Michel Odent obituary

"Odent's work flagged up its pitfalls, and offered an alternative view. Daniela Drandic of the International Confederation of Midwives said: In the 1970s birth was institutionalised and medicalised. Michel Odent reminded us that physiological processes during pregnancy and birth should be respected, which was very important as things had gone too far in the other direction. There wasn't much discourse at the time and he showed us another way."

"He championed squatting or standing to give birth rather than lying flat, having seen women do this when he was working in Algeria, and he turned a conventional delivery suite into a more comfortable room, with cushions and blinds. Concerned about women's lower back pain in labour, he acquired an inflatable paddling pool, and then went on to install a birth pool in his unit."

Michel Odent spent more than fifty years promoting understanding of childbirth's natural physiology and warning against the dominance of active management, including artificial oxytocin. He introduced home-like delivery rooms, encouraged upright positions such as squatting and standing, and adopted water birth methods to relieve back pain, installing a birth pool after using an inflatable paddling pool. He worked at Pithiviers state hospital from 1962 until 1985, drew on ideas from Frederick Leboyer and Igor Charkovsky, and published the landmark paper 'Birth Under Water' after the hundredth water birth. Many practices he championed—birthing pools, movement during labour, and undisturbed bonding—are now widely accepted.

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