Women who desire 'natural childbirth' in hospitals in a highly medicalized birth care system.

'Natural childbirth' continues to matter to women in today's world. Building on qualitative research informed by constructivist grounded theory, I aim to bring insight into the birth experiences of women who demanded 'natural childbirth' in Czech hospitals in the context of a highly medicalized birth care system. I explore four themes: (1) the requirements of birth care, (2) strategies to achieve 'natural childbirth', (3) women's views of the hospital environment, (4) that of healthcare providers.

The social conception of space of birth narrated by women with negative and traumatic birth experiences.

Background: Many women experience giving birth as a negative or even as a traumatic event. Birth space and its occupants are fundamentally interconnected with negative and traumatic experiences, highlighting the importance of the social space of birth.

Aim: To explore experiences of women who have had a negative or traumatic birth to identify the value, sense and meaning they assign to the social space of birth.

The Island of Alternatives: Power, Medical Science, and "Gentle Birthing" in Socialist Czechoslovakia.

Beginning in the early 1980s, medical experts and birthing women increasingly voiced criticism of what had long been the technocratic, depersonalized nature of obstetric treatment in Czechoslovakia, despite the limited opportunities for them to do so publicly. A few maternity hospitals responded to the complaints by introducing radically different regimens of care. This article examines the history of one reformist project that took place in the small town of Ostrov nad Ohří.

The Psychoprophylactic Method of Painless Childbirth in Socialist Czechoslovakia: from State Propaganda to Activism of Enthusiasts.

This paper explores the history of the 'psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth' in socialist Czechoslovakia, in particular, in the Czech and Moravian regions of the country, showing that it substantially differs from the course that the method took in other countries. This non-pharmacological method of pain relief originated in the USSR and became well known as the Lamaze method in western English-speaking countries. Use of the method in Czechoslovakia, however, followed a very different path from both the West, where its use was refined mainly outside the biomedical frame, and the USSR, where it ceased to be pursued as a scientific method in the 1950s after Stalin's death.