Elide’s Story
Elide is a midwife who completed our home study acupressure program, Ancient Secrets for Better Bumps, Births and Babies.
The following is one of her case studies where she demonstrates the true effectiveness of acupressure for labour pain and placental delivery.
The client was a healthy, young woman, she was 39 weeks pregnant and having her 4th baby. Her 1st pregnancy she had a normal vaginal birth, her 2nd pregnancy she had a caesarean section for twins and her 3rd pregnancy she wanted to have a Vaginal Birth after Caesarean (VBAC). She had a low risk and normal pregnancy.
She had to travel over 2 hours to have access to our birth facility and hence presented to the unit when in early labour. Her baby was in the posterior position and gave her strong and painful ‘back labour’ that lasted all night.She was unable to get any sleep all night and required use of nitrous gas and morphine. The next morning she was still contracting irregularly in the latent phase of labour, she was exhausted and her baby was still posterior. Her cervix was unchanged from the night before at 2cm dilated and 1 cm thick.
My aim was to get her up and moving, help the baby rotate out of the posterior position, give her a more comfortable labour and achieve more contractions to get her into active labour. I encouraged her to get up out of bed, to have a shower and then get her legs and pelvis moving with some stretches, lunges and yoga ball manoeuvres.
The first [acupressure] points I chose to use were to help rotate the baby out of the posterior position. I used BL-60 on both ankles for 5 minutes, SP-6 on both ankles for 5 minutes, then BL-67 on both feet for 10 minutes (this ‘OP recipe’ was previously taught to me from a Debra Betts ACM acupressure course). She felt lots of movements and slightly more comfortable in her back. She also noticed the intensity of contractions increased while we used the points. I noticed there were accelerations on the CTG and could hear the sound change with the fetal movements. I also noticed she had occasional leg twitches while I used the points, as if almost the muscles could notice the movement of Qi and the change in flow.
On abdominal palpation 15 minutes after the acupressure her baby appeared to be lying ROL. I felt the ‘OP recipe’ was successful!!
She remained on the yoga ball and the next points I chose were to enhance contractions. Her husband, a student midwife and myself tried GB-21, BL-32 and LI-4 at different times to enhance contractions. Within 30 minutes her contractions started to establish more frequently, started getting stronger and she felt more pressure downwards with them. She also stated that the points ‘felt good’. She progressed into active labour and managed to labour with no pharmacological pain relief.
We used BL-32 and KI-1 for pain relief during each contraction. She found these points amazing. She couldn’t have a contraction without them being pressed!! I especially find BL-32 to be the most effective and beneficial point to use during labour. While pressing it you can feel the movement of energy, it relieves all their sacral and back pain, and it does appear to help the cervix dilate. Additionally, I noticed the purple line appear on her bottom crease.
So after a few hours of active labour and many successful acupressure points, she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.
I also used SP-6 for the 3rd stage, as being a VBAC I wanted to reduce blood loss and reduce any delay in the placenta. The placenta was expelled 10 minutes later with no problems.
I loved the use of acupressure in her labour and birth. I believe there was a huge contrast in her 12 hours of no acupressure where she was in OP early labour compared to the few hours of active labour once I started doing acupressure. Not only did the woman feel high on endorphins from her empowering labour, but I felt empowered as a midwife to help her get into more comfortable efficient labour without a medical induction or any intervention. I feel these techniques made a huge difference to her labour and birth.
Find out more about our home study acupressure program for midwives.
Have you used acupressure to help throughout labour and birth? Share your story in the comments below.