Tens of thousands of women should be offered “natural” caesareans on the NHS, a leading doctor has said.
Letting babies wriggle their way out of the incision to the womb and lie skin-to-skin with mothers immediately is safe and could boost breastfeeding, a study found.
Doctors at the Euroanaesthesia conference in Geneva will be told today by Felicity Plaat, an anaesthetist at Imperial College London, that women who need to have caesareans miss out on the experience of birth and doctors ought to offer them a chance to replicate a natural delivery.
In a natural caesarean, the parents watch as the baby is partly brought out of the abdomen. After the doctor delivers the head and shoulders, the baby then pushes its way out of the womb, mimicking the experience of natural birth.
“Parents were worrying beforehand that it was going to be gruesome but it isn’t really. They are absolutely entranced by it,” Dr Plaat said.