Natural birth: our bodies, our choices, our future

Pregnancy and birth: what if we widened our view?

What if, to experience pregnancy and birth more fully, it was simply important to know all the options that exist?

Today, pregnant women and their partners benefit from increasingly precise medical care, which helps prevent, detect and manage many complications. Medicine and hospitals therefore play an essential role in the safety of mothers and newborns.

But when a pregnancy is progressing normally, other forms of care can also have their place.

This is the case with birth centres, and so with La Roseraie, which offers care focused on physiology and continuity.

Méline Leca, one of our midwives at La Roseraie birth centre in Geneva, shares these thoughts in a video about our way of approaching pregnancy and birth.

Low-risk pregnancy: knowing the different options

A low-risk (physiological) pregnancy is one that progresses normally, without complications requiring specific medical care.

In this context, care from a midwife means paying particular attention to the health of mother and baby, while taking into account the physical, emotional and family aspects of pregnancy.

This does not mean giving up medical care or safety. On the contrary, the midwife works within a defined professional framework and knows how to recognise situations that need a medical opinion or a referral to hospital.

At La Roseraie, this approach means supporting women and families with respect for physiology, while keeping a close eye on how each pregnancy develops.

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Taking an active part in your pregnancy and birth

Every woman experiences her pregnancy differently. Her needs, her expectations, her story and her birth plan are her own.

The care offered at La Roseraie aims to give parents-to-be an active role in their journey. Appointments with the midwife are a chance to ask questions, express wishes, talk about any worries and better understand the different options available.

At La Roseraie, the birth plan is built with the parents-to-be so that their wishes and needs are taken into account, within the safety framework of the birth centre.

La Roseraie: a setting designed around physiology

The house stands in a calm, warm setting, surrounded by a garden. The birth spaces have been designed to support privacy, comfort and freedom of movement.

The birth rooms have birth pools, so that women who wish to, and when the situation allows, can use water during labour or birth.

This familiar, intimate setting can help create favourable conditions for labour to unfold physiologically.

La Roseraie is also close to Geneva University Hospitals (HUG). This proximity is part of our safety arrangements and means that hospital care can be organised when needed.

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Méline Leca’s journey: a holistic vision of birth

Méline Leca’s career illustrates this wish to widen the options for care.

She qualified as a midwife in Switzerland in 2009 and first worked for several years in university hospitals, including three years in a midwife-led “continuity of care” service.

She then joined La Roseraie birth centre, where she cares for women with low-risk pregnancies, attends births and supports families in the first weeks after birth.

She has also trained in acupuncture and Tuina, two disciplines of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This training has fed her interest in prevention, a holistic approach to the person and the different options that can complement conventional care.

Her journey reflects a conviction: caring for birth also means caring for the woman, the baby and the family as a whole.

Birth centre or hospital: what if the most important thing was having the choice?

This is not about setting different places of birth against each other. These options complement one another and make it possible to offer care suited to each situation.

For parents-to-be, the key is to find out about their options early enough to choose the setting that matches their expectations, their situation and their plans. There is no single way to experience pregnancy or to give birth.

Listen. Inform. Support. Keep safe. Respect.

These are the values that build a relationship of trust between parents and midwives.

Because birth is both a deeply intimate event and a founding moment in the life of a family, it deserves care suited to each story.