Michel Odent Reviews my Book…
I asked Michel Odent to review my book, The Basic Needs of a Woman in Labour. Who is Michel Odent? Dr. Odent started his medical career as a surgeon and became involved in birth when he was put in charge of a hospital in Pithiviers, outside Paris. He soon realised that hospitals were not conducive to a woman in labour. They were too bright, sterile and uncomfortable and lacked privacy. He was the first person to introduce low beds (easier for a labouring woman to climb in and out of), dim lighting, beautiful home-like rooms, and eventually water as a form of pain relief, in a hospital setting. The hospital in Pithiviers was so successful that many people came specially to have their babies there. Dr. Odent was there from 1962 to 1985. He worked with six midwives and oversaw approximately 1000 births per year. The hospital’s maternity section had excellent statistics with low rates of intervention. He eventually moved to London and became a home birth midwife there. Again, he was able to make many interesting observations through his experience there. Later he founded the Primal Health Research Centre He works with a doula called Liliana Lammers. Together they run the Paramana Doula course in London. Liliana is a quiet and unassuming woman who holds an incredible strength in doing very little at a birth. She is able to hold a space with her presence alone, a quiet strength. She must make a woman feel very safe in labour. Through his many years (more than half a century) of attending births (around 15 000 births) in both hospitals and at home, Dr. Odent has come to the conclusion that a labouring woman needs not much more than to be left alone, simply to be attended to by a quiet, non-invasive and low profile midwife. The little 24 page booklet I wrote is a summary of what I have learned from attending Michel Odent and Liliana Lammer’s course in December 2010, by reading Michel’s books, and from my own experience and work with pregnant and labouring women. I received his feedback a few days ago…I am honoured and humbled by his feedback and it took me a few days to process the immensity of his review before I could bring myself to share it. Here it is: There are two important published documents about birth physiology and the basic needs of labouring women. The first one is an enormous book written thousands of years ago. In the very first pages of this bestseller, there are some lines suggesting an association between the consumption of the fruit of the tree of knowledge (translate knowing too much or having developed a powerful neocortex) and the difficulties of human birth. At the end of this book, we can read about the birth of a legendary man whose mission was to promote love. His mother found a strategy to overcome the human handicap: with humility she gave birth among non-human mammals, in a stable. The second document is the opposite of the first one in terms of size. It is a booklet by Ruth Ehrhrardt. To bring together what is important in such a small number of pages is a feat. I hope that, on the five continents, all pregnant women, midwives, doulas, doctors, etc. will take the time to assimilate the contents of this chef d’oeuvre: it will be a turning point in the history of childbirth and therefore in the history of mankind. – Michel Odent...
Read MoreMeeting a Traditional Midwife in Malawi
Marianne Littlejohn and I volunteer for Operation Smile by teaching the Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) programme. In June of 2014 we were flown to Malawi to teach at the Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe . Over five days we taught approximately 40 people each. Malawi is an amazing country. It is incredibly poor but we were really pleasantly surprised by the hospitality and kindness and receptiveness of everyone we met. What I love about the HBB programme is its focus on normal birth, its simplicity and its adaptability to whatever environment it is presented in. We have so far taught in high tech hospitals, to home birth midwives, low resourced settings, to doulas and mothers. Each course is different because it works with the experiences and environments the people being taught bring to the workshops. Kamuzu Central Hospital is a reasonably well equipped hospital with sensitive and compassionate midwives. Some of the people we taught were very experienced midwives, doctors and paediatric nurses with many years of experience with very compromised babies. There was interesting discussion and sharing of stories and knowledge – we definitely learned a lot from the people who attended these workshops. One of the women we taught, Violet, a highly experienced midwife, told us about the work she used to do providing training and education and equipment to Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) in her region. TBA is the term used to describe traditional or lay midwives who have no ‘officially’ recognised training. Usually they have learned their skills from other traditional midwives. It is a controversial title as it takes away the centuries old title of ‘midwife’ from those women who have always attended pregnant and labouring women and who often carry skills and knowledge passed down through generations. Violet told us about a TBA living in a village not far from Lilongwe and offered to take us to meet her if we could organise the transport. The following day we organised a car and a driver and were driven about 45 minutes outside of Lilongwe over dusty and bumpy clay coloured roads, past simple handmade clay brick homes and thorn trees and goats and women wearing colourful cloth skirts. Along the way, Violet told us that TBAs had been the backbone of maternal care for a very long time in Malawi. She told us that the Malawian government had trained many TBAs in basic midwifery skills to provide care for pregnant and labouring women. The government had also provided updates and further education every month to the TBAs to ensure their skills were kept up to date. The government had also provided the TBAs with equipment and medications. It had been Violet’s job to provide these updates and education to ensure that the TBAs were following best practice when caring for pregnant and labouring women. Violet’s duties had also been to ensure that the TBAs were stocked with the medicines and equipment they needed. She had enjoyed this work. She had enjoyed the travelling and admired the TBAs she was responsible for. Two years previously, in a drive to encourage women to seek care from hospitals, the Malawian government had banned TBAs. This had not really changed the birth statistics in the hospitals, Violet said, all it had done was driven the TBAs underground and yet most rural women still sought care from the TBAs they knew and had grown up with, and who had probably attended their mothers when they themselves were born. Lack of transport to the hospitals made it difficult for mothers to get to the hospitals even if they wanted to. The government...
