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Entering the World
Michel Odent, a leading figure in the natural childbirth movement, explains the techniques used at his Pithiviers hospital and the philosophy behind his remarkable a gentle, intimate trauma-free birth method.
- GenresMedicalNonfictionHealth
164 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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114 people want to read
About the author
Michel Odent
121 books83 followersFor several decades Michel Odent has been instrumental in influencing the history of childbirth and health research.
As a practitioner he developed the maternity unit at Pithiviers Hospital in France in the 1960s and '70s. He is familiarly known as the obstetrician who introduced the concept of birthing pools and home-like birthing rooms. His approach has been featured in eminent medical journals such as Lancet, and in TV documentaries such as the BBC film Birth Reborn. With six midwives he was in charge of about one thousand births a year and could achieve ideal statistics with low rates of intervention. After his hospital career he practiced home birth.
As a researcher he founded the Primal Health Research Center in London (UK), which focuses upon the long-term consequences of early experiences. An overview of the Primal Health Research data bank ( www.birthworks.org/primalhealth) clearly indicates that health is to a great extent shaped during the primal period (from conception until the first birthday). It also suggests that the way we are born has long-term consequences in terms of sociability, aggressiveness or, otherwise speaking, capacity to love.
Michel Odent has developed a preconceptional program (the "accordion method") in order to minimize the effects of intrauterine and milk pollution by synthetic fat soluble chemicals such as dioxins, PCBs, etc. His other research interests are the non-specific long term effects on health of early multiple vaccinations.
Author of approximately 50 scientific papers, Odent has 11 books published in 21 languages to his name. In his books he developed the art of turning traditional questions around, looking at the question of “how to develop good health” rather than at that of “how to prevent disease”, and at the question of “how the capacity to love develops”, rather than at that of “how to prevent violence”. His books The Scientification of Love and The Farmer and the Obstetrician raise urgent questions about the future of our civilizations. His latest book ('The Caesarean') has been published in April 2004.
As a practitioner he developed the maternity unit at Pithiviers Hospital in France in the 1960s and '70s. He is familiarly known as the obstetrician who introduced the concept of birthing pools and home-like birthing rooms. His approach has been featured in eminent medical journals such as Lancet, and in TV documentaries such as the BBC film Birth Reborn. With six midwives he was in charge of about one thousand births a year and could achieve ideal statistics with low rates of intervention. After his hospital career he practiced home birth.
As a researcher he founded the Primal Health Research Center in London (UK), which focuses upon the long-term consequences of early experiences. An overview of the Primal Health Research data bank ( www.birthworks.org/primalhealth) clearly indicates that health is to a great extent shaped during the primal period (from conception until the first birthday). It also suggests that the way we are born has long-term consequences in terms of sociability, aggressiveness or, otherwise speaking, capacity to love.
Michel Odent has developed a preconceptional program (the "accordion method") in order to minimize the effects of intrauterine and milk pollution by synthetic fat soluble chemicals such as dioxins, PCBs, etc. His other research interests are the non-specific long term effects on health of early multiple vaccinations.
Author of approximately 50 scientific papers, Odent has 11 books published in 21 languages to his name. In his books he developed the art of turning traditional questions around, looking at the question of “how to develop good health” rather than at that of “how to prevent disease”, and at the question of “how the capacity to love develops”, rather than at that of “how to prevent violence”. His books The Scientification of Love and The Farmer and the Obstetrician raise urgent questions about the future of our civilizations. His latest book ('The Caesarean') has been published in April 2004.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 28, 2023
Sometimes, it felt a little bit "above my pay grade," but totally worth it. Of course, much of the information is outdated, but the principles of birth without violence (coined by Frederick Leboyer) hold up to this day.
It was inspiring to see the seeds of so many ideas and fields of study just beginning to sprout. Epigenetics, the importance of the mother-baby bond, birth trauma, and so many others.
It's kind of funny watching a man expound on truths that women have known for pretty much all of human history, but Odent's voice got the ball rolling in modern obstetrics, and the medical monolith had to begin paying attention. We have come a long way since then, but we still have so far to go.
That said, I enjoyed reading this short work, and feel a deeper sense of appreciation for the shoulders I stand on as a midwife, whether they are men or women, doctors or midwives, scientists or poets.
It was inspiring to see the seeds of so many ideas and fields of study just beginning to sprout. Epigenetics, the importance of the mother-baby bond, birth trauma, and so many others.
It's kind of funny watching a man expound on truths that women have known for pretty much all of human history, but Odent's voice got the ball rolling in modern obstetrics, and the medical monolith had to begin paying attention. We have come a long way since then, but we still have so far to go.
That said, I enjoyed reading this short work, and feel a deeper sense of appreciation for the shoulders I stand on as a midwife, whether they are men or women, doctors or midwives, scientists or poets.
