Restorative Justice in Childbirth

Perinatal Mental Health and Obstetric Violence: Tensions, Impacts and Restorative Horizons

November 8, 2025

The Body Knows, the Space Accompanies

Municipal Maternal and Child Hospital of San Isidro, Argentina
November 2025

Authors

Dr Laura Abojer – Head of the Obstetrics Department at San Isidro Mother and Child Hospital
Dr Javier De Cicco – Obstetrician specialising in high-risk pregnancies and Head of Emergency Services at San Isidro Mother and Child Hospital
Ivana Iriarte, Lic. – Certified breastfeeding counsellor and doula at San Isidro Mother and Child Hospital. Licentiate in Communication Sciences.
Nury Benavides, Lic. – On-call midwife and Coordinator of the Early Childhood Programme (PIM) at San Isidro Mother and Child Hospital

Institution
San Isidro Mother and Child Hospital. Buenos Aires, Argentina.

A Story of Transformation in the Obstetric Care Model from San Isidro, Argentina

Our institutional story is not so different from that of most hospital birth centers across Latin America: the story of a maternity ward that, for many years, was part of an interventionist, hegemonic, androcentric, and physician-centered model of care.

The Municipal Maternal and Child Hospital of San Isidro (HMMISI), located in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, has for decades been a place of training for countless generations of specialists in Gynecology and Obstetrics, and the birthplace of thousands of babies.

Our delivery room used to be a “typical” hospital birth room, one among many across Latin America: white walls, cold lights, inherited protocols, a clock ticking as if “time was about to run out”… A cold iron bed at the center of the scene, with stirrups to hold women’s legs, stealing their autonomy to give birth as they need and desire, forcing them to give birth in the lithotomy position as the only option.

Metal furniture, metallic sounds, metallic cold… all within a chain of decisions that often left out the woman giving birth—and her companion as well.

But in recent years, within that same room, something new began to breathe.
And that is what we want to share with you.

A Watershed Moment

In June 2024, our maternity ward welcomed Anna Maria Rossetti, an Italian midwife and director of the Scuola Elementale di Arte Ostetrica (SEAO) in Florence, Italy, as part of the international project IPOV – Respectful Care (respectfulcare.eu), in which our maternity hospital takes part.

That encounter became a turning point. During her one-month stay, we were able to absorb her transformative vision, based on Verena Schmid’s salutogenic model of integral maternity care and the Midwifery Care model. Through this lens, we understood with new clarity how the environment acts as a neuromodulator on the birthing body, and the deep importance of the space that accompanies.

New words appeared. Questions emerged. A desire was ignited: to transform obstetric practice from within.

When the Environment Also Supports

Thus, the space began to change.
An old, almost-forgotten corner of the surgical area was transformed into a small “little house.”
An intimate refuge. A temple.

A space where architecture doesn’t impose but accompanies;
where light doesn’t invade but embraces;
where time becomes porous and the outside world fades away.

To understand birth as an act of profound intimacy—and to protect that sacredness—is part of our duty as health professionals.

This deep transformation was driven 100% by the initiative and commitment of the staff themselves, inspired and convinced of the need to change the model of care.

It was the cleaning staff, for instance, who on their day off came enthusiastically to paint the birth room.
Midwives painted mandalas and repurposed furniture.
Obstetricians, residents, and even the Deputy Head of Obstetrics brought their own tools to install every detail of the new room.

All of this was born from within —from a collective desire to transform the space—with only simple institutional permission, but above all, the strength of a shared conviction.

Thus, this non-intervention birth room became, in a way, a shared space—created by collective hands, inhabited by diverse bodies, sustained by a common vision.

This new room blossomed into a “birth home” for all the women who choose it.

The following texts bring together two real stories—the births of Ana and Lucía, both of which took place in this room.
They are living experiences that show that when the space listens, the body speaks. And it knows.

A Rebirth – Ana

It was almost midnight. The silence and intimacy of the night in the maternity ward were complete… but the body does not follow schedules when it comes to being born.

Ana arrived at the emergency room, barely able to finish a sentence between the flood of sensations running through her body. She was in full labor. Her voice and her body said it all.

She had experienced a highly medicalized birth before. This time, she chose another path. Ana went straight to the non-intervention birth room—this was her second chance, her unfinished story, her birth that hadn’t been allowed to be.

She entered the room like someone entering a sacred cave.
Dim light, soft blue waves moving on the walls, the sound of the sea whispering in the background. Everything vibrated.

Ana was on all fours, crossing her own inner sea. She gasped between “I can’t anymore” and long silences filled with endorphins. Her body was speaking. Her pelvis opened. Her breathing became an ancient chant.

The space held her. The room didn’t rush her. Calmness filled every corner.

The birth unfolded in two moments: first the head, then the shoulders, the body, the legs. And right after, Ana’s body embracing her son’s—skin to skin.

No interruptions. No foreign voices. No haste.
Just her, her child, her partner, and that warm atmosphere that wrapped around everything.

The room was filled with oxytocin, joy, and sweet tears.

Lucía

Lucía is very young—17, maybe 18 years old. Her partner, Oscar, too. When I arrived, I could already perceive the ritual of the body, the path. She was already in labor. Her sounds, her movements, her presence—everything in her said: “I am giving birth.”

The room was bluish, warm, contained. The silence was alive.
Lucía roared from the deepest part of her being. She was animal. She was human. She was a woman giving birth in freedom.

Her body knew. And the space knew it too.

Oscar was not just accompanying her—he was breathing with her, vibrating with her. In that shared rhythm there was something ancestral. The whole room became a single breath.
A dance of frequencies. A new balance between earth, mother, father, and child.

When the baby girl began to move through Lucía’s birth canal, something opened within her too.
She supported herself, changed position, sought air, sought openness.

Yamila, the midwife accompanying her, spoke softly and respectfully, and told her she could touch her baby’s head if she wished.
At first, Lucía hesitated—but eventually, she did.
Because when the body feels safe, it finds its way.

Aime was born. In two moments as well.
And she was received by her mother, upon her chest.
With tears. With love. With oxytocin.

The entire room pulsed with emotion and life.

Lucía asked how long she had been there. She began to talk, laugh, tell stories. And while doing so, she held her baby close.
She had transformed. She was a new woman.

And Aime, her daughter, arrived knowing that this space, this room—this external womb—had known how to wait for her.