Husband-Coached Childbirth (Fifth Edition)

Introduction The administrator of Porter Memorial Hospital in Denver, Colorado, called our office one day in 1961. He had received a request from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for permission to film a documentary on husband-coached natural childbirth for presentation on their program, This Hour Has Seven Days. Mrs. Merle Grosman, of Toronto, a natural-childbirth mother herself and a member of the Natural Childbirth Association at the time, had initiated the idea and written to ask if we had patients who would cooperate. In discussing it with her, we decided to utilize a woman having her first baby. There is a misconception promoted by the unknowing that having a baby by natural childbirth might be possible after having had other babies, but not with the first! Accordingly we contacted our due or overdue primigravidas (women experiencing their first pregnancies), and after Tom Koch, director, and his crew of cameramen arrived, these women were photographed with their husbands at class, doing prenatal exercises, etc., as participants in mental and physical preparation for childbirth. Then everyone waited patiently for one of them to go into labor. The law of the perversity of nature in general and pregnant women in particular manifested itself in that we had had many births just before our Canadian visitors arrived, then had to wait a week before one went into labor. This served to illustrate again that babies cannot read calendars and that doctors cannot tell when labor will begin. As an honorary life member of the Toronto Natural Childbirth Association I was very much honored to be chosen to illustrate the great principles involved. I was also embarrassed that it took so long before a patient went into labor. I was bound by medical principles not to interfere with the development of a baby by forcing or inducing labor for anyone's convenience, so everyone waited. Finally at midnight one night the phone rang, and Patricia and Gary Petersen announced they were on their way to the hospital. They were met at the hospital entrance by the somewhat sleepy but efficient TV camera crew of the CBC, who carefully followed the course of labor and birth with cameras and sound recorders. The visitors were intrigued and delighted by the calm self-assurance of these two young people who confidently went about the happy business of bearing a child as they had each been trained to do. The husband had signed in for his wife while the nurse in attendance had performed the prep. He then joined his wife, to remain with her throughout labor and birth and share the requested privilege of walking back with her from the delivery room. Their happy chatter as they strolled together in the early stages of labor would be rhythmically interrupted by uterine contractions. As her labor picked up in intensity they returned to the labor room and concentrated on their respective tasks. The old term "labor pains" just couldn't properly be applied here, for the observers could see no evidence of pain. The husband busily cranked the bed flat, arranged an extra pillow under his wife's raised knee as she turned on her side and assumed the "running" position of early first-stage labor that she had learned in class. During the contractions the young mother would calmly lie curled up, peacefully close her eyes, and automatically relax all the muscles of her body. The young husband tenderly placed a guiding hand on his wife's abdomen and directed her diaphragmatic breathing. He would also lean over and maintain a constant soft whispering in his wife's ear during this interval. The observing guests could not make out his words, but the endearing tone of his voice made apparent that the content was indeed the repetitious love "gobbledygook" with which she was so familiarBradley, Robert A. is the author of 'Husband-Coached Childbirth (Fifth Edition)' with ISBN 9780553385168 and ISBN 055338516X.