Obituary: Sheila Kitzinger, CBE, childbirth campaigner, writer and anthropologist

Sheila Kitzinger: Natural childbirth campaigner whose books transformed maternity care. Picture: PA

Born: 29 March, 1929, in Taunton, Somerset. Died: 11 April, 2015, Oxfordshire, aged 86

Sheila Kitzinger was a prolific author and anthropologist, but was best known for challenging the medical establishment on natural childbirth, which she believed women should view as an exhilarating and rewarding experience.

Known to millions as the “natural birth guru”, through her tireless campaigning, she almost single-handedly changed the perceived “correct” and traditional attitudes to childbirth and challenged the system of the 1960s and 1970s, developing the concept of a “birthplan”, which aimed to give more choice to pregnant women. Over the ensuing 50 years, she wrote more than 25 books on the subject, gaining a global audience in the process, and waged an unrelenting crusade advocating that mothers, not clinicians, should be the focus during childbirth.

Her first book The Experience of Childbirth (1962), which argued that birth was a wonderful, exhilarating event where women needed to retain control and also had the potential to be a “psychosexual experience”, caused a sensation. Up until then, enemas, shaving and episiotomies had been unquestioned routines in modern childbirth and seen as essential.

Letters poured in. “It struck a chord,” she recalled. “It was as if I had pulled out a cork. Women poured out their joy and anguish, their anger and love, describing their births and telling me how hospitals, doctors and midwives needed to change.” The book had many editions and was updated and expanded as The New Experience of Childbirth in 2004.

Unlike many campaigners and feminists, who wanted women to reclaim their bodies and take control of their destinies, Kitzinger was not dogmatic in her approach or views. She never denied the possibility that there can be difficult pregnancies. She simply wanted women to be accompanied in labour by a sensitive, qualified midwife and for life-saving technology to be available if things went wrong.

She was convinced that emergency services were needed only for the very few, and women were mistaken in assuming critical care facilities and hospitals should form the basis of the maternity service “just in case”.

Her deeply held belief was merely that pregnancy is not an illness or a problem, but the most natural thing in the world for the majority of women. She supported elective caesarians, accepting that not all women found childbirth as pain-free and delightful as she did. Kitzinger’s empathy with other women and flexible viewpoint enabled her to stand apart in the natural childbirth field.

Thanks to her campaigning, it became normal to see partners present at the birth and she pushed to establish the importance of breast-feeding to maternal and infant health. In the 1980s she introduced the birthplan to Britain, by which prospective mothers can insist on various ­procedures during labour.

Social commentator Polly Toynbee described Kitzinger as “the Earth Mother, or Birth ­Mother of the Nation”, observing that “if Britain is now one of the most progressive countries in ­obstetric practices, it is largely due to her”.

Active into her 80s, Kitzinger campaigned on a wide range of issues including female genital mutilation, prisoners giving birth in handcuffs and human rights in midwifery in eastern Europe.

Described as “a woman of great spunk” by husband Uwe, he said: “She was an icon of home birth who decided to have a home death… taking to bed three months ago, she drank kir royale and Champagne and ate chocolates three days ago, knowing she didn’t have long… We said goodbye with a prayer.”

Born in Taunton in 1929, Sheila Helena Elizabeth Kitzinger was one of seven daughters to Alec, a tailor, and Clare Webster. Clare was the catalyst for Sheila’s own career and vocation. As well as tending home, Clare was a nurse who worked in an early family planning clinic and was an active campaigner for birth control; she even counselled women in the family sitting room with Sheila listening behind their sofa.

Educated in Taunton at Bishop Fox Girls’ School, Sheila initially trained to teach drama, but then changed to read anthropology at Ruskin and St Hugh’s College, Oxford, before moving to the 
University of Edinburgh to teach and carry out research into British race relations. In 1952, she married German émigré Uwe Kitzinger, an economist whom she had met while at Oxford. He joined the diplomatic service and in 1956 while on a posting in Strasbourg, Sheila gave birth to their first daughter. However, she chose a home birth which stirred consternation among the French upper classes and her fellow diplomatic wives at the time. Some were so dismayed that they likened her behaviour to “some sort of peasant giving birth in a field”.

The birth took just three hours from start to finish and, with only her husband and a midwife in attendance, she worked with her body and found the experience transformative. She recalled, “This is a sport I can do!” Over the next six years, she gave home births to four more daughters including twins, describing her third birth as “a torrential, painful, but glorious 40 minutes of action”.

In 1958 she joined the advisory board of the newly formed Natural Childbirth Trust (NCT, renamed the National Childbirth Trust in 1961). Over the years, Kitzinger developed exercises to teach expectant mothers how to overcome stress and gave classes; she also invented a foam rubber vagina and used a doll to demonstrate how a baby emerges from the birth canal, as well as devising pelvic floor exercises that are now standard in pregnancy classes.

She toured the world, lecturing on midwifery, training NCT teachers and holding workshops on antenatal care, inspiring her audiences with her enthusiasm and “sharp, witty tongue”.

Kitzinger was a prolific writer with her books covering women’s experiences of antenatal care, birthplans, induction of labour, epidurals, episiotomy, hospital care in childbirth and post-traumatic stress following childbirth. Pregnancy and Childbirth (1980), for example, was revised as The New Pregnancy and Childbirth, in 2011, selling over a million copies.

Other books including Education and Counselling for Childbirth (1977) and The Good Birth Guide (1979) extended her argument that problems in childbirth could be reduced through education and by using a range of relaxation techniques. Further topics covered included breastfeeding, childcare, sexuality, motherhood and grandparenthood. Many of her books became bestsellers and were translated into different languages. Her autobiography is due to be published next month.

She was honorary professor at University of West London, where she taught the MA in midwifery in the Wolfson School of Health Sciences. She also taught workshops on the social anthropology of birth and breastfeeding.

She later established the Birth Crisis Network, a helpline for mothers who had experienced a traumatic birth. She said: “The romantic image of a radiant mother, a beautiful baby in her arms, her golden hair lit by the sun’s rays, displayed on the jackets of many birth books is far removed from reality.”

She explained that new mothers were often unhappy adding, “One reason why many women have low self-esteem and cannot enjoy their babies is that care in childbirth often denies them honest information, the possibility of choice, and simple human respect.”