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Tips for facilitating difficult births

Several people have asked me, via Diary feedback and emails, about the “towel trick” and the “pencil in the vagina” suggestion that Vicki Chan offered during the Midwifery Intensives tour, as ways of facilitating difficult births. These were just two among many suggestions that Vicki had compiled for working with OP labours, but they were some of the most intriguing.

The “towel trick” was a idea she had picked up from the Internet, and had used successfully during hard labours. It is a variation of a strategy that can be adapted in several ways for making it easier for the woman to push out her baby. The woman adopts a deep squat, holding the ends of a towel that has been rolled up into a loop. A partner or support person holds the towel in the middle, and as the woman pulls on the towel, the partner pulls back. I hope you can get the picture!

Variations would be to have the woman pull against a rope, a bar fixed to a wall, or even the end of the bed. The advantage of using a towel is that it can be done anywhere, being completely portable. As the woman bears down in this squatting position, with her upper body stabilised by pulling on the towel, her pelvis will tilt under, curving the birth canal. For some babies this change of drive angle may help them into the world.

The “pencil in the vagina” was an idea that Vicki suggested to encourage women to wiggle their pelvis more effectively. Pelvic rocking is a well known strategy for jiggling the baby into better alignment, but sometimes women can’t quite get the hang of how to do it, and sway on their legs to circle their pelvis around, rather than moving just the pelvis while keeping their legs relatively still. Imagining that you are holding a pencil in the vagina and drawing small circles on the floor makes it easier to visualise what is needed.

At one point on the tour, amid much laughter as everyone practised this manoeuvre, Vicki announced that I would give anyone who could complete their evaluation with the “pencil in their vagina” a discount on the next workshop! Although some of the writing on the evaluations was hard to read, I decided that all had been completed by hand, and no discounts were necessary.

Sharing ideas like these in workshops is always useful. If anyone has any similar tips and tricks, please share them with us via a comment on this Diary entry.

Posted by andrea at May 18, 2004 08:35 AM

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