Spain will modify the protocols of birth attendance, putting them at the same level of their Communitarian counterparts.
In Spain, compared to other European countries, birth is a traumatic process wherein the pregnant is treated like an ill, practicing on her protocols that contemplate the unnecessary administration of drugs, and non-required C sections. Also, the pregnant is not duly informed about the alternatives she has, she might choose tranquilizers or acupuncture over epidural, for example, or even to rely on the endorphins the body secretes during pregnancy.
A New Directive of Birth Attendance has been approved, changing traditional birth attendance models, aiming to consider birth a physiological and natural process, and not an illness. Birth has to be left to its own devices, progressing at a spontaneous pace, intervening only when it¡s necessary, mainly if there is risk for the women and/or the newborn.
These new measures include the optionality of shaving the perineum as well as enema, selective and non-systematic episiotomy, the pregnant will be informed and permanently escorted, women will chose the position in which she wants to give birth, she will be able to drink and eat according to her needs, amniotomy will not be performed and neither the routine placement of a venous prophylactic line, amongst others.
The objective is to get back to to natural birth, in a warm, entrusting, intimate context, where women can feel comfortable and birth develops organically without so many drugs involved and the where the pregnant is the protagonist of once in a lifetime moment.
