This is the sixth post in a series.
In the book Matrescence: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood, Lucy Jones talks about the shocking lack of information available to women regarding what childbirth is really like, what the actual consequences are of using pain relief during labor, and what some of the potential risks are during delivery.
Jones takes up the subject of "natural childbirth." She says that women have been told for so long that "natural childbirth" is best that this has pretty much become the ideal. However, she lets us know that the concept of "natural childbirth" has a very particular origin.
She says that this goes back a long way in medicine to a British obstetrician named Grantly Dick-Read, who coined the phrase in the mid-1900s and who portrayed childbirth in a highly idealized way. Dick-Read promulgated the idea that childbirth is not necessarily painful and that fear is the main cause of pain during labor and delivery. He developed a form of hypnotherapy that he said would help women be less anxious about going through labor and delivery and, therefore, experience less pain. His work is still used and quoted today.
However, according to Jones, Dick-Read had scant evidence for this theory. And he also had little evidence that hypnosis and relaxation techniques could make the birth process far less painful.
This will come as shocking news to most women—as these ideas are still popular and routinely disseminated in childbirth classes to this........