I’m leaving for the International Confederation of Midwives conference today. While on the plane I’m going to read a few books for review on this blog. That will give me something to do since last time they confiscated my knitting!

There was an interesting article in the UK’s Telegraph called who’s birth plan is it anyway. I’m in the unenviable position that women only book me if they want a homebirth. There is a total understanding of the care I offer and the location. There aren’t any traumatised women claiming I withheld drugs or changed the venue. The article implies that midwives are stopping women from getting pain relief they badly need.

When Hannah Hancock was pregnant with her first child she was keen on the idea of a drug-free birth. But, like millions of women, when labour pains kicked in, ideals were abandoned. ‘It was a long labour. At first I was on an oxytocin drip, then on pethidine, and a few hours later when they asked me if I wanted an epidural I was shouting, “Give it to me now!”

This suggest that the oxytocin drip was pain relief. It’s not, but it can make your contractions much worse. Maybe she should just have said no to that.

For the record, if women want pain relief and are happy that they know all potential complications then they should get it. They shouldn’t then complain about the outcome of a Cesarean that may have been avoided, having delayed milk production or potential long term effects.

In the article they claim that most of this is because of Grantly Dick-Read.

At the heart of much of the argument are the philosophies of Grantly Dick-Read, a British obstetrician who was convinced that much of labour pain came from society conditioning women to expect it. His 1942 classic Childbirth Without Fear expounded his belief that women educated to be free of fear and tension would experience birth as a ‘normal and natural defecation’. Pain relief, he said, was undesirable because it affected the baby and slowed down labour, frequently leading to interventions, such as the use of forceps or the ventouse vacuum pump, or emergency caesareans.

Dick-Read became the first president of the Natural Childbirth Trust, promoting better understanding of his system. This later became the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), whose antenatal classes are seen as a rite of passage for all middle-class couples. Yet Treadwell believes they may also encourage an unnecessarily stoic attitude. ‘In any respects the NCT is wonderful, but I have noticed that several midwives who have gone down its route believe pain relief leads to a cascade of interventions, when with modern techniques there is little evidence to back this.’

What a load of crap. How is it that they always believe a man has to be behind a theory. He didn’t start people considering labour to be normal. Women have been doing this for thousands of years.

I have also noted another blog claiming that Dick-Read is a racist and sexist and believed labour was a punishment for women. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the gist of the book but I must admit I haven’t read it for ages so one of my pieces of reading on the plane will be childbirth without fear so I can comment for myself. I may even agree after looking into it. You never know.