Frédérick Leboyer obituary

Obstetrician best known for his revolutionary 1974 book, Birth Without Violence

"Do you think babies like being born?" So opened Birth Without Violence, a book that in 1974 was to change obstetrics. Its author was a French doctor who, having delivered thousands of babies, had come to a startling realisation - that while the requirements of the mother, the father and medical staff were all catered for in the delivery room, the needs of the one other person involved were being entirely overlooked. The baby, said Fri(C)di(C)rick Leboyer, was being ignored. Some even claimed newborn babies had no feelings. "The newborn baby " a person?" he wrote. "Now, really. Medical books will tell you quite the opposite."

In an age during which television programmes are made about the life of babies in utero, and when children have a commissioner and a UN convention to guard their rights, it seems odd to remember that when Birth Without Violence was written, the baby was not considered central to the business of childbirth. Beyond being physically alive, he or she had pretty much a bit part in the drama - the doctor's trophy, sometimes held aloft by his or her feet, encouraged to breathe with a slap or two on the buttocks.