics the situation at vaginal birth by allowing (i) the parents to watch the birth of their child as active participants (ii) slow delivery with physiological autoresuscitation and (iii) the baby to be transferred directly onto the mother’s chest for early skin-to-skin. Studies are required into methods of reforming caesarean section, the most common operation worldwide.