Entre riscos fisiológicos e emocionais:

a humanização do parto em uma maternidade pública carioca

Abstract

This article will be focusing on physiological and psychological risks during childbirth, deriving from an etnography of a public humanized maternity in Rio da Janeiro under the point of view of both nurse-obstetricians and women they attend.

There is an hierarchy and a contradiction between physiological and emotional based risks in the struggle between the woman’s desires and the institution’s protocols that have physiological risks and rates as a major concern. In the activist discourse, the concept of autonomy is connected to a desire for more natural practices in childbirth, raising opposition to the way medical knowledge defines protocols to childbirth by setting in motion evidence-based medicine knowledge that seeks to classify and act upon physiological risk in a manner that doesn’t compromise to other views without struggle.

This article analyses the institutionalization of the humanized model, taking in consideration the permanent tensions between the ideals promoted by the humanized childbirth movement, the biomedical know-power, and structural and institutional aspects of healthcare. This article also encompasses the majority of this hospital users that are not necessarily seeking a childbirth with no intervention, ‘respecting childbirth physiology’.

Keywords: maternity; childbirth; humanized childbirth; women