May 19, 2022
I enjoyed this book and the overview of common sense philosophies on treating newborns with humanity and respect in the birth setting. However, it very much read as a response directly to Childbirth Without Violence - while it is still an important work, had I known how much the bulk of it was written specifically in response to Childbirth Without Violence, I would have opted to read that book first.
July 1, 2024
A book I read in the days when I was delivering babies. Probably dated now, but Odent was at the forefront in his day.
November 6, 2015
A book calling for the de-medicalization of childbirth is even more revolutionary now than in 1976 when this book was first published in French and in 1984 when the first English edition appeared. The number and types of routine medical interventions that are standard hospital procedures have increased exponentially, and Dr. Michel Odent's call to re-examine the medical practices surrounding childbirth that can disrupt and complicate a normal birth is still valid. For historians of the natural childbirth movement, this book is the cornerstone of the pushback against the industrialization of birth. As Dr. Odent states on page 112, ". . . the movement toward birth without violence or gentle birth is irreversible. Any woman who has experienced the new climate, either as a mother or as a witness, will find the current atmosphere in most maternity unit today intolerable in the future."
ENTERING THE WORLD: THE DE-MEDICALIZATION OF CHILDBIRTH reads like a philosophical treatise. In it Dr. Odent describes how deeply moved he and the staff at his maternity ward were deeply moved by Dr. Frederick Leboyer's book Birth without Violence and implemented a nonviolent, non-medically invasive method of childbirth at the Pithiviers Hospital in France. Dr. Odent explains why birth without iatrogenic violence and without unnecessary medical inventions is crucial to childbirth for both mother and baby.
The crux of this argument is "Obstetricians have made great efforts to assimilate the applications of modern technology. They have allowed themselves to be overwhelmed and intoxicated by the technology and by their pride in themselves as technicians, forgetting that they must be more than technicians" (119 -- 120). When technology is seen as superior to nature, then unnecessary use of technology is bound to run rampant. When Dr. Odent mused, "Will the obstetrician of tomorrow be sitting in front of a computer terminal screen?" (30), I had to laugh. Now it's the nurses sitting in front of a computer screen at the nurses' station monitoring all the women in the maternity unit from a distance while the doctor is across town at his/her office monitoring his patients' labors on his smart phone while conducting business as usual. Dr. Odent was not kidding when he said, "The history of obstetrics sometimes looks like a catalogue of futile and dangerous exercises dreamt up to 'facilitate' labour" (121). Perhaps for the safety of all patients, it is time to call for the separation of ob-gyn into the two distinct practices of obstetrics and gynecology, which would allow obstetricians to focus exclusively on pregnant women and gynecologists to focus solely on all other women's reproductive health concerns.
This book is slightly out of date. While advocating waiting to cut the umbilical cord (a photograph of a woman bathing her own newborn with the cord still attached to her is included), Dr. Odent did discuss the medical concerns of this practice's safety. Although cutting the cord almost instantly after delivery is still standard practice in most hospitals, research has shown waiting until the placenta is delivered to cut the umbilical is perfectly safe and even has benefits due to that fact that up to a third of a child's blood still can still be in the cord and placenta at the time of birth. Dr. Odent also discusses waterbirth as being experimental, and it has long since become an established, albeit still considered eccentric, practice.
Dr. Odent's statement "Obstetricians have not realized that by concentrating more on the child, they would be working towards a reduction in neo-natal mortality and morbidity" is has proven incorrect. The pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme as doctors focus almost exclusively on the fetus's welling being out of fear of litigation, and mothers are treated by professionals in modern maternity care as potentially fatal barriers to the babies whom they are carrying rather than fully fledged human beings whose experience and emotions deserve to be taken into account. Mothers as well as their infants routinely experience medically perpetrated violence in childbirth. And sadly playing the dead baby card to get mothers to submit to a host of medical interventions has not improved the neo-natal mortality rates.
Medical students, midwives, and medical historians would enjoy this book slightly dated though it is. For mothers-to-be I would recommend the revised edition of Birth without Violence, Ina May Gaskin's Birth without Violence, and Active Birth : The New Approach to Giving Birth Naturally, which is based upon Dr. Odent's work.
ENTERING THE WORLD: THE DE-MEDICALIZATION OF CHILDBIRTH reads like a philosophical treatise. In it Dr. Odent describes how deeply moved he and the staff at his maternity ward were deeply moved by Dr. Frederick Leboyer's book Birth without Violence and implemented a nonviolent, non-medically invasive method of childbirth at the Pithiviers Hospital in France. Dr. Odent explains why birth without iatrogenic violence and without unnecessary medical inventions is crucial to childbirth for both mother and baby.
