Decompression Babies

I recently added a new page to my website about my being a decompression baby — during the final months of her pregnancy with me, my mother spent half an hour or so every day in a strange contraption that lowered the atmospheric pressure on her abdomen.

The theory was that daily sessions of mild abdominal decompression on a pregnant women would result in increased bloodflow — and therefore oxygenation — to her foetus, which in turn would result in an easier pregnancy and a “smarter, healthier baby” (according to David M. Rorvik with O.S. Heyns, D.Sc, who published the only book I could find on the subject in 1973).

It seems to have gone out of medical vogue now, but apparently there are some tens of thousands of decompression babies in the World — all presumably about my age.