We started seeing Dr. Ross when Bryan was breech in-utero.  His care has positively impacted my health and made our last pregnancy feel like my best one ever.  Not wanting to keep the goodness to ourselves, we invite him to come speak to our students as a free bonus class.   They hear about the many ways chiropractic care may benefit them during pregnancy, postpartum and their nursing relationship.  For more information on those topics, click here.

 

Here is the second topic in Dr. Ross’ presentation to our students: how to coach back labor.  He is also a Bradley© dad, and he knows first-hand the importance of being able to coach a mom with back labor and relieve the intense pain it can cause.  We ask him to share his tips and tricks with our student coaches.  I am so excited that we finally got some videos of him demonstrating his techniques so that people can refer to them in preparation for the birth-day.  Thank you to Erica White for volunteering to be his demo partner and for allowing me to share these on the world wide web!

 

The first video demonstrates how to find the mom’s sacrum and how to manipulate it in labor.  The idea is to open the top of the pelvis when mom and baby are trying to line up – this is great for the first stage of labor.  When baby is engaging and mom is starting to feel low-back pressure, the focus changes to opening the bottom of the pelvis to increase the size of the passageway and ease baby out.

 

This second video is a technique for every coach and doula to add to his or her “labor toolbox”. It is specifically designed to turn a posterior baby.  I have had students use this successfully and avoid a cesarean.  In their case, it correctly positioned their baby who was asynclitic, which is just a fancy way of saying the baby’s head was tilted to the side and misaligned with the birth canal.  Their baby’s position was also very painful to the mom, similar to the manner that can make back labor unbearable.

 

Dr. Ross has the moms scoot as close to the edge of the bed as they are comfortable, and he has the coaches support the moms so that they can completely relax in this position.  I included the written description of the technique below the video.

 

Alternate Positioning During Labor:

Have the patient lie on the side (whichever side feels the most comfortable to her).  Ask her to drop her top leg off of the side of the bed for as long as she’s comfortable.  This will many times take the tension out of the tissue and allow the baby to rotate into the proper position with the occiput oriented anterior instead of posterior.

     - Attribution Unkown (by me – if Dr. Ross has it I will edit)

 

Let me know if you try any of these techniques and how they work for you.  I trust and pray that their successful application will help you avoid  medical interventions. As always, I wish you the best labor possible and encourage you to make decisions that lead to a Healthy Mom, Healthy Baby outcome.

 

 

 

We are now enrolling for our Spring Series

March 5, 2012 to May 21, 2012

 

For more information or to register, please call us at 602-684-6567 or email us at [email protected]