Mothers And Babies

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31380, 27 May 1967, Page 4

Mothers And Babies

Maternity Care. By P. M. Fleury. Allen and Unwin. Illustrated. Liat of References. 128 pp. Although some of the material in this book is irrelevant to New Zealand (home confinements, for instance), there is much of value to those concerned with maternity welfare. Dr. Fleury sent out a questionnaire to a group of women in Rutland and a group in London, thus obtaining information under rural end city conditions. Mothers were asked 21 questions (a copy of the questionnaire appears in the book), including where their latest baby was born (in home or in hospital), whether they attended any classes in preparation for the birth, and whether they were satisfied with the maternity services. The book is an assessment of the replies to her question-

nalre, particularly regarding the "human” point of view as well as the purely technical service which was received. Many mothers felt that although the babies were treated with great care and affection, they themselves were often felt to be a nuisance to bo ignored as far as possible.

Dr. Fleury, who has spent three years In an Anglican mission hospital in South Africa and is now medical officer In one of the large London boroughs, is most conscious,of the need to treat maternity patients as people, often requiring encouragement and often bewildered by all that is happening to them. She ends her book with 10 letters she received in answer to an advertisement she placed in a nursing magazine asking for mothers’ childbirth‘experiences.- -