October 30, 2003

In Aqua - Italian Conference on water birth

Today I gave the opening presentation at the “In Water”Conference being held in Massa, Italy. The audience is a mixture of midwives, obstetricians, birth educators, aquarobics instructors amongst others and it has been an amazingly varied day. My paper was on “Empowering Women” and I offered an overview of the birth scene on a global as well as local level, including the relationship between women and midwives, the battle between obstetrics and midwifery, the need for better parent education together with some suggestions for forging a way forward.

Next came a lovely visual presentation of water in all its manifestations - lakes, rivers, ocean waves, ponds, droplets, streams etc with a minimalist voice over of appropriate “water” words.

A presentation about the nature of water, water crystals and memories imparted and reproducible through water followed. I had trouble grasping the point of this paper, an even though it was accompanied by music, an array of clever graphics and the sounding of tuning forks, it failed to convince me that water crystals would shape themselves to represent a sound, word or picture that had been shown to it.

The last presentation before the end of a very long morning was a dissertation, accompanied by lovely paintings and photographs of the essence of birth. This speaker was passionate about her topic but spoke so fast (in the inimitable Italian style) that the translation failed to keep up very well.

After lunch, the first speaker was a Russian who had worked with Igor Charkovsky, the man who has promoted birth in water followed by immediate baby swimming. I find this work very hard to tolerate and I was disturbed by the videos showing the presenter pushing floating pregnant women around a swimming pool. The aim was to acclimatise them for birth in water, but it seemed to me to be another manifestation of the man dominating the woman, and she was certainly completely submissive in a way I found quite dangerous. He also showed scenes of his swimming classes where very young babies are pushed underwater, encouraged to swim (for their lives?) and tossed into the air to be held by their feet. I am not sure what the purpose of this is, but I found it disturbing.

The last speaker was my old friend Michel Odent, talking about birth physiology and the use of water in labour. He has come up with a new idea (as you would expect of Michel!) and is now promoting their idea of the “birth pool test”. Whenever a labour is stalled, or the woman is having difficulties, he suggest that shw be given up tp two hours in a water birth pool. If there is not further progress then a caesarean is the next step. His rationale is that the calming effect of the water should lower the adrenaline and enable the birth hormones, and in particular oxytocin, to reestablish themselves. If the labour doesn’t then proceed, there is probably a mechanical difficulty and a caesarean will be the only option. He illustrated this proposition with several interesting anecdotes. It is a theory that seems worth pursuing, because it will be less invasive than other ways of accelerating a stalled labour and may be a simple strategy that works. It is certainly worth a try.

he day concluded with a wonderful new video for Austria that I will certainly be tracking down for sale through our catalogue. It was marvellous, showing women labouring using their own hormones and giving birth magnificently. I wish I has this video to show the Spanish midwives I worked with recently - they would have been blown away, as I think most midwives will be =when I have a copy to use. Watch this space for more details later.

Posted by andrea at October 30, 2003 09:39 PM

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