The surgeon gives the nod: it's time. The drape across the patient's abdomen is lowered and her head is raised. Her eyes widen as she and her husband watch their baby, tiny and pink with a mop of black hair, being gently delivered from her. There is a moment of collective awe before the newborn's cry fills the air. �It's a boy!� his mother gasps, before enveloping him in a warm hug.
This mother has just had a �natural Caesarean�, a revolutionary technique that attempts to turn one of the world's most common operations into an experience closer to vaginal birth. The idea was conceived by Professor Nicholas Fisk in response to the rising numbers of Caesareans in the UK.
His team concentrated on three areas. First, parental involvement: this meant dropping the drape that �divorced� the mother from her abdomen, to allow her to see her baby's head emerge; the baby itself blocks the mother's view of the operation.
The second point was physiological: Fisk showed that when a Caesarean is performed slowly the baby is able to �autoresuscitate� - start breathing unaided - while still attached to the placenta, as in normal birth. The baby is �half-delivered� and a combination of the naturally contracting uterus and the baby's vigorous wriggles allow the lungs to expel fluid in a similar way to a vaginal birth. This reduces the risk of the baby needing help to breathe; a common occurrence after a Caesarean.
Finally, Fisk wanted to see newborns handed immediately to their mother for skin-to-skin bonding. �There are now official standards for skin-to-skin bonding in childbirth, but these are almost never met with Caesareans,� he says. One obstruction is that the monitoring equipment needed for patients in surgery is routinely attached to the mother's chest. �In a natural Caesarean we attach the ECG wires to the back of the chest so that the baby can be placed on the mother after birth,� Plaat says. The anaesthetic dose is lowered so that there is no �heaviness in the arms� to prevent holding the baby, and a clip that measures oxygen in the blood is attached to the toe.
Smith, whose book Your Baby, Your Body, Your Birth advocates a softer general approach to birth, adds: �And while keeping both mother and baby safe, we focus on the fact that this is a birth. We bring in the elements of normal birth: the mother can see her baby's sex at the same time as the operating team. The father can perform a second �cutting of the cord' and the midwife can show him where to clamp it. It is entirely different from the experience parents have had before.�
The procedure is unsuitable for babies who are in the breech position, or when the baby or mother, or both, are in danger, or for premature babies whose lungs are not mature.
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[Source: Pregnancy Blog - For All Your Pregnancy Things by PregnancyWeekly]
