This is neither the time nor place for a lesson on obstetrics, but you should know that
for a long time before ‘those days’, the act of giving birth was extremely dangerous in the Western countries. A revolution in medical procedure, beginning around 1900, had made
the process much safer, but an absurdly small number of doctors bothered to tell their
expectant mothers that. God knows why. But in light of this, is it any wonder that most
delivery rooms sounded like Ward Nine in Bellevue? Here are these poor women, their
time come round at last, experiencing a process which has, because of the almost
Victorian decorum of the times, been described to them only in the vaguest of terms; here
are these women experiencing that engine of birth finally running at full power. They
were seized with an awe and wonder which they immediately interpreted as insupportable
pain, and most of them felt that they would very shortly die a dog’s death.
In the course of my reading on the subject of pregnancy, I discovered the principle of
the silent birth and the idea of the Breathing Method. Screaming wastes energy which
would be better used to expel the baby, it causes the women to hyperventilate, and
hyperventilation puts the body on an emergency basis – adrenals running full blast,
respiration and pulse-rate up – that is really unnecessary. The Breathing Method was
supposed to help the mother focus her attention on the job at hand and to cope with pain
by utilizing the body’s own resources.
It was used widely at that time in India and Africa; in America, the Shoshone, Kiowa,
and Micmac Indians all used it; the Eskimos have always used it; but, as you may guess,
most Western doctors had little interest in it One of my colleagues – an intelligent man –
returned the typescript of my pregnancy pamphlet to me in the fall of 1931 with a red line
drawn through the entire section on the Breathing Method. In the margin he had scribbled
that if he wanted to know about ‘nigger superstitions’, he would stop by a newsstand and
buy an issue of Weird Tales!
Well, I didn’t cut the section from the pamphlet as he had suggested, but I had mixed
results with the method – that was the best one could say. There were women who used it
with great success. There were others who seemed to grasp the idea perfectly in principle
but who lost their discipline completely as soon as their contractions became deep and
heavy. In most of those cases I found that the entire idea had been subverted and
undermined by well-meaning friends and relatives who had never heard of such a thing
and thus could not believe it would actually work.
The method was based on the idea that, while no two labours are ever the same in their
specifics, all are pretty much alike in general. There are four stages: contractive labour,
mid-labour, birth, and the expulsion of the afterbirth. Contractions are a complete
hardening of the abdominal and pelvic-area muscles, and the expectant mother often finds
them beginning in the sixth month. Many women pregnant for the first time expect
something rather nasty, like bowel cramps, but I’m told it’s much cleaner – a strongly
physical sensation, which may deepen into a pain like a charley horse. A woman
employing the Breathing Method began to breathe in a series of short, measured inhales
and exhales when she felt a contraction coming on. Each breath was expelled in a puff, as
if one were blowing a trumpet Dizzy Gillespie fashion.
During mid-labour, when more painful contractions begin coming every fifteen
minutes or so, the woman switched to long inhales followed by long exhales – it’s the way
a marathon runner breathes when he’s starting his final kick. The harder the contraction,
the longer the inhale-exhale. In my pamphlet, I called this stage ‘riding the waves’.
The final stage we need concern ourselves with here I called ‘locomotive’, and Lamaze
instructors today frequently call it the ‘choo-choo’ stage of breathing. Final labour is
accompanied by pains which are most frequently described as deep and glassy. They are
accompanied by an irresistible urge on the mother’s part to push … to expel the baby. This
is the point, gentlemen, at which that wonderful, frightening engine reaches its absolute
crescendo. The cervix is fully dilated. The baby has begun its short journey down the
birth canal, and if you were to look directly between the mother’s legs, you would be apt
to see the baby’s fontanell pulsing only inches from the open air. The mother using the
Breathing Method now begins to take and let out short, sharp breaths between her lips,
not filling her lungs, not hyperventilating, but almost panting in a perfectly controlled
fashion. It really is the sound children make when they are imitating a steam-driven
locomotive.
All of this has a salutary effect on the body – the mother’s oxygen is kept high without
putting her systems on an emergency basis, and she herself remains aware and alert, able
to ask and answer questions, able to take instructions. But of course the mental results of the Breathing Method were even more important. The mother felt she was actively
participating in the birth of her child – that she was in some part guiding the process. She
felt on top of the experience … and on top of the pain.
You can understand that the whole process was utterly dependent on the patient’s state
of mind. The Breathing Method was uniquely vulnerable, uniquely delicate, and if I had a
good many failures, I’d explain them this way – what a patient can be convinced of by her
doctor she may be unconvinced of by relatives who raise their hands in horror when told
of such a heathenish practice.
From this aspect, at least, Miss Stansfield was the ideal patient She had neither friends
nor relatives to talk her out of her belief in the Breathing Method (although, in all
fairness, I must add that I doubt anyone ever talked her out of anything once she had
made up her mind on the subject) once she came to believe in it And she did come to
believe in it
‘It’s a little like self-hypnosis, isn’t it?’ she asked me the first time we really discussed it
I agreed, delighted. ‘Exactly! But you mustn’t let that make you think it’s a trick, or that
it will let you down when the going gets tough.’
‘I don’t think that at all. I’m very grateful to you. I’ll practise assiduously, Dr
McCarron.’ She was the sort of woman the Breathing Method was invented for, and when
she told me she would practise, she spoke nothing but the truth. I have never seen anyone
embrace an idea with such enthusiasm … but, of course, the Breathing Method was
uniquely suited to her temperament There are docile men and women in this world by the
millions, and some of them are damn fine people. But there are others whose hands ache
to hold the throttles of their own lives, and Miss Stansfield was one of those.
When I say she embraced the Breathing Method totally, I mean it … and I think the
story of her final day at the department store where she sold perfumes and cosmetics
proves the point
The end of her gainful employment finally came late in August. Miss Stansfield was a
slim young woman in fine physical condition, and this was, of course, her first child. Any
doctor will tell you that such a woman is apt not to ‘show’ for five, perhaps even six
months … and then, one day and all at once, everything will show.
She came in for her monthly checkup on the first of September, laughed ruefully, and
told me she had discovered the Breathing Method had another use.
‘What’s that?’ I asked her.
‘It’s even better than counting to ten when you’re mad as hell at someone,’ she said.
Those hazel eyes were dancing. ‘Although people look at you as if you might be a lunatic
when you start puffing and blowing.’
She told me the tale readily enough. She had gone to work as usual on the previous
Monday, and all I can think is that the curiously abrupt transition from a slim young
woman to an obviously pregnant young woman — and the transition really can be almost
as sudden as day to dark in the tropics -had happened over the weekend. Or maybe her
supervisor finally decided that her suspicions were no longer just suspicions.
‘I’ll want to see you in the office on your break,’ this woman, a Mrs Kelly, said coldly.
She had previously been quite friendly to Miss Stansfield. She had shown her pictures of
her two children, both in high school, and they had exchanged recipes at one point. Mrs
Kelly was always asking her if she had met ‘a nice boy’ yet That kindliness and