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Birth Without Violence

by Frederick Leboyer

Part Two

1

To be born is to suffer.
Birth is pain.
For the woman, as we all know, and for the child
as we have forgotten.
Now that we are finally aware of it, let us try to
understand why.
What is it that makes being born such a horror?

2

The nightmare of being born is not so
much the pain as the fear.
For the baby, the world is a terrifying place.
It is the vastness, the enormity of the whole
experience of being born which so terrifies this little traveller.
Blindly, madly, we assume that the newborn baby feels
nothing.
In fact, he feels . . . everything.
Everything, totally, completely, utterly,
and with a sensitivity we can't even begin to
imagine.
Birth is a tempest, a tidal wave of sensations
and he doesn't know what to make of them.
Sensations are felt more acutely, more strongly by the child,
because they are all new, and because his skin is
so fresh, so tender,
while our blunted deadened senses have
become indifferent.
The result of age, or maybe of habit.

3

Let's begin with sight.
A newborn baby cannot see.
Or so we are told in books, and have come to believe.
Otherwise, we could never
shine a light straight into the eyes of a newborn baby
as we do.
What if we were to lower the lights as the child is being
born?
But why lower lights for someone who
is blind?

Blind?
Maybe it is time that
we
opened our eyes.

If we did, what might we see?
Just as the head emerges, while the body is still
prisoner, the child opens his eyes wide. Only to
close them again instantly, screaming, a look of
indescribable suffering on his tiny
face.

Are we trying to brand our children with the marks of
suffering, of violence
by blinding them as we do with dazzling lights?
What goes on before a bullfight?
How is a furious charging bull produced, mad with
pain and rage?

He is locked up in the pitch dark for a week
then chased out into the blinding light of the arena.
Of course he charges! He's got to kill!
Perhaps there lurks a murderer in the heart of
every man as well. Is it surprising?

4

Now hearing.
Do you imagine a newborn child is deaf?
No more than he's blind.
By the time he arrives in this world he's been
aware of sound for a long time. He already
knows many sounds from the universe which is his mother's
body:
intestines rumbling, joints cracking,
and that spellbinding rhythm, the heartbeat,
even nobler, grander,
the throbbing undercurrent, the swell,
sometimes the storm
that is "her" breath.
Then . . . "her" voice, unique in
its quality, its mood, its accent, its inflections.
Out of all of which is woven, as it were, this child.
From a great distance come the sounds of the
outside world.
What a symphony!

But remember that all these sounds are muffled,
filtered, cushioned by the waters.
So that once the child is out of the water, how the
world roars!
Voices, cries, any small sounds in the room
are like a thousand thunderclaps to the unhappy
child!
It is only because we are unaware, or because we have
forgotten how acute the sensitivity of a newborn baby is
that we dare talk at the top of our voices or even, at times,
shout out orders in a delivery room.

Where we should be as spontaneously and respectfully
silent as we are in a forest or a church.

5

Now we begin to suspect what a calamity,
what a disaster it can be to be born,
to arrive suddenly into the midst of all this
ignorance, all this unintentional cruelty.
What about the newborn baby's skin?
This timorous skin that quivers at the slightest
touch, this skin that knows if what approaches is
friend or foe and can start to tremble,
this skin, raw as an open wound, which until this moment
has known nothing but the caress of the friendly
waves lapping it.
What is in store for it now?
Roughness, insensitivity
the macabre deadness of surgical gloves,
the coldness of aluminium surfaces,
the towels, stiff with starch.
So the newborn baby screams,
and we
laugh delightedly.

6

Once the scales begin to fall from our eyes
and we become aware
of the torture we've made of birth,
something in us cannot but shout
"Stop! Just stop!"

Hell is no abstraction.
It exists.
Not as a possibility in some other world at
the end of our days,
but here and now, right at the start.
Who would be surprised to learn that such visions
of horror haunt us for the rest of our days?

Is that it then?
Is that the extent of the torture?
No.

There is fire, which burns the skin, scalds the eyes,
engulfs the whole being, as if this poor baby had
to swallow this fire.
Think back to your first cigarette, or your
first whiskey, and remember the tears it brought
to your eyes, how your choking breath protested.
Such a memory might begin to help you understand how
the baby feels drawing in his first gulp of air.
Of course the baby screams, his whole being
struggling to expel this vicious fire,
to fight bitterly this precious air, which is
the very substance of life!

