The BBC today are reporting that Michael Odent is arguing against the presence of dads in the delivery room.

It is only in recent history that fathers have been allowed to be present at a hospital birth. It is also commonly thought that they are a reassuring presence and that women want them to be there.

Odent however, argues that they inhibit the flow of oxytocin, the hormone which encourages and supports labour.

Perhaps though, it is not simply a male presence which inhibits oxytocin, it is anxiety.

The problem with a dad in the delivery room is that unless he happens to be a midwife, obstetrician or similar, he is likely to be unfamiliar with the process of birth. He will also be anxious about his partner. She’s in pain, for heaven’s sake! Someone help her! He will maybe hang on the word of medical staff and stare at beeping monitors, rather than being the emotional support his partner needs. He may well be asking if things are normal and worry at the first sign of trouble (like a nervous passenger on a plane).

And there’s the other problem. Labour is messy and it can be a little undignified. His partner may not be altogether comfortable with her sexual partner seeing her in this way. Because let’s face it, there’s grunting and mooing, there may well be pooing and there’s goo galore. Being inhibited or worried about appearance isn’t good for the labour process.

Now, all that said, we’re talking about life partners, and we’re talking about the father of the baby. Doesn’t he deserve to see this miraculous event and welcome his new baby? And don’t you want him there to hold your hand?

The Bradley ‘husband coached’ method is as it sounds. For followers of Bradley, the dad’s role is very important, although with the best will in the world, he may surrender his position once into hospital territory and medical staff ‘take over.’

One solution here is a doula, a lay-woman trained and familiar with the process of childbirth. A doula need not replace the dad unless the couple specifically want this. In normal cases, she complements their partnership.

A doula serves many purposes. She is there primarily to provide comfort and support to the mother, through coping techniques which might include massage, breathing, aromatherapy, positioning and visualisation. She also is clearheaded and not emotionally attached so that she can help a woman to get the birth she wants, helping her to communicate her needs and wants. She can also support the dad.

The presence of the doula actually frees up the dad to concentrate on emotional support, loving his partner and serving her emotional needs. While he may help her with her breathing or offer massages or suggestions, he no longer has the sense of responsibility or the demand to remember everything from birth classes – the doula may in fact help him out with reminders, ‘Hey dad, maybe she just needs you to breathe with her.. like this’ and if they’re doing fine, she may just sit back, or do something simple for the couple, like a hand massage. Many dads feel deeply relieved by the decision to have a doula on the birth team.

Numerous studies have shown that a doula supported birth shortens labours considerably, reduces complications and caesarean rate and reduces the need for pain relief or epidural. They have also found that women are more satisfied with their birth experience and their babies breastfeed more easily and have less special care admissions and shorter hospital stays.

As an afterthought, oxytocin is a bonding hormone and a love hormone. It is my belief that birth can be family centered and a birth can do wonders for bonding a whole family, mother, father and siblings, with one another and with the baby. This is why I believe that dads have a role in the delivery room at home or in the hospital and that they should (if both partners want) be allowed to experience this amazing day. But they must be free to provide emotional, instinctive support and not be worried about what they ’should’ be doing. For my last birth, I found dad and doula were the perfect team!

To find out more information on doulas, try DONA (Doulas of North America) or Doula UK. Doulas are also available to help during pregnancy (planning a birth plan for example) and to help postpartum.

If you’re in San Diego and expecting, I also offer doula services. Drop me an email!

As an advocate for home birth, I have faced incredulity and confusion from a culture that believes that hospital is the safest place for birth. As a woman who has given birth at home, I have also faced a usually unspoken accusation. An accusation that what I did was selfish – that I was risking my baby’s life on a whim.

When faced with this and explaining why I chose to give birth at home, I have had to pick my arguments carefully. I can argue with statistics and science. I can argue emotively. Or I can tell my story.

And BIRTH, The Play makes its argument with stories. Eight women tell their stories of giving birth in the USA. Much like The Vagina Monologues, the stories are based upon interviews with over one hundred women and are presented as monologues with moments of dialogue.

As in reality, each birth in the play is different. Each woman has her own feelings and preferences, each pregnancy presents with different challenges and each woman has a different home life and social support system.

BIRTH takes away the statistics and looks at the notion of choice and the emotion of each birth. There are moments of beauty and moments of absolute terror. One woman described her progress through labour against the odds of a clockwatching, doubtful obstetrician, the baby finally crowning and her exultation as she was about to push it into the world, only to scream, “Don’t cut me! Don’t cut me!” as the doctor insisted on an apparently unnecessary episiotomy at the last moment.

The sense of despair, terror and violation was palpable, and it was these moments that were so chilling and resonated in the audience.

The play was not anti-intervention. One woman was satisfied with her planned caesarean birth and went on to repeat it. Yet another woman’s caesarean under undue pressure saw the sinister green cloth raised and her tears and bitterness. She described the removal of the baby as a death, that her body was pregnant one moment then empty the next. The shock of BIRTH was in these moments where a choice was denied and the woman’s body violated without consent. The moments when a woman was lied to about the size of her baby or pressured into unwanted interventions. These moments were nothing short of horror.

