For a birth without violence. My review.

The author is a French gynecologist and obstetrician. We owe him the “Leboyer method” which brings together a series of conditions for a gentle birth that allows the newborn to be born without unnecessary trauma.

There are books that call you and that you read in the periods of your life that suit them best.
Or at least, somehow, you let them model themselves on you and you manage to grasp the lifeblood of their every page.

As already anticipated on the Fertile Period FB page a few days ago, today I would like to introduce you to Frédérick Leboyer ‘s ‘ For a birth without violence ‘ .

The author is a French gynecologist and obstetrician . We owe him the ” Leboyer method ” which collects a series of conditions for a gentle birth that allows the newborn to be born without unnecessary trauma .

After having finished reading the book, to my amazement I discover that the text was published for the first time in 1975.
Written so many years ago yet so current and modern in the concepts and implementation of many of its “operations”. A complete, competent and meticulous analysis of the aspects of birth and intra- and extra-uterine life of children.

Leboyer weighs his words with attention, love and respect for his work.

This book had been on my bedside table for a very long time but I never found a motivational boost sufficient to open its pages and let myself be catapulted into experiences and situations that I probably didn’t want to see or simply wanted to ignore.

A book that has no plot, no episodes and no scales on which to measure what is right to think and what is not.

Tell a truth. That truth that the child who is about to leave the mother’s body cannot tell us in words.

It deals with and explores a vast and boundless subject, in which word after word remains central, a single, very important and at times underestimated point of view … that of the child.

“Do you think being born is pleasant?”
This is the first line of the book, which will unfold in a dialogue that immediately becomes a reflection for those who are reading.
It starts immediately “in fifth” with pressing questions on happiness and unhappiness.

It’s really hard to review this book without bringing you full pages full of experience.

The author put me in front of a lot of information, which is not data, numbers or statistics.
They are images.

A delivery room, the blinding light that frames the baby’s coming into the world, his crying, the chatter, the screams, the confusion, the fast and snappy movements, the automatisms of some operations.

Let’s stop. Let’s reflect.
Is this really how it has to go?

It is a widespread idea, a well-rooted postulate: a newborn is a “little thing” who feels nothing, who hears nothing, who sees nothing… How
could this “little thing” feel pain?
The “little thing” screams, screams, that’s all.
In short: it is an object.
What if it’s not true?
What if it was already a person?

Leboyer overturns the clichés, those of the 60s which are very similar to those of today (and I assure you that not much has changed!).

While reading, a concept remains clear and always present which in the frenzy and novelty of pregnancy and childbirth generally tends to slip into the background or third place. I’m talking about the word we can give to the baby, his personal interpretation of the belly-environment, the warmth of the uterus, the coldness of a scale, his umbilical cord and his lungs breathing air for the first time. of his eyes that open to the world for the first time, of his mouth, of his arms, of his ears unaccustomed to the noise.

Never lose sight of this, never forget the ordeal of the child to pass through the birth canal and make friends with the contractions, of his immense effort to manage his emotions and the environment that envelops him in a vice, almost as if to suffocate him and torture.

In birth there is a singular paradox: the child comes out of an unbearable prison, here he is free and yet… he screams!
It seems that the same happens to the freed prisoners.
The freedom they have dreamed of for so long intoxicates them, throws them into panic.

And then again the sense of sight. In a beautiful analogy, the author asks us to do like lovers, who place themselves in the dark, explore and get to know each other first through touch to increase the attention and sensitivity of our hands.

Therefore, it is better for the mother to discover her child first by touching him.
She that she hears it before she sees it.
May she feel that warm, throbbing life. May it be moved through his hands, in his very flesh. And not in his judgment.

In the third and final part of the book, the answers to many of the questions that more or less explicitly emerge in the first and second parts arrive.

Fear, seeing, hearing.
The unknown, the ego, common sense.

In short, a book so dense and full that it must be accepted line after line.
Very often during the reading I have underlined sentences, I have written in the margin and I have jotted down in a notebook all the aspects on which I want to stop and think in more detail.

I never felt judged in my role as a “parturient woman”, on the contrary I felt even stronger and more motivated.

Welcoming a new life is a “task” that often gets out of hand. Regaining an ancestral and magical relationship can and must be part of our interests and beliefs.