Lamaze and «Painless Childbirth»
(cf. Psychological Methods for Managing Labor Pain, Part One)
The psychoprophylactic method reached France thanks to Dr. F. Lamaze, who in 1951, during a trip to the USSR, had witnessed a painless birth. Lamaze reworked it in his own way, also drawing on the Read method, and called it painless childbirth (Accouchement sans douleur, ASD).
To learn the method, expectant mothers had to attend a series of theoretical sessions (which provided information about labor and delivery) and practical ones (which taught different breathing techniques to use during the various stages of labor: slow and deep during labor, shallow and panting, known as «doggy breathing», during the pushing stage).
Future fathers were also invited to these sessions, who for the first time were able to take part in something usually reserved for women alone.
Spreading the Lamaze method was anything but easy, since medical and paramedical staff had to undergo additional specific training, which required more time and increased costs. For this reason, Lamaze had many detractors, who opposed him to the point of summoning him more than once before the Medical Board (which, however, always cleared him).
After more than 500 women were able to give birth using this method in 1952 at the Bluets clinic (where Lamaze worked), a method that reduced the number of cesarean sections and allowed for a faster recovery for new mothers, the battle began to make it more widely available. Thanks to the support of the Communist parliamentary group and the Union des femmes françaises, in 1955 the city of Paris made several million francs available to introduce painless childbirth in six of the city's maternity wards.
1956 marked an important date in the history of obstetrics: the book written by Lamaze and the colleagues who practiced psychoprophylactic (or painless) childbirth was published; Pope Pius XII took a position in favor of the method, judging it irreproachable from a moral standpoint; and the French National Assembly agreed to reimburse six preparation sessions for painless childbirth.
The Lamaze method also spread in Italy in the 1950s, introduced by P. Malcovati and his student F. Miraglia, still known today for the book «Sarò madre: la donna dall'adolescenza alla maternità. Guida alla preparazione psicoprofilattica al parto» [I Will Be a Mother: Woman from Adolescence to Motherhood. A Guide to Psychoprophylactic Childbirth Preparation] (1957), in which he addresses women to explain the method.