It is nothing new that an environment that is most similar to a home and least similar to a hospital is something that greatly favors the optimal conditions for giving birth.
For a long time, many voices from Science have expressed the need to normalize childbirth, that is, not to medicalize it if there is no reason to do so.
That it be safe, of course, for mother and child, and where well-being conditions are met, are synonymous with laying the foundations to establish a perfect synchrony between both brains and establish, in the event that the future mother so wishes, a successful lactation.
All this is known by the architects who have designed a delivery room that has been awarded at the European Healthcare Design Conference 2022 (European Healthcare Design Conference, EHD2022), which was held in London last June.
Marta Parra, architect, co-founder of the Virai+Parra-Müller Maternity Architecture studio, and Nicolás Neleo Sánchez Cañamero, engineer from the medical center's maintenance service, received the award.
The project presented corresponds to the remodeling and new design of the delivery area of the Punta de Europa University Hospital, in Algeciras (Cádiz), developed by the studio.
For the first time, a Spanish project has won not only the first prize in the category of
Design in Health and Well-being, but also with the second in the category Design in Innovation and Transformation.
More information
Birth Plan: what it is and why it is interesting to deliver it
Many maternity hospitals in Spain continue to operate in spaces that no longer meet the minimum safety parameters established by the Ministry of Health's Normal Delivery Care Strategy and which delivery rooms should currently have.
For this reason, it is worth highlighting the work and involvement of the Puerta de Europa staff who, encouraged by the midwife Antonio Fernández Caballero, insists on "the need to reform the obstetrics area and carry out the necessary transformation for guaranteed care".
The Parra-Müller Maternity Architecture studio in collaboration with Virai-Arquitectura presented an innovative project to adapt previously existing spaces to new practices in care for normal childbirth, focused on women and their babies, but without forgetting functionality, security and the beauty of the environment.
The new space includes three Labor and Recovery units (expandable to four), an obstetrical bath room that is accessible from two delivery rooms, an office, a monitor room, an obstetrical operating room, a central resuscitation area and spaces for staff (work area, rest, meeting, guard room, changing rooms and toilets).
Delivery Area of the Punta de Europa University Hospital, Algeciras (Cádiz, Spain).
science speaks
Sara Cañamero de León is a midwife and has spent years spreading the idea of normalizing births through her publications and talks.
“The delivery room,” she explains, “and the dilation areas within the hospital environment are the only areas that are usually inhabited by a healthy population and host a physiological and natural event.
Not only how we give birth matters, but also where we give birth”.
“The environment”, she maintains, “as well as everything related to hospital architecture, can turn the birth into a very positive experience, or just the opposite.
For this, it is essential to understand the physiology of childbirth, the importance of certain elements that can favor the release of hormones that will help the process flow.
The Normal Childbirth Care Strategy highlights the importance of seeking environments that favor feelings of intimacy, security and tranquility for women at the time of giving birth.
It is important, emphasizes this midwife, "that the woman feels security, intimacy during her delivery, which is why when thinking about the best place to give birth, it is the one in which the woman in labor is the protagonist of the space".
Delivery Area of the Punta de Europa University Hospital, Algeciras (Cádiz, Spain).
Cañamero considers that it is "vital" to understand that childbirth is movement, "and therefore it is necessary to provide it through large spaces, with little furniture."
For her, it is also essential to know what the different positions are in which women can give birth, and to offer devices and means so that they can do so, to facilitate the different positions through bathtubs, balls, beds, vines or fabrics hung from the ceiling that allow women's restraint to facilitate vertical childbirth, delivery chairs...
Light also plays a key role: "Lighting is extremely important to be able to favor or give an atmosphere of intimacy: natural light, indirect lighting, dim lights...", she reviews it.
"It is known that white hospital lights inhibit the release of oxytocin, an essential hormone for childbirth to take place,"
“The dilation-delivery room design so that the woman does not have to be moved at any stage of the delivery process, and that she feels safe, on the one hand, and free, with privacy, like at home, on the other.
Since we are mammals, childbirth is mediated and regulated by hormones that respond to these feelings, these emotions”, says Cañamero.
“I think it is possible to reach a point where they can converge”, he reflects, “on the one hand, the safety of the woman and the baby (with the different means, devices... that are necessary, hidden in the architecture of the space so that the toilets can use them if necessary), and the comfort of the woman, respect for the physiology of childbirth on the other”.
For her part, the doctor in Biology María Berrozpe praises this initiative: “The pleasant and relaxed spaces that inspire confidence and where the mother feels not only safe when being skin to skin with her baby, but comfortable and comfortable, promote the necessary encouragement so that you can concentrate on the child and thus establish that imprint that is so important and that fosters a future relationship of healthy attachment between both: mother and newborn.
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