Charles Brinkman, chief of the division of obstetrics at UCLA Medical Center, agrees that Bradley mothers sometimes harbor unreasonably high expectations for a totally natural birth. Depending on hospital policy, or the degree of pain they may experience, some mothers may receive medication despite their plans to the contrary, he said.ĭr. Lamaze director Moran said that Bradley may be doing a disservice in telling women to expect a drug-free birth. “We encourage people not to use medications, but sometimes labor brings untenable situations.” “We (Lamaze advocates) are not proponents of everyone having an unmedicated birth,” said Winter. (In recent years, the Lamaze organization has downplayed the importance of the breathing pattern Bradley objects to, according to Lamaze spokesperson Katherine Winter.)īradley, who crusades against the use of any pain medication in delivery, is also critical of the Lamaze stance on drugs. The Lamaze technique is also unnatural in Bradley’s estimation because in the past the French physician advocated artificial breathing patterns intended to distract women from the pain of labor. ![]() But Bradley contends that his predecessor was not a true advocate of natural childbirth because he allowed women to whiff at an anesthetic if their labor pains were severe. It is not natural.”īoth Lamaze and Bradley have their roots in the work of Grantly Dick-Read, a British physician who published his original work on natural childbirth in 1933. Of the Lamaze organization, he said: “They have the audacity to call their method natural. And though they are milder in their criticisms, members of the Lamaze organization are not above taking potshots at Bradley.īradley claims that his is the only truly natural childbirth method. Bradley so vigorously defends his own childbirth style that he has been called bombastic by more than one close friend. The retired obstetrician has spent countless hours during his career explaining how his method differs from Lamaze’s. Robert Bradley, 69, in an interview at his Colorado home. “My method is coming into its own now because it’s right Lamaze was wrong,” said Dr. The majority of those births are in the West, with California accounting for about one-fourth of all Bradley births. The American Academy of Husband-Coached Childbirth in Sherman Oaks, Bradley’s national headquarters, reports about 20,000 Bradley births a year. (ASPO stands for American Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics), more than 1 million Lamaze-coached mothers give birth each year in this country.īradley is the runner-up. According to Robert Moran, executive director of the ASPO/Lamaze organization in Arlington, Va. But it’s true that the Bradley and Lamaze methods are in a kind of competition for every woman contemplating natural childbirth-or prepared childbirth, as many now call it.Īlthough there are a handful of lesser-known natural birth methods in use today, the name Lamaze has become nearly synonymous with natural childbirth. ![]() ![]() In reality, this theoretical tug of war will never happen since Lamaze died in 1957. Pretty soon the discussion might deteriorate into a shouting match, with Lamaze taunting his rival with the nickname “Barnyard Bradley.” (A Lamaze instructor once dubbed him this because Bradley has studied animals in labor.) Bradley might assert that Lamaze’s psychoprophlyaxis method (it means “mind prevention”) is nothing more than hypnosis.
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