The Atmosphere in the Labour Ward

Frederick Leboyer, in his film and in his book Birth without Violence (Leboyer, 1975) has drawn our attention to the feelings and the needs of the newborn baby. Through his work we are made poignantly aware of the trauma of birth, and of the baby's anxiety at the primary separation from mother. The film, by focusing our attention in detail, in close-up, on the baby makes us deeply aware of the infant's feelings, needs and capacities. Yet the film also distances us from the anxiety arousing events, thereby freeing our capacity to observe. That the film is in black and white further distances us from the bloody anxiety of birth in colour.

In the labour ward the conscious and unconscious awareness of the infant's anxieties at the birth, gives rise to anxiety in the adults attending the labour. This is counter-transference anxiety, which in obstetric staff may lead to the mismanagement of labour. For example, in Birth without Violence Leboyer gives as his opinion that the unconscious reawakening of the adult's memory of pain of his own birth and the need to deny and forget this pain, is a reason for our blindness to the new infant's pain. And that as a result of our blindness we are unkind to the newborn baby.

At a birth we are made particularly aware of our primitive feelings; feelings that are related to the memory of our experiences as babies. Our feelings are associated with fantasies, and these conscious and unconscious fantasies, arising as they do from our earliest experiences, are based on the body and its products. At a childbirth we are concerned with breath and breathing, with shit and blood and sweat and liquor, with milk and vomit. Dr. Leboyer's film makes us aware through close-up of the baby's sensations. We see skin and are aware of touch; we see the mouth and are made aware of breathing and sucking; we see the infant's eyes and are made aware of apparent curiosity and need to relate. Leboyer discusses in detail how the baby feels anxiety at the primary se