Back Labor and How to Prevent It
Techniques to Turn Your Posterior Baby During Pregnancy or Labor
Back labor often causes labor to be longer and more painful. Turning your posterior baby to an anterior position during pregnancy may help to prevent back labor.
In Part 1 of our series on Back Labor, we have discussed what causes back labor and how to identify it. In this article, we will focus our attention to preventing back labor as well as how to turn a posterior baby once your labor has started.
The truth is that very few people realize that there are some techniques that can help your baby seek a more favorable position during both your pregnancy and labor. However, these are not likely to be positions or techniques that you will learn from either reading a book, talking to your primary provider or taking a class.
Although there is no hard evidence that shows us we can prevent back labor from happening by using these techniques, a good knowledge of labor physiology, the use of gravity and watching to see how babies respond often tells us that these techniques are helpful and effective. Some of the methods can take a few minutes or up to a few hours in labor to turn your baby if she is posterior. Many birth experts such as midwives and doulas have safely used these positions and techniques effectively hundreds of times over the last few years.
Here are a list of some of the most useful techniques to turn your baby or you can review the complete list of techniques.
- Watch for body posture to encourage positions where your knees are lower than your hips (such as kneeling, hands and knees, straddling a birth ball or straddling a chair backwards.)
- If you notice that your baby is lying on either your left or right nearly all the time, try to encourage the baby to rotate toward the front of your abdomen in a left-side lean over position. This position can be used while you rest or during labor if you have an epidural and need to rotate your baby while remaining in bed.
- If your provider can tell which side of your pelvis the baby's occiput is on, lie on your opposite side to turn the baby.
- If you have had a history of back labor, use a pregnancy belt to lift your abdomen to encourage your baby to move down and into your pelvis.
- Use an inversion position if your baby is already in your pelvis and needs to be completely repositioned. The inversion can be done in pregnancy or during labor with support.
- Get the basics of your pregnancy in order - good nutrition (for healthy tissues), stay hydrated in pregnancy and labor, practice good toning exercises and get good chiropractic care whether you have back pain or not during pregnancy.
Remember that not all babies will have to turn. Some may in fact be born in a posterior position just because that is the way they were meant to come into the world!
(Many thanks to Gail Tully, the use of her amazing techniques and helpful website information)
