Shorter Labour

Tony Crisp

For the first time in my life I recently helped to deliver a baby. There were several remarkable features about the birth.

1) We used an extraordinarily simple new approach to birthing.

2) This approach claims to radically reduce the length of labour -- and it did.

3) The pregnant woman's previous length of labour had been forty five hours. This labour was three hours.

4) The birth was achieved without any professional help.

I am going to outline the approach we used, but will give a little more background first.

I will call the woman Jane. It was Jane's third pregnancy. The first child, a boy, was a Caesarean birth. Jane says this was because of the paediatricians mismanagement of her situation, and because of racial difficulties at the hospital.

Jane was told afterwards that the midwives, because of the racial situation, gave her a bad time and pushed her into having an unnecessary Caesarean. The Caesarean birth left Jane feeling an enormous lack of confidence in her ability to naturally deliver her baby. It did not completely deter her from trying again though. So fairly quickly she was pregnant with her second child.

Seeing that the doctors and midwives in her country stick to the fairly rigid rules that Jane felt were part of the cause of previous difficulties, Jane and her husband Alan decided to have a home delivery without a midwife. This took a lot of courage, and of course took the risk that if there were real problems there was no attending medical help. I was asked to help during the birth.

Prior to the birth we all read the book and practised the procedures it suggests. Also, Alan added some changes to what Janie King describes in the book. We believe these improved its helpfulness.

Although I suggest getting the book, reading it and practising the procedures, the book is not easy to get, is expensive, and for Jane and Alan, working as missionaries, was more than they could afford. So for those of you in a similar situation I will outline the simple procedures and exercises.

The main statement in the book is that energy moves in straight lines unless it meets a resistance. When contractions occur the baby's body is pushed in a certain direction. If you imagine a line running through the baby's body and head, then the contractions pushes along that line to the head.

The important point made it is that the head is often pressing, not into the birth canal, but into the back of the pelvis, hitting the lower spine. This line of force hitting the lower spine causes intense back pain -- thus the title of the book.

The wonderful thing that Janie King shows, is how to alter that situation, so the contractions push the baby toward being born, rather than to agonising back pain and extended, unnecessarily long labour.

Janie King suggests a couple of things to do to experience this difference. In other words the difference between the baby's head pushing against a solid blockage, or pushing into the birth canal.

She describes a game in which the expectant mother is blindfolded and placed just under an arm's-length from an uncluttered wall. She then has to push her fist hard forward. Of course she bangs her hand and it is painful. If she is then stood before an open door she can push forward and there is no pain.

Another lesson suggested involves using a large door hinge -- actually it is usually easier to find or cut an oblong piece of cardboard about eight inches long and folded in half. A slight knife cut In the middle helps it to bend easily. The aim is to push one end of the hinge and experiment with the pressure on the opposite end. If the hinge is at a fairly flat angle pressure on one end will flow through to the other end. But if the hinge is bent it simply folds.

This is to illustrate that if the baby's body is not in the correct position, its body will simply fold up under the contractions.

So the whole aim of the technique is to correctly align the position of baby so it's head is not hitting the lower spine, and not folding up. You line up the baby's head with the birth canal and let the contractions push it out.

If you think of the line through the baby's body and head again, and imagine the angle of that line if the head is hitting the lower back, you can see that if you are looking at this from the right side of the expectant mothers body, the bottom of the line needs to be shifted forward slightly. This brings the baby's head away from spine toward the birth canal.

There are several ways of helping this take place. What Janie King suggests is for the expectant mother to practise a couple of things prior to birth. The first is to place her hands each side of the lower bulge, fingers not touching across the bulge, and lift slightly up and inwards. If you imagine the elbows as hinges, and the arms kept to the side, the movement is that of a slight arc, changing the alignment of the baby in the way desired.

The second technique used is to learn to tilt the pelvis backwards and forwards. It is not simply a swinging of the trunk.

The aim is to start the hands adjusting the baby's alignment as soon as the contractions begin.

Alan stood behind Jane doing the adjustment so Jane could simply get on with meeting the impact of the contractions. But Jane felt like the need to have Alan press just above her vagina hairline -- on the pubic bone. So Alan, now using one hand for the adjustment, found that as each contraction began, the uterus was easy to feel as a hard surface. So he then put his hand midway up the uterus, and lifted slightly up and back. The effect was magical. The baby's head could be felt slipping into the birth canal during the contraction, then out again at the end. But it was obviously engaging.

Jane now knelt down leaning on the other side of the sofa. Then suddenly, in just about five contractions, the head was engaged and stayed. Dilation occurred and the baby's head was out. I slightly helped the shoulder out with the next contraction, and the baby was in my hands. Almost immediately he opened his eyes, looked at me and started breathing. He let out a couple of yells to let us know he was with us. It was an unforgettable moment. Janes only experienced a tiny tear about a centimetre long. The woman whose house we were lodging in had, without Jane's permission, called a midwife. The midwife arrived just after the birth. She was proficient in cleaning up, but handled the baby like it was an unfeeling lump of flesh. The adjustment is a very simple thing to do. Jane used it during a home birth, but it can be used in any type of confinement except a Caesarean birth. It involves no drugs, no special knowledge, no professional adjuster. You can do it yourself with or without doctor or midwife.

Jane found that as each contraction occurred she naturally swivelled the pelvis backwards. Otherwise the only other aid was Alan lifting and tilting her abdomen.

If you can read Janie King's book do so. It has more detail and some case histories that are interesting and helpful. But don't hesitate to try using the alignment. It is completely non-invasive, and at the very worst can make no difference to your birth process. But with most people it produces a revolutionary change in their experience of giving birth.

Tony's in print Books in the UK or USA

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