So it all begins with a "No!"
to life itself

7

If even that were the end of the suffering,
the pain.
But it isn't.

No sooner is the child born, than we grasp his feet
and dangle him upside down in mid-air!
To get a sense of the unbearable
vertigo the child experiences, we must go
back a bit, back to the womb.

8

In the womb the child's life unfolded like
a play in two acts;
two seasons, as different as summer from
winter.
In the beginning, the "golden age."
The embryo, a tiny plant, budding, growing
and one day becoming a fetus.
From vegetable to animal; movement appears,
spreading from the little trunk outward, to the extremities.
The little plant has learned to move its branches,
the fetus is now enjoying his limbs.
Heavenly freedom!
Yes, this is the golden age!
This little being is weightless; free of all shackles,
all worries.

Carried weightless by the waters,
he plays,
he frolics,
he gambols,
light as a bird,
flashing as quickly, as brilliantly as a fish.

In his limitless kingdom,
in his boundless freedom,
as if' passing through the immensity of time,
he tries on all the robes,
he tastes and enjoys all the forms
which Life has dreamed up for Itself.

Alas, why must it be that everything must become
its own opposite?
This is, unfortunately,
the Law,
to which all things must bow.
So it is that, dancing in tune to this Universal
Breath,
Night leads towards Day,
Spring to Winter.
It is the inevitable law that turns the enchanted
garden where the child once played so freely
into a garden of shadows and sorrow.

During the first half of pregnancy the egg
(that is to say the membranes which surround and contain
the fetus, and the waters in which he swims) has
been growing more quickly than the child.
But from now on the reverse becomes true:
the fetus is now growing much bigger, becoming
a little child.
The egg does the opposite. It has achieved its own
perfection and hardly grows any more.

Because he is growing so large, one day the child
comes upon something solid: the walls of the uterus,
and learns for the first time that his kingdom has
boundaries.
Because he keeps on growing, the space around him
becomes more and more confined.
His world seems to be closing in on him,
gripping him in its clutches.
The former absolute monarch must now reckon with the
law!
Careless freedom, golden hours!
My foolish youth!
Where have you gone?
Why have you left me?

The child, once his own master, now becomes a
prisoner.
Immured.
And what a prison.
Not only do the walls press in on him,
squashing him from all sides,
but the floor is coming up to meet him,
even as the ceiling is descending slowly,
relentlessly, forcing his neck to bend.
What is there for him to do but bow his head in submission,
accept this abasement.
And wait.

9

But one day he is rewarded for his
humility.
To his surprise the grip is now an embrace.
The walls are suddenly alive, and the clutch has become
a caress!
What's happening?
His fear is changing into pleasure!
Now he revels in the very sensations that first made
him tremble.
When they come he quivers with pleasure,
curves his back,
bends his head
and waits,
but this time, with anticipation, with wonder.

What is happening?...
What is the reason for all this?
Contractions.
The contractions of the final month of pregnancy,
warming the uterus, preparing it for its new role.

But then one day ...
the gentle waves lash into a storm .
and there is anger in this embrace!
It's grinding, crushing, instead of holding,
cherishing!
The once pleasant game has become horrible. . .
It's not being caressed, it's being hunted.
I thought you loved me,
but now you're squeezing me, killing me,
pushing me down.
You want me to die,
to launch myself into . . . this emptiness,
this bottomless pit!

With all the strength he can muster,
the child resists.
Not to leave, not to go, not to jump ...
anything ... but not this void.
He's fighting not to be cast out, not to be expelled,
and of course he's going to lose.

His back stiffens, his head hunches down
into his shoulders,
his heart thumps as if it will break, the child
is nothing but a mass of terror.
The walls are closing in on him like a
wine press crushing grapes.
His prison has become
a passageway,
which is turning into a funnel.

As for his terror, which is limitless,
it has turned into rage.
Animated by rage,
he's going to attack.
These walls are trying to kill me,
they must give way!
And these walls are . .
my mother!
My mother who carried me,
who loved me!

