"GENTLE BIRTH METHOD celebrates pregnancy and makes women birth fit"

Aruna Raghuram interviewed Dr Gowri Motha, a London-based obstetrician, wellknown childbirth pioneer, and founder of the Gentle Birth Method. Excerpts:

London-based celebrity medical practitioner of Indian origin, Dr. Gowri  Motha graduated from the well-reputed St. John’s Medical College, Bengaluru, and practised as an obstetrician in Bengaluru and Chennai in the 1970s. However, she recalls not “quite fitting into the medical system in India at that time”.

In 1980, she moved to the UK and began working with the country’s world-renowned National Health Service (NHS). Six years later, in 1986, she became the first medical practitioner to offer water births in a London NHS hospital and founded the Gentle Birth Method (GBM) — “a practical and effective week-by-week, mindbody programme to celebrate pregnancy and make mothers birth fit.”

Since then, Dr Motha has enabled over 10,000 women to deliver infants naturally through a preparation programme that leads to “comfortable, calm and confident births”.

Among the mothers enabled by her are supermodels Kate Moss and Elle Macpherson; fashion designer Stella McCartney, actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Sienna Miller, Sophie Hunter Cumberbatch, and Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex. Indian mothers enabled by her include Bollywood star Sonam Kapoor Ahuja and entrepreneur Eiesha Bharti Pasricha.

Dr. Motha is also author of Gentle Birth Method (2004) and Gentle First Year (2006).

What motivated you to develop the Gentle Birth Method?

My interest in water births was my primary motivation, as I deeply wanted mothers to have a gentler experience of childbirth. The birthing options offered to women in hospitals at that time were highly interventional.