Birth Preparation

Supporting Birth With Acupuncture & Massage

Birth preparation with acupuncture and massage is a wonderful way to balance and support yourself, and also prepare your body for an optimal birth. I recommend these treatments weekly beginning week 36/37. Our focus for birth preparation treatments include:

• Optimal positioning for the baby for birth. Moxibustion and acupuncture can help when babies are breech or transverse. It’s a good idea to try this gentle method before the more aggressive methods used by doctors. If your baby is breech, I recommend starting around week 34.
• Physical discomforts such as fatigue, insomnia, lower back or pelvic pain, swelling. When you’re pain-free and well rested, you’ll have more stamina for birth.
• Emotional preparation. I want to hear from you how you are approaching the birth, what fears or excitement you have. The goal is to increase your feelings of safety and calm, which help release oxytocin, the hormone that gets you ready for labour.
• Using acupuncture points which help in relaxing and opening the pelvic region as well as softening the cervix in preparation for labour.
• Teaching you acupressure points you and your partner, where relevant, can use in labour to help support your body’s natural birth process and relieve pain.

Induction & Acupuncture

Women who have pre-birth acupuncture in the weeks leading up to full-term tend to go into labour naturally and on time, and have shorter labours with fewer complications.

What about when you’re days or hours away from a hospital induction? Each woman is different, and depending on her needs, I will use acupuncture and massage to help stimulate those first pulses of labour, by activating channels that connect to the uterus, and also give tips about movement that can help.

Still, the ideal approach, if possible, is to have pre-birth acupuncture and massage from week 36 or 37, which decreases the likelihood of needing to be induced.