Michel Odent, a French obstetrician whose natural childbirth innovations, including homelike delivery rooms and birthing pools, aimed to make new mothers feel calm and secure, died on Aug. 19 in London. He was 95.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his companion and medical partner, Liliana Lammers, a doula.
Avoiding complex interventions and medical technology whenever possible, Dr. Odent pioneered birthing techniques that became widely adopted. Among them were delivering the baby in a warm bath; allowing the mother to move and even be upright if she wished; creating serene delivery rooms and keeping men out of them; using drugs only minimally during birth; and encouraging breastfeeding immediately after.
He wrote more than 15 books arguing for these methods, gave lectures and speeches around the world, and founded a research center in London for the study of fetal and newborn health.
Behind his ideas was a simple conviction, arrived at early in his career: Birth is involuntary, and the mind must be cut out of the process. “Human birth cannot work as long as a woman is thinking,” Dr. Odent told an interviewer last year.
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The post Michel Odent, Pioneer of Natural Childbirth, Is Dead at 95 appeared first on New York Times.