Read MoreA Little Gypsy is Born…
Today 25 years ago my sister Gypsy was born. Seven years ago she was killed in a car accident along with my mother and step-father. I was 9 years old when she was born. This is the story of her birth as I experienced it on that day: Our mother went into labour on a Sunday morning in the warmth of November 1989. We were getting ready to drive to Cape Town anyway as my sister Kate and I stayed with our grandparents in Constantia during the week so that we could go to school. Since our mother was in no state to drive, our step-father, who we called Baas (it was his nickname since childhood) took the driver’s seat. We left Droëland, our farm near Ceres, driving slowly over the rocks, so as not aggravate our mother’s labour pains. We got to the first gate at Bloubank when our mother suddenly remembered that she’d left her birthing book behind. She insisted that Baas turn the Nissan Langley around so that she could go and get it. He did it, grumbling and when we got back to our little labourer’s cottage, our mother rushed into the house. Frau Züllig, our mother’s former teacher and friend from her days at a Swiss finishing school, was visiting for three months and was busy sweeping the kitchen floor when my mother rushed in. “I’ve come for my birthing book,” our mother panted, “I’ve forgotten how to breathe!” Once back on the road, the drive was slow and tiring. Kate and I sat quietly on the grey back seats of the car, watching our mother sighing and breathing and moaning softly to herself, lifting herself up onto her arms when the pains became extreme. The car felt hot and dusty. Arriving in Cape Town after three hours was like a breath of fresh sea air. It was cool and overcast. It was lush and green after the sandy dryness of Droëland. Everything seemed to go in slow motion. Our mother moaning softly to herself in labour. The pedestrians in shorts and T-shirts, going about their business, oblivious to the happenings in the car. We arrived at Mowbray Maternity hospital and our mother was admitted into the labour ward. Kate and I were told to sit in the waiting room. We felt sad and cheated at being locked out of that sacred space of giving birth. Were we not, after all, not also her children? Of her womb? Why was Baas was allowed in with her? We’ve known her longer than he has… We did not have to wait long. The birth was quick. Kate and I were allowed in after our sister was born. The baby was tiny and wrinkly and pink and she lay between our mother’s large brown breasts, eyes closed with a hospital towel draped over her. Kate and I sat on either side of our mother and looked at this new member of the family. “After the long drive to get here, you should call her Gypsy!” the doctor joked. Kate asked the nurse what the IV drip was. I felt embarrassed at Kate asking but the nurse commented on how good it was that Kate had asked. The nurse then took the baby from our mother and inviting Kate and I along, she carried the newborn to another room. There we watched her wash and dry and weigh our vulnerable little sister. We watched the nurse examine her and check all her reflexes and then put a disposable nappy and some clothes on her. When she was returned to our mother, we were told that Baas would take us to our grandparents. We felt sad leaving our mother and this new creature that was our sister and we wept quietly the entire way to our grandparents. Baas dropped us off at the top of the driveway of our grandparents’ home and we walked down the long lonesome...
Read MoreDroëland – In Memory of my Mother
My mother, Carol Kathleen Ehrhardt, was born in Athlone in December 1950. In 1958, under the Apartheid government’s Population Registration Act, her family were reclassified ‘white’ and moved to a white residential area. My grandfather was a brilliant businessman, and in his ‘new life’ he quickly became a millionaire, enabling him to drive a Rolls Royce, travel the world first class and send his children to the best white schools. My mother always resented this new way of life. When she was eighteen, she saw her parents’ offer to send her to finishing school in Switzerland as a way of escaping her identity as a ‘white’ South African. She lived in Switzerland for twenty years, studying for a doctorate in psychology and working as a social worker. In 1979, the year before my birth, she chose to be reclassified ‘coloured’. My younger sister and I grew up with her songs and stories of home, surrounded by the snowy mountains of Switzerland. We moved back to South Africa in 1988 and my mother went in search of her lost ‘coloured’ family. She met my stepfather, who was trading in scrap metal and picking buchu in the mountains for a living. Together they bought the farm Droeland (Droeland literally means ‘Dry Land’), outside Ceres, and had two daughters. Their dream was to have a piece of land that would be both a sanctuary and a place of emancipation for the coloured people of South Africa. My mother began to work with the farm workers, an oppressed and largely illiterate community. She became a counsellor to them and a dispenser of medicine. She held church services with them, buried them and delivered their babies by candlelight. ‘Droeland’ is the story of the first baby my mother ever delivered on the farm. After that, pregnant women in the community chose not to go to hospital to give birth; instead they sent for her, trusting her able hands and soothing words. On 26 May 2007, my mother, my stepfather and my seventeen-year-old sister, Gypsy, were killed in an accident on Michell’s Pass, outside Ceres. It is to my mother that I dedicate this story, because I miss her so. * It is the middle of winter and the middle of the night. The wind moans and rain rips through the sky, stinging the windscreen, making it impossible to see. My mother drives slowly along the farm road. The bakkie (pick up truck) bumps and rattles over the rocks.Streams have turned to torrents of water, nearly impassable, and mud splatters the windscreen. She is driving down to one of the farm labourer’s cottages, where Hester is in labour. She has her little enamel saucepan with her and the knitting cotton she bought back in Switzerland in the 1980s. She also has black bags, towels, baby clothes, needle and thread, and a pair of scissors. Hester is Willem Prins’s wife. She is twenty-three, small and pretty, with high-cheekboned Bushman features. She had arrived a week earlier from Sutherland, heavily pregnant and travelling on a donkiekar(donkey cart) with her husband. My mother drives into Ou Vloer (Old Floor), the bottom part of Droeland, the part which dips into the Klein Karoo. She continues through the gateposts and past the dam, full now from the rains. She stops next to the little clay house with its lone pomegranate bush, grabs her bag of goods and the saucepan, and dashes through the rain. Willem Prins opens the door looking nervous. “Naand Mevrou.” (“Evening Madam.”) He lets her in. Inside the little house it is snug and warm and clean....
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