Читать книгу Stand and Deliver!: And other Brilliant Ways to Give Birth - Emma Mahony - Страница 37

Because labour is all about trying to get you to relax so that the cervix will dilate, you can always show this page to your midwives ahead of time to ask whether they might be game for some way-out ways of helping labour progress.

For example, what our German friends call die äpfel schüttelm or ‘shaking the apples’ is a technique whereby the buttocks or thighs are jostled rhythmically as a way of softening up a mother’s tension in the legs.

Alternatively, you could try to ‘Chung’, a practice favoured in rural China. The labouring mother stands up, surrounded by her midwives, who then proceed to shake her vigorously. Despite the fact that it looks painful to the onlooker, one American midwife who observed Chunging in action said that the woman swore afterwards that it felt great.

Another firm favourite, which is a little less offbeam, is the salsa dance. This I witnessed in action on the Discovery Health Channel when a series called Portland Babies ran in March 2004. There was a lovely moment during one birth when the midwives Fiona and Liz wanted to get labour going for a mother who seemed resigned to lie on her back. They showed her how to do the ‘salsa dance’ by standing with her feet a hip-width apart and rocking her hips from side to side. The midwives did it with her and within minutes the atmosphere in the room had changed from a downbeat to an upbeat one as everyone started giggling. The dancing really did get things going, and the mother still got to lie down, on her side, to birth her baby soon after.