Stand and Deliver!: And other Brilliant Ways to Give Birth. Emma Mahony

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СКАЧАТЬ health. For slow-releasing carbohydrates, oat cakes and rye crackers (particularly with mashed banana on top) will fill you up.³

      If all the above makes you want to reach for the Dairylea, don’t worry. Eat what your body wants to eat. It probably knows best.

      Yoga, Walking and Swimming

      The safest forms of ‘aerobic’ exercise to take when pregnant are walking (an hour a day is ideal), swimming (which supports all the muscles, increases blood flow and urine output, and reduces swelling) and yoga. Yoga classes are particularly good, especially if you can find or persuade a yoga teacher to set up an antenatal one, because then there is group support as well. Yoga works so well in pregnancy because it makes the most of the natural increase in suppleness due to the hormone relaxin coursing through your body. In addition, Janet Balaskas, who runs the antenatal yoga programme at the Active Birth Centre in north London, lists its benefits as: helping you to ‘make friends’ with your pain and to go beyond your normal limits while stretching; improving blood circulation and breathing; regulating blood pressure and heart rate; and correcting posture to help prevent backache. ‘I would say that after a whole 25 years of being a childbirth educator, I’ve never found anything to be more potentially effective than yoga in pregnancy,’ she says. Although Balaskas does not keep ongoing records of the births of her students, one year she estimated that 80 per cent of her students went on to have a natural birth without intervention – not even an epidural. ‘Natural Active birth is not just for lentil eaters and brown sandal wearers,’ says Balaskas, ‘it is practical and safe.’

      If there are no antenatal yoga teachers in your area, you can always start to do it yourself by buying one of Balaskas’ books, such as Preparing for Birth with Yoga (Thorsons, 2003).

      Scents and Sensibility

      Aromatic essential oils are a great healer for those common discomforts in the last stages of pregnancy, and are particularly good for massage during labour. Take some advice, however, because certain oils should be avoided, and essential oils should not be used at all until after the first three months.

      My midwife massaged me on my lower back during labour with some rose oil that she had brought back from Turkey, and it was something pleasant to do while lying in the bath before my waters broke.

      Aromatherapists describe rose oil as a uterine relaxant, which helps soften the ligaments and help the pelvic bones expand, as well as being a natural antiseptic and having slight analgesic properties.

      Sceptics of the benefits of aromatherapy in labour may be interested by the results of the largest clinical aromatherapy trial in Europe, which took place in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Over a period of nine years, 8,000 mothers were offered aromatherapy in labour. Those that took it up were proved to have shorter labours with fewer drugs were used for pain-relief. There were no side-effects on the babies.⁴

      One mother I met recently at the Active Birth Centre in north London was Natalie, who had no pain-relief during the birth of her breech baby, delivered standing up at home. All she had was a few drops of clary sage (another uterine tonic that is good for labour pains) put on a wet sponge and inhaled. She claims, ‘It acted like gas and air, and I was practically chewing the sponge by the end!’ She gave birth to an 8-lb little boy, without anyone touching her or the baby throughout the whole experience (‘If anyone came near me, I just said “don’t touch me!’”) while two ambulances and a host of midwives waited outside the door.

      The typical gripes during the last stages of pregnancy – swelling, indigestion, muscle ache and poor sleep – can all be improved with a good oily rub in the last few weeks, particularly if you can find a professional to do it for you. Stick to lavender and citrus oils for facial and body massage because there are many oils to avoid altogether.

      The best carrier oil for essential oils when pregnant is sweet almond, a medium-to-light oil which protects and nourishes the skin, and is relatively pure because it is cold-pressed. While pregnant, the usual dosage of 1 drop of essential oil per 5ml of carrier oil, for facial massage, should be further diluted to 1 drop per 10ml.

      Essential oil-wise, lavender is an analgesic, making it good for aches and pains, as well as relaxing (add 3 drops to a warm bath in the evening to help you sleep).

      Mandarin oil is an uplifting oil and has carminative and digestive properties which help heartburn and indigestion, as well as stimulating the lymph glands – good for oedema (water-retention) and swollen ankles.

      Grapefruit oil also has an uplifting effect and is good for general fatigue, circulation, and muscle stiffness.

      Try sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) for its digestive properties, black pepper (Piper nigrum) as a muscular tonic, and ylang ylang (Cananga odorata) for calming and soothing. Denise Tiran, author of Natural Remedies (Quadrille, 2001) recommends that you don’t use the same oil for more than three weeks, particularly in your bath water, so chop and change as you deem fit.

      For labour, blend your favourites with 3 drops per 20 ml of carrier oil, and don’t forget to add good old clary sage. If it worked for Natalie, it could work for you.⁵

      If you can afford to go the whole hog, to find out where your nearest accredited aromatherapist is contact the International Federation of Aromatherapists at 182 Chiswick High Road, London W4 1PP (tel. 0208 742 2605) or visit their website at www.ifaroma.org. A ready-made organic labour massage oil containing lavender, clary sage and geranium can be bought from www.activebirthcentre.com, where the organic perineal massage oil is also sold.

      Feet Need Love, Too

      You probably already know a little about reflexology, where areas of the foot that correspond to the internal organs and the skeleton of your body are massaged. By massaging certain points, a trained reflexologist can tell where there are imbalances in the system. When I had bad sinusitis and a cold, the trained reflexologist Vivian Knowland massaged my toes (which relate to the sinus areas) and I ouched and eeed my way on the bed, amazed by the power concentrated in her thumbs.

      Reflexology can be used to prime labour. It doesn’t always work as a form of induction, but Viv chatted amiably to me about a client who had come to see her when 10 days overdue with her second baby. ‘Poor woman was in a terrible state,’ she said, ‘The hospital had told her that she had to come in and be induced, and she really didn’t want to.’ So what happened, I asked, hoping that she wasn’t suffering from sinus problems at the time. ‘I spent some time working on her feet and she left feeling very calm. She rang me from home 10 hours later to say that she was cuddling her new baby.’ Labour had apparently started as soon as she got home, followed by an easy two-hour birth in the hospital. The miracle of me-time.

      Once already in labour, there are many techniques that can be used, as Suzanne Enzer details in her book Reflexology as a Tool for Midwives. Enzer, who has travelled as far as Australia to teach midwives and maternity reflexologists, says ‘Reflexology is a superb therapy to support the natural event of childbearing and childbirth. If you have had reflexology during your pregnancy you will be in the best possible state to go through birthing. It is never too late, and if you have not had reflexology during pregnancy, it is still a wonderful complementary therapy to support birthing.’ In labour, you may want to get someone to tap into some reflexology techniques and do some ankle rotations to relax the pelvis. To do this, get them to practise on someone else by asking them to hold the ankle with one hand and rotate the foot with the other hand, turning it clockwise several times and anticlockwise the same number of times. Take care to rotate the ball of the foot rather than СКАЧАТЬ