Читать книгу New Active Birth: A Concise Guide to Natural Childbirth - Janet Balaskas - Страница 15

In the Western world, the birthstool or chair remained indispensably part of the equipment of most midwives up to the middle of the eighteenth century. Each wealthy household had its own stool, whilst among the poor a stool was transported from house to house. The birthstools of royalty were carved and ornamented with jewels. Dutch, German and French sixteenth century drawings show the great use of birthstools, as do Chinese drawings of the same period. Even today, a birthchair is still used by some Egyptian women.

The first record of a woman lying down for birth describes Madame de Montespan, mistress of Louis XIV, who lay down in a recumbent position so that he could watch the birth from behind a curtain. Then in the mid seventeenth century in France, two brothers named Chamberlain invented the forceps. The best position for a forceps delivery is to have the woman lying down. This invention was jealously guarded by the Chamberlains who performed their deliveries shrouded by black drapes, but the obstetric fashion for ladies of quality to give birth in recumbent positions became firmly entrenched, and the physician took over from the midwife in the birth chamber. In the same century, François Mauriceau became the leading figure in French obstetrics. He scorned the use of the birthchair and advocated childbirth in bed, lying on the back. As forceps gained popularity, the birthchair lost favour and, by the end of the eighteenth century, little more was heard of it.

In the nineteenth century, Queen Victoria was the first woman in England to have chloroform while giving birth. Delivery under anaesthetic further established the lying down position on the back or on the side. Birth positions which lend themselves more easily to the convenience of the attendants who perform these procedures became the only choice, and the practice of confining a woman to bed for the major part of her labour and then on to an obstetric table for delivery, eventually spread throughout the West. This practice has become so widespread that the word ‘confinement’ is commonly used to describe the birth process.

The birthchair had given way to the bed and the delivery tables of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Women were flat on their backs, a position that made them passive and controllable, and although this offered a fine view to the attendant, it was in total defiance of the active forces of gravity and the joyous independence that comes from naturally and instinctively giving birth actively, on one’s own two feet.