The crux of this argument is "Obstetricians have made great efforts to assimilate the applications of modern technology. They have allowed themselves to be overwhelmed and intoxicated by the technology and by their pride in themselves as technicians, forgetting that they must be more than technicians" (119 -- 120). When technology is seen as superior to nature, then unnecessary use of technology is bound to run rampant. When Dr. Odent mused, "Will the obstetrician of tomorrow be sitting in front of a computer terminal screen?" (30), I had to laugh. Now it's the nurses sitting in front of a computer screen at the nurses' station monitoring all the women in the maternity unit from a distance while the doctor is across town at his/her office monitoring his patients' labors on his smart phone while conducting business as usual. Dr. Odent was not kidding when he said, "The history of obstetrics sometimes looks like a catalogue of futile and dangerous exercises dreamt up to 'facilitate' labour" (121). Perhaps for the safety of all patients, it is time to call for the separation of ob-gyn into the two distinct practices of obstetrics and gynecology, which would allow obstetricians to focus exclusively on pregnant women and gynecologists to focus solely on all other women's reproductive health concerns.
This book is slightly out of date. While advocating waiting to cut the umbilical cord (a photograph of a woman bathing her own newborn with the cord still attached to her is included), Dr. Odent did discuss the medical concerns of this practice's safety. Although cutting the cord almost instantly after delivery is still standard practice in most hospitals, research has shown waiting until the placenta is delivered to cut the umbilical is perfectly safe and even has benefits due to that fact that up to a third of a child's blood still can still be in the cord and placenta at the time of birth. Dr. Odent also discusses waterbirth as being experimental, and it has long since become an established, albeit still considered eccentric, practice.
Dr. Odent's statement "Obstetricians have not realized that by concentrating more on the child, they would be working towards a reduction in neo-natal mortality and morbidity" is has proven incorrect. The pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme as doctors focus almost exclusively on the fetus's welling being out of fear of litigation, and mothers are treated by professionals in modern maternity care as potentially fatal barriers to the babies whom they are carrying rather than fully fledged human beings whose experience and emotions deserve to be taken into account. Mothers as well as their infants routinely experience medically perpetrated violence in childbirth. And sadly playing the dead baby card to get mothers to submit to a host of medical interventions has not improved the neo-natal mortality rates.
Medical students, midwives, and medical historians would enjoy this book slightly dated though it is. For mothers-to-be I would recommend the revised edition of Birth without Violence, Ina May Gaskin's Birth without Violence, and Active Birth : The New Approach to Giving Birth Naturally, which is based upon Dr. Odent's work.
February 19, 2015
Basically, this book felt like an overview of how Michel Odent and those he was working with put the ideas set forth by Frederick Leboyer in his book Birth Without Fear into practice. Of course, there is a lot more to it than just that including much regarding Ivan Illich but with or without, there is still a lot of food for thought. It is interesting after having read more recent books by Dr. Odent how much things really have not changed in the birth world.
I have so many little sticky note papers sticking out of the pages of this book that it would make for a very long review to mention them all but I would like to mention one. The last paragraph, comprised of one sentence, of the first chapter reads, "Will the obstetrician of tomorrow be sitting in front of a computer terminal screen?"
Forty years later that question can be answered with an emphatic, "Yes!"
I'm sure I cannot recount how many times I've heard women reassured that the doctor can see this (the monitor screen on which is the tracing for fetal heart tones, blood pressure, contractions, etc.) in her office or at home. Is the doctor actually sitting in front of the monitor? Probably not all the time because he/she has other 'patients' to see and has a life at home. However, the doctor is aware, at some level, of what is going on in the labor room all the time.
Are people, more than a few at a time, ever going to wake up?
I have so many little sticky note papers sticking out of the pages of this book that it would make for a very long review to mention them all but I would like to mention one. The last paragraph, comprised of one sentence, of the first chapter reads, "Will the obstetrician of tomorrow be sitting in front of a computer terminal screen?"
Forty years later that question can be answered with an emphatic, "Yes!"
I'm sure I cannot recount how many times I've heard women reassured that the doctor can see this (the monitor screen on which is the tracing for fetal heart tones, blood pressure, contractions, etc.) in her office or at home. Is the doctor actually sitting in front of the monitor? Probably not all the time because he/she has other 'patients' to see and has a life at home. However, the doctor is aware, at some level, of what is going on in the labor room all the time.
Are people, more than a few at a time, ever going to wake up?
December 16, 2008
This book is filled with what SHOULD be "no duh" info & makes me wonder why all hospitals don't feel the same way. After reading this book I wondered why *I* didn't intuit some of the information presented here. The author makes us see just how brain-washed we are about what is necessary & what is optimal for the neonate.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews