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Women's Way of Birth | Obstetric Way of Birth |
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| Cultural definition of birth |
- Social event
- Normal part of women's lives
- Birth is work by the woman and her family and kin
- The woman is a person passing through a major life transition
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- Potentially pathological process
- Illness
- Birth is work of doctors/nurses/midwives and other experts
- The woman is a patient
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The setting for birth |
- Home or other familiar surroundings
- Informal system of care
- In a woman's home or near
- With other women of neighbourhood and family
- Continuity of care
- Woman free to change position and move about
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- Hospital, territory alien to the woman
- Bureaucratic, hierarchical system of care
- May be distant from woman's home
- Woman is separated from those close to her
- Discontinuity of care, e.g. shift changes/woman is moved from one room or one ward
to another
- Woman may not be free to change position and move about
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Caregivers: the support they give and the conduct of labour |
- Older and more experienced women who are themselves mothers
- See birth as holistic process
- Shared decision-making between caregivers and woman giving birth
- No class distinction between caregivers and woman giving birth
- Equal relationship
- Information shared
- Personal caring - longer, more frequent, and in-depth prenatal visits
- Often strong emotional support
- Verbal and non-verbal encouragement
- Familiar language and imagery used
- Empathy
- Cultural awareness because they are part of the same culture
- Awareness of spiritual significance of birth
- Believes in integrity of birth, uses technology if appropriate and proven
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- Young and older women who have often not themselves had babies, under direction
of male obstetricians
- Trained to focus on medical aspects of birth
- Professional care that is authoritarian
- Often class distinction between obstetricians and patients
- Dominant-subordinate relationship
- Information about health, disease, and degree of risk kept secret
- Care depersonalized
- Little emotional support
- Lack of communication
- Use of medical language
- Threatening and often punitive behaviour, e.g. commanding, scolding, warning
- Little cultural awareness of rituals, beliefs, social behaviour, values
- Spiritual aspects of birth ignored or treated as embarrassing
- Values technology, often without proof that it improves birth outcomes
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| Techniques used |
- Skills to preserve the physiological progress of labour
- Usually intervention-free
- Comfort skill, e.g. massage, hot and cold compresses, holding
- Few resources to handle complicated obstructed labour
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- No skills to preserve the physiological progress of labour
- Obstetric intervention
- Drugs for pain relief
- Skills and resources to handle complicated and obstructed labour, e.g. intravenous
fluids, oxytocin stimulation, surgery
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MoonDragon's Pregnancy Information