Has she gone mad?
Or have I?
This monster won't let go.
My head, oh my poor head,
this poor head which bears the brunt
of all this misery.
It's going to explode.

The end is in sight.
It must mean death.
How can he know, this poor, unhappy child,
that the darker the gloom, the obscurity,
the closer he is to reaching
the light, the very light of life!

10

It is then that everything seems to
become chaos!
The walls have released me, the prison, the dungeon
has vanished.
Nothing!
Has the entire universe exploded?
No.
I am born ...
and around me,
the void.

Freedom, unbearable freedom.
Before, everything was crushing me, killing me, but at
least I had shape, I had some form!
Prison, I cursed you!
Mother, oh my mother, where are you?
Without you, where am I?
If you are gone
I no longer exist.
Come back, come back to me,
Hold me! Crush me!
So that I may be!

11

Fear always strikes from behind.
The enemy always attacks you from the rear.
The child is wild with anxiety
for the simple reason that he is not being held
any more.
His back, which has been curled up for months,
which the contractions have drawn taut as a bow,
is suddenly released,
like a bow having let fly its arrow.
But what a shock!
To calm, reassure and pacify the
terrified child, we must gather up his little body,
hold it back from the void, save it from this unwanted
liberty, which he cannot yet taste or enjoy,
because it came all at once, and far too quickly.
We must help him the same way we regulate the air
pressure
for a deep sea diver who has surfaced too fast.

What fools we are!
Instead of gathering up the little body,
we hang it by its feet, leaving it swinging in the void.
As for the head, this poor head,
which has borne the brunt of the catastrophe,
we let it dangle, and give the poor child the sense
that everything is whirling, spinning,
that the universe holds nothing but unbearable vertigo.

12

Next, where do we put this martyr, this child
who comes from the security, the warmth of the womb?
we put him onto
the freezing harshness of the scales!
Steel, hard and cold, cold as ice,
cold which burns like fire.
A sadist couldn't do better.
The baby screams louder and louder.
Yet everyone else is in rapture.
"Listen! Listen to him cry!" they say,
delighted at all the noise he's making.

Then he's off again.
Carried by his heels of course.
Another trip, more vertigo.
He's put somewhere on a table and we abandon him, but not
for long.
Now for the drops.
It wasn't enough to stab his eyes with light
directed right onto his face, now we've got something
even worse in store for him.
Since we are the adults, we are the stronger,
we decide .

13

Of course, we prevail.
We force the tender eyelids open,
to apply a few drops of burning liquid....
Drops.
Drops of fire, supposed to protect him from an
infection long since eradicated.
As if he knows what's coming,
he struggles like one possessed,
he squeezes his eyelids tightly together
trying desperately to protect himself.

14

Then he's left on his own.
Adrift in this incomprehensible, insane, hostile
world,
which seems bent on destroying him.
Escape! Escape!
Suddenly an amazing thing happens:
at the limit of his tears, the limit of his breath,
at the limit of his misery, the newborn finds a way
to escape.
Not that his legs can take him anywhere, but
he can flee to within himself
Arms and legs clasped, curled up into a ball,
almost as though he were a fetus again.
He has rejected his birth, and the world as well.
He's back in paradise,
willing prisoner in a symbolic womb.

15

But his precious moments of peace don't last
long.
He must be elegant, reflect well on his mother!
So for her sake he is squeezed into those implements of
torture we call clothes.

16

The glass has been drained to its dregs.
The worn-out, defeated child gives up.
He lets himself fall back into the arms of his only
friend,
his one refuge:
sleep.

17

This torture, this slaughter of an innocent,
this murder
is what we have made of birth.
But how naive, how innocent to imagine
no trace will remain;
that one could emerge unscathed, unmarked, from
such an experience.
The scars are everywhere:
in our flesh, our bones, our backs,
our nightmares, our madness,
and all the insanity, the folly of this world -
its tortures, its wars, its prisons.

Of what else do all our myths and legends cry,
all our holy scriptures,
if not of this tragic odyssey.

To Part Three | Part One

This book is obtainable from bookshops. ISBN 0 7493 0642 4. Publisher Cedar