BIRTH explores the great contrast of births. Against these moments of fear, it also considers pain. That pain is anguishing and impossible in a context of fear, but that it can be good and positive when the fear is removed. We see the triumph and joy of a functioning body when it is allowed to function. The woman who shouts, ‘MY BODY ROCKS!’

Having dismissed the cliches of sitcom births, BIRTH managed to show how things could be different. Indeed, the woman with the terrifying caesarean considered running away to Tennessee with her mother-in-law to birth at Ina May Gaskin’s fabled ‘Farm’ birth centre. It wasn’t to be, but the audience could imagine the flight of fantasy, and we identified with her yearning to escape the operating theatre and the restraints of the table.

Catharsis came in the final birth story – the fourth birth of Jillian who finally achieved a home birth, surrounded by her closest friends, whispering good wishes until her baby arrives in a final triumphant moment, a moment more subtle and gentle than the ‘MY BODY ROCKS!’ lady, but the sentiment no less powerful.

BIRTH was performed by a group of birth professionals, midwives, doulas and other women committed to making birth positive. It was authentic and compelling, with moments that any woman who has given birth could identify with. It didn’t write off caesareans, doctors or intervention as evil but it showed them honestly – we saw a moment of panic as an epidural caused blood pressure to drop. We saw the fear of a paralysed bowel, a caesarean complication. But we also saw the relief as an epidural took away the pain in labour. BIRTH was honest about the benefits and risks of such, without resorting to statistics.

And that’s what BIRTH is – the human face of statistics. I can show you many figures that show that home birth is safe. Indeed, the latest research fresh in from Canada is a study of 13,000 low risk women – just the sort of women that BIRTH is about. It shows home birth to have a slightly lower rate of perinatal (infant) mortality, and far lower rates of complications including haemorhage, infection, serious tears and uterine rupture. In short, that home birth is safer.

These statistics sound impressive and might win an argument of logic but they’re only half of the story.

The true story is that birth is an important, vital event. In BIRTH, it is described as ‘Just one day’ – that a woman can suffer for ‘just one day’ and can put up with a doctor she hates, who can’t remember her name, for ‘just one day’ – but what we learn is that the events of that day will change her life completely, mentally and physically. That it will be engraved in her memory indelibly. Whether she felt loved and supported or whether she suffered.

So perhaps I need the statistics to prove that I’m not being ’selfish’ in a choice to home birth and that it is a sensible, considered option, but I also need the story to show why. Why I accepted the ‘pain’ rather than opting for a caesarean or an epidural. Why giving birth is so important. In BIRTH, every story had an impact, but the most empty story to me was the planned caesarean. It was quick, easy and the mother had a healthy baby and painful but manageable recovery. She chose to repeat the experience uneventfully. But this story felt like it had something missing. No real moment of triumph or ecstasy to compare with the women who pushed their babies out and screamed with joy. Risks and benefits, medical pros and cons aside, this moment was to me conspicuous in its absence. But that is a personal feeling, and as BIRTH so neatly pointed out, giving birth is a personal decision, but should be a decision freely made, and fully informed – and the reason that birth activists are so fiercely trying to make women aware of their power to choose is that this information is not as easily come by (or as honestly given) as we might think.

This play was an important community event, presented by women on the front line of birth to a room including a great many pregnant women. At a time when healthcare is so hotly debated, this issue should not be swept aside – women, their babies and their partners deserve more, and they deserve the birth they want. After all, it’s just one day.

Welcome to this new blog.

This will be a space to talk about parenthood.  About trying to conceive, pregnancy, birth, parenthood and every little nuance in between.  There won’t always be full agreement, but this is a safe space where we can treat one another with kindness.  I aim to take a holistic view, balancing science and emotion, mind and body.  To be evidence-led, but also to consider the more ethereal, more difficult to define moments along the journey of parenthood.

My reason for beginning this blog is that how we welcome our children to the world and facilitate their journey to adolescence and beyond is important. Beyond important.  It’s vital.  It’s vital to the future of society.  This journey undertaken by every family who nurture a new life should be foremost in the minds of all forward thinking politicians, of all planners and constructors of society.

At the very start of this journey is the first hour.  The baby’s arrival and the hour that follows.  An hour where the baby gazes at surroundings, at family and most of all at their mother.  The gaze is returned and eye contact sustained.  The baby is quiet, alert and receptive.  Bonding can begin.  The breastfeeding relationship can begin.  This first hour is just one hour in the life of mother and child, but will never be repeated.

“The hour following birth is undoubtedly one of the most critical phases in the life of human beings. It is not by chance that all human groups have routinely disturbed the physiological processes in this short period of time, via beliefs and rituals. Our cultural milieus are to a great extent shaped at the very beginning of the mother-newborn interaction.” Michael Odent MD

Birth is important.  While it is not the end of the world if birth doesn’t go how we expect and it is of course never too late to make up for lost time, this first hour is ideally the most potent time to start paving the way for the future journey.  An hour in which mama, baby and the rest of the family begin to weave the first stitches of an intricate and unique fabric that will wrap around their family unit and keep them safe as they walk along that path.

The science is supporting us.  Oxytocin, adrenaline and endorphins are described as a ‘complex cocktail of love hormones’ and will likely never peak so high again as in this moment if the birth is allowed to progress naturally.

Let’s make the best of our first hour…