Antonina Doroszewska

There has been a lot of changes in the provision of care for women during the perinatal period and newborns since the early 90s past century. These changes are an example occurring in parallel to the process of medicalization and the tendency to demedicalization.

The aim of this paper is to analyse these changes from the perspective of the theory of medicalization. In this article we analyse three effects of medicalization: increasing number of unjustified medical interventions, ignoring the needs of childbearing women and reducing the role of midwives.

I assert that we observe two contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the medicalization of perinatal care is promoted by physicians. On the other hand, the demedicalization has its advocates among women and midwives. The question then arises whether these tendencies are exclusive or they are an example of democratization in the field of perinatal care, which are increasingly influenced by active in civil society, various pressure groups.

The process of birth has become a medical procedure, the correctness of which is monitored by obstetricians and midwives. In a hospital setting, the needs of a woman giving birth are not always taken into account. Over the years, women have been pushed into areas of objective rather than subjective treatment in obstetric care. Despite significant positive changes in perinatal care in Poland, many women giving birth do not understand why they are experiencing harm and violence from medical personnel. At the same time, the movement of the humanization of midwifery, emphasizing the patient's subjectivity, strengthens the active role of the mother in the delivery room, opening the possibility of using new methods of communication. Non-violent communication, developed by Marshall Rosenberg, assumes communication based on the recognition of needs and emotions, and allows for the complete elimination or at least limitation of the possibility of violence in dialogue in any form, psychological or physical. The aim of the article is to show how the empathic reception of the interlocutor's message can be an alternative to the communication of the delivery tract that women recall. Base on the experiences of women giving birth, a simulation of "reversing traumatic perinatal experiences" will be created through a proposed change in the pattern of communication.