Frédérick Leboyer's light touch turned births into 'nativities'

Washington

IT was somewhere around his 9,000th delivery that Frédérick Leboyer began questioning his methods and those of his colleagues - obstetricians who worked in noisy, brightly lit operating rooms and concluded each birth by picking the infant up by its heels and smacking it on the bottom.

The ensuing wail was, according to tradition, the sign of a happy, healthy, newly breathing baby.