Childbirth Without Pain... Without Anesthesia or Narcosis

I made a pledge to myself to set forth my theory of “childbirth without pain and without recourse to narcosis or anesthesia” in a series of talks that will throw light on the obscurities of this question and pluck from the mother's heart the terror and dread that generations, traditions, and environment have imposed upon her. It is no secret that this grave subject occupied the brains of thinkers, great scientists, and philosophers for many centuries, and that it is a perilous ground and a riddle hard to solve; but my resolve did not weaken, nor did I retreat before the difficulties, great as they were, for I have devoted myself to serving the mother — a sincere and disinterested service — to lighten her pains and provide her the means of comfort and happiness, paving the roads and smoothing the rough paths before her so that she may cut for herself in life a broad way, far from the anxieties and delusions that have accompanied her down the generations. The time has come for her to be freed from bondage to the superstitions that have ruled her since antiquity, and to have recourse to modern science and enlightened thought, so as to see things in their actual truth, not as she imagines them under her psychological influences — those influences which we shall take as the subject of our coming talks, making plain their evils and their harms and striving our utmost to destroy them by way of reason and persuasion.

This subject of mine is drawn from personal experience of no less than thirty years, saturated with study and scrutiny, and joined to the precise information I gathered in the course of my journeys to the capitals of Europe, thanks to delightful discussions and debates with the world's masters of medicine, the professors of obstetrics and gynecology — especially on one of my journeys to Great Britain, where fortune favored me with meeting one of its great professors, in whose head the very same idea was fermenting. We conferred at length and exchanged views; I took and I gave, and my idea was polished, crystallized, and ripened. Here I am now, proceeding to expound and clarify it, hoping to reach the desired goal.

My mind goes back to an incident I witnessed at the beginning of my medical career — an incident I have never forgotten, for it left a deep mark on my soul, helped to set my direction, and drove me along this path confident and enthusiastic. I was called one night to deliver a woman at her home, a nurse accompanying me — delivery in hospital being at that time rare and unwelcome. On my arrival, the lady approaching her delivery greeted me with these words: “Forgive me, doctor, for calling you out on this cold and rainy night; I feel nothing but a slight discomfort, perhaps caused by a chill in the bowels, with no connection to childbirth; but since I am a first-time mother without experience, and have reached the last days of my pregnancy, I made bold to trouble you, that you might guide me to what should be done.” But the medical examination showed me that she was in labor and had gone a long way (the neck of her womb was on the point of full dilation); so I put her in her bed, prepared what was needed, and left the nurse at her side, to summon me when the pain grew severe. I went to one of the rooms to rest a little until the time for work should come; but I had scarcely closed my eyes when the nurse's voice rang in my ears, calling me in haste. I responded quickly, and my astonishment was great when I saw that the child had already seen the light. I scolded the nurse and rebuked her for her negligence in not summoning me when the strong, driving labor began; but the lady answered me with a gentle smile: “The nurse, sir, is not at fault; I felt nothing but something suddenly pushing outward, without troubling pain, so I alerted her to it and she summoned you at once.” I said to her: “Is it possible that you gave birth without pain and without strong labor?” She said: “Why not, doctor — is the feeling of pain necessary? My mother used to repeat in my hearing, many a time, that she bore three children without pain — indeed, on the last two occasions she completed the delivery of her babies before the midwife arrived. Is there anything strange in a daughter's taking after her mother?”

This old incident was the first, and it was not the last; but it stuck in my memory because it awakened my scientific curiosity, and there settled before my young mind a new picture, different from the one that had been stamped upon me from the mouths of mothers describing the pains of childbirth. It worked deeply upon my imagination, and I would think again and again of the state of that serene, tranquil lady in that critical stage of her life; and the memory would return to me whenever I delivered a woman swept by a state of extreme terror.

After long and continuous thought, the shining truth became clear to me, and I realized that there is in nature no system or arrangement that justifies the existence of pain in the condition of delivery. I have myself seen women give birth naturally, without pain, and others seized at delivery by agonizing pains, which remained for them a fearful and harrowing memory. It became clear to me that the majority of women were subject to all manner of pains at delivery, while a small minority passed through that stage with ease and tranquility, asking for no sedative and showing no unbearable distress.

It was hard for me to account for this obscure phenomenon: to see one woman suffer during delivery while another woman feels no pain in the very same condition — for both women exert a similar effort and use the same force to pass through the selfsame event, nor do they differ in the length of time they take from the onset of labor to the delivery.

Except that the woman who suffers may take a little longer than the one who gives birth without pain. Medicine in those days was still ignorant of the mechanism of that pain, and so passed over many of its manifestations without giving them any of the attention we give them today, guided by modern views.

My questioning and my reflection went on long; I strained myself in observation, and it appeared to me that the woman's surrender and tranquility at delivery are the salient element that distinguishes a birth without pain, relatively speaking, from a birth with pain: it is the woman's calm — indeed her faith that childbirth is a natural and ordinary thing.

These observations had their profound effect in leading me to study the role the psyche plays on the stage of this natural act. Civilization has been accompanied by a delusion, which became a fixed belief, that delivery is a painful and dangerous event; and the further peoples advanced in the field of civilization, culture, and comfort, the more firmly this belief rooted itself in minds, and that delusion mastered souls and weakened them. For this fear generates in mothers a tension in the muscles which may lead to the closing of the womb and the barring of the infant's exit at the hour of delivery, because muscular tension creates a resistance in the neck of the womb at the very time when those muscles ought to be relaxed and pliant. The real pain has its source in tension and resistance; and in the womb there are special organs that register the pains arising from increased tension.

Fear, tension, and pain, then, are the three unnatural afflictions of childbirth, created by the ignorance of those upon whose shoulders, throughout history, the care of delivery was cast. And since these three afflictions are united, marching together side by side, it has become necessary to remove tension by conquering fear, so that the avoidance of pain may become easy. The application of my theory, then, is confined to the means calculated to conquer fear and banish tension, that bodily and mental surrender may take their place.