A doula is a trained professional who provides continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to a mother before, during, and shortly after childbirth. Unlike midwives or obstetricians, ...

Pregnant women worry. They worry whether the baby is healthy; they worry if they’re eating right and avoiding everything that could possibly be harmful to the new life growing within. They also worry ...

Making informed decisions about childbirth represents one of the most significant choices expectant parents face. While both vaginal deliveries and cesarean sections safely bring babies into the world ...

Birthing centers, which offer natural, low-intervention births to low-risk moms, are becoming more and more popular. But regardless of demand, they’re struggling to stay open. When Kimberly Kleoppel ...

More than a century of medical progress designed to make childbirth a “more comfortable and happy event” is being slighted in the current craze for “natural childbirth,” says a team of four Baltimore ...

Michel Odent, a French obstetrician whose natural childbirth innovations, including homelike delivery rooms and birthing pools, aimed to make new mothers feel calm and secure, died Aug. 19 in London.

Pressure on women from antenatal classes, social media and health care professionals to have a natural birth is causing lasting psychological harm when it does not go to plan, new research shows. The ...