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Bing, born in a Berlin suburb on July 9, 1914, died on Friday
at her home in New York, her son Peter said on Sunday.
When Bing was 18, she fled her homeland after Hitler took power
in Germany and moved to England, where she became interested in
obstetrics and natural childbirth while working in a hospital's
maternity ward as a physical therapist.
She helped postpartum women regain their strength after they
were heavily medicated during childbirth and ordered to remain
in their beds for 10 days, she told The Journal of Perinatal
Education in 2000.
"What I saw I disliked intensely and I thought there must be
better ways. It was very frightening and upsetting to me. The
women either had very heavy anesthesia or nothing at all," she
said during the interview.
In 1949, Bing moved to the United States, eventually settling
down in New York, where she took a job teaching childbirth
classes to expectant mothers at Mt. Sinai Hospital.
There she familiarized herself and began teaching classes based
on the work of French obstetrician Dr. Fernand Lamaze, who
emphasized relaxation, breathing techniques and emotional
support from the father during childbirth.
"She was a charming, delightful and strong individual, who had
to sometimes take on a medical establishment that was not
comfortable with the things she was pushing," her son said.
In 1960, Bing help found the American Society for
Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics, now known as Lamaze
International.
During the next two decades, Bing introduced the Lamaze method
to the United States, giving interviews on television and radio
talk shows and speeches about the benefits of natural childbirth
and important role expecting parents play in childbirth.
"Prepared childbirth was easy to introduce in a way because the
atmosphere was right," she said during the interview,
attributing the growing popularity of the natural childbirth to
Women's Lib and other social and political movements of the
time.
Peter Bing said mothers would regularly stop Bing, known as the
"Mother of Lamaze," on the streets of New York to thank her.
"It was clear that she had a lasting impression, a human
impression as a teacher," he said.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Andrew
Hay)
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