“We decided that the most sensible thing was that my husband stay with our older girl while I went in to birth alone – it was a painful decisión. Our girl was asleep in the car and my husband did not want me to go in alone and carrying my bag. I told him we…
Birth Activism and Obstetric Violence: Interview with Ibone Olza by Elena Skoko I met Ibone at my first meeting of the COST Action BIRTH in Lancaster (UK) in 2015, as part of this European research project where researchers, policymakers, and activists work together to produce and disseminate scientific literature on the topic of normal or…
by Ibone Olza, MD, PhD I met Cheryl Beck in 2010 in Pittsburgh, at the Marcé International Conference. I had been reading her groundbreaking and brave research on birth trauma for years. One of her publications begins with this potent sentence: “My child was conceived in love and born by rape.” The Anniversary…
A study published in the latest edition of Archives of Women’s Health has found that instrumental births (those requiring forceps, vacuum extraction, etc.) and cesarean sections are related to a higher number of psychological difficulties after birth – ranging from lack of adjustment to motherhood to post-traumatic stress disorder. To put these conclusions into perspective,…
According to some sources, when a woman in Sparta (Ancient Greece) hadn’t gone into labour after nine months, other women would go to her house to berate her almost violently. They would hurl all the grievances in her face that they had kept to themselves during the pregnancy and the heated exchange usually triggered the…
The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes a “positive childbirth experience” as a significant end point for all women undergoing labor. It defines a positive childbirth experience as one that fulfils or exceeds a woman’s prior personal and sociocultural beliefs and expectations, including giving birth to a healthy baby in a clinically and psychologically safe environment…
By Esther Ramírez Matos, perinatal psychologist and family therapist My body spoke to me again, last night while I was calmly reading a novel about maternity. As a traumatic birth was described, after which mother and infant were separated, I felt an intense pain in my pelvic area; I had not been so uncomfortable in…
“There are no feet too small to leave prints on this earth.” The child that dies during the perinatal stage: lifelong impact on the family Although there has traditionally been silence in our society about children who die at the beginning of life, this silence has been unravelling. Scientific papers and worldly magazines, support groups…
By Ibone Olza, MD PhD. Psyquiatrist. Associate Professor at Universidad de Alcalá. Director of the European Perinatal Mental Health Institute Breastfeeding today seems to be more difficult than mothers imagine or expect. In a North American study, of 1500 mothers who expressed their desire to exclusively breastfeed, only 39% were managing to do so at two…
A UN report published in April 2019 warns against “the widespread and systematic phenomenon of violence towards women and girls in reproductive services”, and urges states to “address the structural problems and root causes of violence against women in reproductive health services, with a focus on childbirth and obstetric violence.” We publish below an…
