... Still in shock after tour of nearest maternity service this afternoon. Was all going swimmingly until the excellent nurse conducting the tour showed us into a sample delivery room and started messing around with the bed.
I remarked to dh that it didn't look very good for lots of delivery positions. And the nurse then said that, of course, ALL women in xxx country have to deliver on their backs with their legs strapped in the air (apart from CSs, naturally). Having had 2 normal deliveries, I laughed and said, surely, this couldn't be completely true: what if a mother really didn't want to do this or was getting on fine in another position? The response was that medical schools here don't "teach" anything else, so none of the staff has any relevant experience and couldn't guarantee the mother/baby's safety doing it any other way. She thought that in Britain all-fours was standard, so I simply said that in Britain, the mother decides what she wants to do and the staff can manage this.
Asked doctor at routine check-up this evening if this blanket "rule" was real, and she said yes, of course: you want a hospital delivery, you sign up to their rules. Her attitude was basically that if you want to do anything else, even if you've done it twice before and have a low-risk pregnancy, then you're jeopardising your baby and going back to the jungle.
Can any midwives/obs specialists explain whether any position with the mother's belly down/backwards causes the slightest complication for the baby (or staff), or whether it's just another indication of how medicalised (antiquated) the whole system is here?