'I have my very best ideas in the bath," says Michel Odent, waving an impressive pile of medical research papers, mostly written by himself. That the French obstetrician is creative when wet is hardly surprising. He's best known for, when working in a maternity unit outside Paris in the late 70s, recommending that women turn up the heating, turn down the lights, and immerse themselves in a birthing pool.
It was while bathing at his Hampstead home, wondering how to reduce the number of women opting for caesarean sections, that a solution came to him like a wave. Women in labour need, he believes, not constant foetal and maternal monitoring, but peace and security; they need the calm wisdom of women who have already given birth naturally. No men, non-mothers, or those who have had caesarean, ventouse or forcep deliveries should be allowed in the room. There was one way to ensure this. "A prerequisite for entering a midwifery school should be that you're a mother with personal experience of a natural birth," he says. "I personally guarantee that on the day when all midwives are mothers - with the experience of giving birth without intervention or medication - the current rate of caesareans will belong to history."
At 73, the long-limbed obstetrician is awash with ideas. His past pronouncements include saying that male partners should be barred from the delivery room, advocating crash dieting before conception to rid the body of toxin-ridden fats, and arguing that mothers should breastfeed for up to five years. But now he's focusing on the increasing curse of caesareans. His latest book, The Caesarean, is published next month. It is, he claims with a characteristic lack of modesty, the only book to exclusively cover the subject, the more remarkable since one in five babies in Britain are born through this method, twice the number recommended by the World Health Organisation and an increase of more than fourfold in the past 25 years.
The significance of these statistics cannot be exaggerated, according to Odent. He believes the overuse of the caesarean could usher in the end of civilisation as we know it. Those few crucial hours surrounding our birth could determine not only individual lives, but all of our futures.
His theory revolves around a notion of a "cocktail of love hormones" - primarily oxytocin - that is produced by a woman who gives birth naturally. But in an elective caesarean, without labour, no such cocktail is produced. As a result, the baby is born with an "impaired capacity to love", which can manifest itself in a variety of ways in later life. There could be a tendency towards juvenile violent crime and autism (reflecting the inability to love others), or anorexia nervosa and suicide (due to an inability to love yourself).
This may be a bizarre theory, with no medical foundation whatsoever, but it's not a simplistic one. Odent is careful to particularly single out elective caesareans, as opposed to those that are carried out in labour. Insisting he is not anti-technology, he concedes that an emergency caesarean is often necessary, and may even be preferable to a forceps delivery. ("Forceps have their place in museums. The last time I used forceps was in February 1965.") An in-labour caesarean also means the "cocktail of love hormones" are not so inhibited.
Nor does he believe that a caesarean is unsafe, in contradiction to many in the medical profession who cite increased risk of blood clotting, bladder injury and bleeding as possible consequences of such surgery. "The safety of the caesarean is comparable to the safety of the vaginal route," he claims confidently. In fact, it's because a caesarean is now so safe that women are increasingly choosing it. It's only the long-term risks "to civilisation" which he sees as devastating.
Ten thousand women a year have this operation at "maternal request" (aka a celebrity or "too posh to push" caesarean), costing the NHS about £25m more than if they had delivered naturally. It is these women that Odent is initially targeting. Women, he says, need to feel so secure about birth that to choose a caesarean is absurd. In order for them to feel that confident, the birthing room must be private, with no strangers and little use of language. This allows the "mammalian" instincts of a mother to emerge. "At heart, we are mammals. We have basic mammalian needs. Mammals don't give birth if there's a predator around. They sneak off alone."
To respect and protect this privacy, Odent suggests that not only midwives but obstetricians should be women who have given birth vaginally and "undisturbed". Ironically, of course, that would exclude Odent.
That may be fine with him, as he is an awkward figure in the medical establishment. Guru is the best title to give him; his work is often more faith than science. He talks about the "sacred atmosphere" in the delivery room, and The Caesarean is an uncomfortable stew of references to obscure medical studies alongside long sections of new-age nonsense: "In order to stop destroying the planet we need a sort of unification of the planetary village. We need love more than ever before." He is a philosopher doctor, relying heavily upon anecdotal evidence. He collects, and then retells to his audience - through lectures, his books, in conversations with me and others - women's labour tales. He tells me about his own birth ("my mother said it was the most joyful day of her life"), the birth of his son, now 19 ("an exceptional situation of pri vacy"), before gladly listening to my own story of giving birth to twins before eight medical professionals, a tale which makes him shake his head in sorrow. "If you don't feel observed, it makes the birth as easy as possible. It's most dangerous when we have a crowd around," he says. It should have been just me and a midwife, who had herself given birth naturally, of course.
Odent gathers together these anecdotal tales and, through giant leaps of thought, constructs general theories about them. He believes, for example, that taking painkilling drugs during childbirth is an explanation for the increased rate of drug taking among teenagers. He is not ashamed of his unorthodox methods. He readily admits that his early book, Primal Health, first published in 1986 and containing many theories about the critical period between conception and a child's first birthday, was originally a book of ideas: "I started with feelings," he says.
Some say, however, that Odent's feelings are slowly being supported by gathering scientific evidence. When he first mooted the idea of birthing pools more than 30 years ago, they were said to be perilous. Now more than 30 NHS hospitals have their own, and many more hire them in. And, increasingly, the early months of life, once given scant attention, are being seen as crucial in a child's long-term development.
It's easy to forget how quickly things have changed; Odent, with all his 73 years, almost 50 of them spent working with women in childbirth, remembers well. In the late 70s, a baby was whisked away from the mother at birth, only to be brought back to the mother later all cleaned up, in the belief that a newborn couldn't breastfeed. Less than 30 years - one generation - later, it's routine for a baby to be placed immediately on its mother's breast.
So Odent is an optimist. The possibility that he may be proved right about some things, but wrong about others (he's been severely criticised for making a connection between birth experience and autism, for example) does not occur to him. He was, he points out, eventually believed about birthing pools; there's a good chance that he will be believed about the caesarean, too. The consequences of his words not being heeded could be catastrophic. It might, he says, take two, three, four ... even 10 generations for the full effects of large numbers of caesarean births to be apparent, and by then it might be too late. "At the beginning of the 21st century, a great proportion of the world population does not use the vaginal route to be born," he says. "The time has come to try to anticipate the - probably enormous - effects on the characteristics of our civilisations in such a sudden turning point in the history of childbirth."
But until he wins that particular battle, he's going to take a few more baths.
· The Caesarean is published by Free Association Books on April 1
