“Do you think babies like being born?” So opened Birth Without Violence, a book that in 1974 was to change obstetrics. Its author was a French doctor who, having delivered thousands of babies, had come to a startling realisation – that while the requirements of the mother, the father and medical staff were all catered for in the delivery room, the needs of the one other person involved were being entirely overlooked. The baby, said Frédérick Leboyer, was being ignored. Some even claimed newborn babies had no feelings. “The newborn baby … a person?” he wrote. “Now, really. Medical books will tell you quite the opposite.”

In an age during which television programmes are made about the lives of babies in utero, and when children have a commissioner and a UN convention to guard their rights, it seems odd to remember that when Birth Without Violence was written

the baby was not considered central to the business of childbirth. Beyond being physically alive, he or she had pretty much a bit part in the drama – the doctor’s trophy, sometimes held aloft by his or her feet, encouraged to breathe with a slap or two on the buttocks.

Leboyer, who has died aged 98, called time on that. Babies, he pointed out, had sensitivities, and, moreover, their experience of childbirth would help shape the individual they became. Not to mention the fact that bonding between a baby and his or her mother or father was also much influenced by the baby’s psychological state. If the child was treated with calm gentleness, that crucial relationship would get off to a better start.

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Leboyer’s crusade to put the baby at the centre of birth led to conditions that today’s parents take for granted – reduced light and noise levels in the delivery room and, most importantly, the handing of the baby straight to the mother, except when emergency medical intervention was needed. All this came about, through the 1970s and 80s, because of Leboyer.

He believed his life’s work was influenced by the manner of his own birth, at the end of the first world war. His mother, Judith Levy (nee Weiler), an artist, had to be held down for his delivery, which was achieved using forceps, and the story of his arrival led Leboyer to think there had to be a better way. Many years later, while travelling in India, he met perhaps the biggest influence on his life, Swami Prajnanpad, who believed human beings carried the memory of their births deep within themselves. Leboyer felt that via dreams, and nightmares, he had relived his own difficult birth, and was then able to move on.

A Parisian, born to Jewish parents – his father, Henri Levy, was a businessman – Leboyer changed his name during the second world war. He trained at the University of Paris and went on to be a leading obstetrician, delivering many thousands of babies.

But it was his frequent visits to India that changed the way he saw birth. He noticed that while the wealthy women in India gave birth in busy, brightly lit hospitals that resembled maternity units in Europe, poorer women who could not afford hospital deliveries often had much easier births; and he also noticed that the way women moved in their daily lives facilitated these deliveries. Watching women sweeping the floor and squatting to grind flour helped him devise exercises and suggest postures that could prepare the body for birth, as he described in his 1978 book, Inner Beauty, Inner Light.

At the centre of his work, though, was the baby’s experience: this was the subject of Birth Without Violence, which caused an immense stir in obstetric circles, and was widely translated. Leboyer’s focus lay in making the transition from the aquatic environment of the womb to the outside world as smooth as possible, and among the book’s many ideas was the suggestion that newborns should be immersed in a tub of warm water – Leboyer baths, as they became known. This led many to believe Leboyer was in favour of water birth; in fact he was not, and this was the realm of another French obstetrician turned childbirth-educator, Michel Odent.

After the publication of Birth Without Violence, Leboyer decided to devote the rest of his life to writing, photography and film-making. His film Naissance (Birth), in which he portrayed labour to be like waves in the sea, and showed the intimacy of intervention-free birth, won the first prize from the Centre National du Cinéma Français in 1974. He went on to write further books, including Loving Hands (1976), which explored baby massage.

Gradually his focus shifted from the newborn to the mother, although his abiding belief was that the greatest contribution anyone else could make to the business of childbirth was simply to leave the mother alone. More than anything, he thought that interference, except when there were life-threatening problems, was the enemy of birth. It was in trying to “help” women, he believed, that damage was done, because interventions such as anaesthetics interfered with the normal physiological processes.

Leboyer spent a summer in Brighton, East Sussex, as a boy, staying with a family who spoke no French, developing a love of the English language, and especially Shakespeare. Between 1982 and 2000, he lived in London; during this period he met his wife, Mieko de Vens.

For almost two years they lived in neighbouring flats without encountering one another; Mieko was working in the City, for a Japanese bank. But one morning in May 1998 they opened their doors at the same moment, and Mieko recalls that her husband announced, with a flourish: “I am Frédérick Leboyer!” On their marriage in 2005 Leboyer was 86 and Mieko 50, and it was a first marriage for both of them. It brought much happiness, but was too late for children; Leboyer later lamented that he had not been a parent, saying it was “one of the greatest privileges life holds”.

At the age of 81 he retired to a small village in Switzerland, where he continued to write, notably The Art of Giving Birth With Chanting, Breathing and Movement (2009), which incorporated personal accounts by women who had followed his teachings. He also wrote poetry.

In 2011, on the publication of a new edition of Birth Without Violence, he visited the UK. At the start of a promotional talk, Leboyer, then 93, announced that he would rather remain silent. His publisher, Martin Wagner of Pinter & Martin, asked whether they could show his film instead, but Leboyer said it must only be seen in private. Finally, recalled Wagner, Leboyer entertained the audience with witty reminiscences and demonstrations of yoga poses.

His wife survives him.

• Frédérick Leboyer, obstetrician and writer, born 1 November 1918; died 25 May 2017