The pregnant and the parturient

Society and the culture of health care delivery have radically changed over the last thirty years, the rate of change increasing exponentially towards the present time.

Maternity care has been part of that change. Previously paternalistic obstetricians told women whether they should or should not become pregnant, advised hospital confinements, kept women in hospital for days after their confinements, and discussed little of their management with the women themselves.

Now women have choice and they exercise that choice. There is choice as to the kind of antenatal care women wish to have, where they will deliver their baby and who will look after them during their pregnancy and delivery.

This was, and to a certain extent still is, threatening to obstetricians. But there are also genuine concerns as to whether these changes will adversely influence the morbidity and mortality of mother and child.

This chapter deals with issues of maternal choice from pre conception through to the post natal period, looking at how the exercise of maternal choice may conflict with the advice of the medical profession, potentially leaving accountability and responsibility a very grey area and how all this impinges on the anaesthetist.

Key words: pregnancy, midwives, changing childbirth, differing professional approach, home births, fertility treatment, in utero surgery, abortion, the underage parturient, refusal of caesarean section, the drug dependent parturient, the older primiparous woman, high BMI (obesity), non obstetric surgery, epidurals, cultural and religious issues, breast feeding mothers