Fredrick Leboyer obituary (obstetrician, "birth without violence")

Last edited Wed Jun 21, 2017, 11:01 AM - Edit history (1)

Frédérick Leboyer obituary

Obstetrician best known for his revolutionary 1974 book, Birth Without Violence
Frédérick Leboyer’s crusade to put the baby at the centre of birth led to conditions that today’s parents take for granted, including peace and calm in the delivery room.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/15/frederick-leboyer-obituary#img-1
Frédérick Leboyer’s crusade to put the baby at the centre of birth led to conditions that today’s parents take for granted, including peace and calm in the delivery room. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian



“Do you think babies like being born?” So opened "Birth Without Violence", a book that in 1974 was to change obstetrics. Its author was a French doctor who, having delivered thousands of babies, had come to a startling realisation – that while the requirements of the mother, the father and medical staff were all catered for in the delivery room, the needs of the one other person involved were being entirely overlooked. The baby, said Frédérick Leboyer, was being ignored. Some even claimed newborn babies had no feelings. “The newborn baby … a person?” he wrote. “Now, really. Medical books will tell you quite the opposite.”

In an age during which television programmes are made about the lives of babies in utero, and when children have a commissioner and a UN convention to guard their rights, it seems odd to remember that when "Birth Without Violence" was written the baby was not considered central to the business of childbirth. Beyond being physically alive, he or she had pretty much a bit part in the drama – the doctor’s trophy, sometimes held aloft by his or her feet, encouraged to breathe with a slap or two on the buttocks.

Leboyer, who has died aged 98, called time on that. Babies, he pointed out, had sensitivities, and, moreover, their experience of childbirth would help shape the individual they became. Not to mention the fact that bonding between a baby and his or her mother or father was also much influenced by the baby’s psychological state. If the child was treated with calm gentleness, that crucial relationship would get off to a better start. Leboyer’s crusade to put the baby at the centre of birth led to conditions that today’s parents take for granted – reduced light and noise levels in the delivery room and, most importantly, the handing of the baby straight to the mother, except when emergency medical intervention was needed. All this came about, through the 1970s and 80s, because of Leboyer.

He believed his life’s work was influenced by the manner of his own birth, at the end of the first world war. His mother, Judith Levy (nee Weiler), an artist, had to be held down for his delivery, which was achieved using forceps, and the story of his arrival led Leboyer to think there had to be a better way. Many years later, while travelling in India, he met perhaps the biggest influence on his life, Swami Prajnanpad, who believed human beings carried the memory of their births deep within themselves. Leboyer felt that via dreams, and nightmares, he had relived his own difficult birth, and was then able to move on.

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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/15/frederick-leboyer-obituary