Pain during childbirth is one of the issues that most worries future moms. For centuries, attempts have been made to reduce pain during childbirth through various methods, and today we are talking about one of them, the Bradley method to control pain during childbirth.
This method is named in honor of its creator, Dr. Robert A. Bradley (1917-1998), who has been credited with making the parents return to the delivery room, since the father figure is important in his theory, as we will see next. Fundamentally, the couple is prepared to trust their instincts and become informed participants in the birth process.
The Bradley Method (also known as "husband-coached childbirth", something like 'childbirth trained or assisted by the father') emphasizes the natural approach to childbirth and the active participation of the baby's father as an assistant. One of the main objectives of this method is to avoid medication unless absolutely necessary.
Although the Bradley method defends a medication-free birth experience, parents are also prepared in class for possible complications or unexpected situations, such as an emergency caesarean section.
They are teaches to the parents to be responsible with their decisions and to be informed about the usual procedures in the place where the woman will give birth, as well as to make their intentions known (something like presenting her birth plan). At first he did not contemplate the father in his theories, but over time he extended his method of birth to include the father's extensive instruction as a "coach" for childbirth.
The Bradley method also emphasizes healthy and balanced eating, the practice of physical exercise during pregnancy and relaxation techniques and deep breathing as ways to cope with the pain in childbirth.
According to Bradley, these would be the six needs of the parturient: deep and complete relaxation, abdominal breathing, loneliness in tranquility, physical comfort, darkness and eyes closed and the appearance of sleep.
It has great importance relaxation for pain relief, which couples practice daily before childbirth, so that when it is time to give birth the woman acquires the necessary relaxation conditioned to the voice and touch of her partner.
After childbirth, emphasis is placed on immediate breastfeeding and constant contact between the parents and the baby. The Bradley method is the option many choose women who give birth at home or in other non-hospital settings.
Give birth without anesthesia, as in the animal world
Dr. Bradley developed his method in order to eliminate and erase drugs from obstetrics, when it was fashionable and so widespread "twilight sleep" and general anesthesia in hospital deliveries.
Having been raised on a farm and witnessed many animal births as part of agricultural life, Dr. Bradley believed that women, like the animals he had observed, can give birth without medication and without distress. This comparison with the animal world reminds us of Michel Odent and his theories.
Based on observations of mammals sweating during childbirth and at birth, Bradley developed a method of birth to teach women to do the things that mothers do by animal instinct, to teach something they had forgotten over the centuries.
Shortly after beginning to apply his new method of delivery in a trial with pregnant nurses, Dr. Bradley began to believe that the presence and support of the father during childbirth was important to the mother's success in achieving a delivery natural.
As we have said, Bradley became a pioneer in the inclusion of parents in the process of childbirth, but in terms of anesthesia and the consideration of women at this time in life, it seemed to many that he took a few steps back , belittling important medical advances for the care of women in childbirth and with comparisons with the animal world that not everyone liked.
And we are not referring only to doctors or anesthetists who are endangering their jobs, but to many women, mothers, who considered that the denial of anesthesia was little less than an attack on their freedom, when not a method of torture of others times to which they wanted to submit again.
It's an exciting story that I'm discovering that of the fight between midwives and obstretas, natural gurus and doctors, mothers and men, women and doctors ... difficult to simplify and which, unlike what we can think, has been developing for a few centuries.
The Bradley method would be a link in fashion because of the "natural" that many would see (see) with bad eyes and others enthroned as the absolute truth, but that simply seems to me a technique to stay with the best and not incompatible with hospital delivery or medically treated.
We will be back soon with more information about Bradley method to control labor pain, a method that today has been professionalized and made official, although it lacks content that is too original, but that was a milestone at the time it became popular.
Official Site | The Bradley Method More information | Wikipedia Photos | Call and davhor on Flickr In Babies and more | A vaginal birth is not the same as a natural birth, What the WHO advises for a normal birth, Natural delivery versus prepared labor, Delivery preparation classes, obsolete?
