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Pre-birth acupuncture is a safe and soothing way to prepare women for childbirth.
Research shows that pregnant women who received a weekly acupuncture treatment from week 36, compared to those who didn't receive it, had fewer complications such as surgeries and inductions. This only makes sense as acupuncture can create the perfect conditions for giving birth: it is calming, relaxing the mind, muscles and tendons, helps breathe better and eases or stops discomforts which are kind of expected especially at the end of pregnancy.
When the chosen points are accurate, acupuncture can make a significant difference even at the last minute, just as happened with Shelly a couple of weeks ago:
We met a few days before the due date of her 4th baby. Shelly was very joyful and felt great with minor discomforts, just as it had been in her previous 3 pregnancies. Shelly was very optimistic as she always gave a natural, fast and almost painless birth.
Unfortunately, each time she had to go through surgery to remove the placenta and her caregivers assumed that it would happen again.
This time Shelly wanted it to be different which is why she had long conversations about it with her doula, Oda Meiberg who also treated her with Shiatsu. When she was mentally prepared, Oda asked for my support with acupuncture to prepare her body as well.
In the initial intake, I recognized that Shelly's lifestyle often skips transitions, which fits her character perfectly, but transitions are essential to complete the process of a human being's creation and then giving them birth, just as the winter needs the autumn and summer needs the spring in order to begin.
The thought of adding transitions to her lifestyle made Shelly very anxious, so I asked her to just be aware of them and let the needles do the rest.
Gradually I inserted only 4 needles according to her individual diagnosis with long gaps in between to create transitions that her body could feel and embrace. Each needle was placed after some improvement: in her pulse, her breath, her eyes, the way she talked or the way she felt her baby. When she was completely calm I left Shelly and her baby for a few minutes to dive into the transition.
On our next session 2 days later Shelly didn't have the spark that she had in her eyes before, she was feeling down after having been checked that morning by her midwife, finding out that she was not in labour yet. Shelly felt discomfort in her chest and the day before the heartburn started earlier than usual, but the irregular contractions she experienced stopped right after the treatment indicated that this may be the result of a transition.
With the insertion of the needles, gradually the spark came back to her eyes and the chest discomfort disappeared. She felt very good, and later told me that her heartburn didn't show anymore.
5 days later Shelly had a 2 hours natural birth of both her baby and her placenta.
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