"zee hormones of love are zee hormones of birth"

    When I was a nursing student back in the early nineties, I had the great fortune to spend a couple days with Michel Odent, .  He is the French obstetrician who revolutionized birth in his country and helped spread the ideas of undisturbed birth, waterbirth, and peri-natal psychology worldwide.   In the 1970s, he was tired of seeing so many births in his hospital ending in forceps deliveries or cesareans.  Clearly, the standard procedure of the time, the take-a laboring woman -and -strap her to a table on her back-and -drug her heavily- and pull the baby out with forceps- method was not optimizing the birth for mother or baby!  He redesigned the labor rooms to be like private, dark warm caves, with a tub of warm water and a bed on the floor in the corner.  He instructed the midwives to  just sit, rocking and knitting.  When a woman came in, in labor, she was given complete freedom to do whatever she wanted.  Most women gave birth in upright positions in the corner of the room or in the tubs.  He coined the term "fetus ejection reflex" to describe the spontaneous, powerful reflex that occurs when a women feels her own urge and pushes her baby out without a cheering squad to yell "push" and count, and tell her how to do it.  No one told these laboring women ANYTHING.  Just nods and smiles of reassurance.  The result of this experiment?