Selling normal birth: six ways to make birth easier.
In this column, a reader expresses concern at the declining number of women attending childbirth classes and her inability to influence a woman's decision to choose normal birth. It may be more effective to market Lamaze as a way to have an easier birth rather than a normal birth. The six care practices that promote, support, and protect normal birth are suggested as a framework for teaching Lamaze classes with the goal of having an easier labor and birth.
JUDITH LOTHIAN is a childbirth educator in Brooklyn, New York, a member of the Lamaze International Board of Directors, and the associate editor of The Journal of Perinatal Education. She is also an associate professor in the College of Nursing at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.
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Lothian