Acupuncture for cervical ripening & labour induction

I just came back from visiting a patient of mine who gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby boy last weekend. The couple had chosen to do a home birth. And if you've seen Jennifer Lopez movie "The back up plan", then you know what home birth is. Kiddy pool in your living room with mom sitting in warm water, baby coming and lots of screaming (sound effects is always more powerful :)). It frightens a lot of my patients and it's not for everyone. What's great about this story is the fact that labour was only 2 hours and hard pushing only 20 minutes. The reason for this faster and therefore easier (not easy, don't get me wrong, pain will occur!) labour, was cervical ripening.

In the last trimester of pregnancy, acupuncture can be a very useful tool to help ripen the cervix in preparation for labour. Your Acupuncturist usually will start around week 36 or 37 and do treatments once or twice a week until week 40. The purpose of cervical ripening is to slowly and safely help the body get ready for labour.

Medical drugs like Oxytocin and Misoprostol are often used to induce labour after the woman's due date, often at week 42 of the pregnancy.  In order to avoid taking medications, there is a safe alternative for going through labour more easily. Acupuncture will start the process and get the woman ready for labour naturally.

New patients may call me at week 40 and ask if acupuncture will help with induction. It will usually take one or two treatments to start labour, but because it has been done so late into the pregnancy, the woman maybe in labour for many hours. So in order to avoid long difficult labour, starting at around week 37 with acupuncture treatments will result in a better outcome: shorter and easier delivery of the beautiful baby the couple has been impatiently waiting for. Now that's one of the many reasons I love my job!

Clara Cohen,
Acupuncturist in Port Moody & Coquitlam