CTG or not CTG, that is the question...

This month's Practising Midwife (June 2010) delivers food for thought on the use of CTG (cardiotocography). An easier understanding of this long word is fetal monitoring.

A summary of findings from the Cochrane systematic review on CTG (11 randomised trials including over 33,000 women both high and low risk) says...

Women with continuous CTG (fetal monitoring) are more likely to have...

a caesarean section or instrumental vaginal birth*

(* instrumental meaning forceps; ventouse and/or episiotomy)

I'm not surprised by this article. For many years I have understood the relationship of lack of mobility of women during labour due to constant monitoring and a surgical / instrumental outcome. It has informed my teaching and continues to do so.

To avoid the likelihood of an intervention, women need to be encouraged to be more mobile and adopt postures that enable her body to do the fantastic job it has been designed to do.

Media and programme makers need to adopt this too by visually showing women labouring off the bed and making use of gravity.

Come on ladies...stand and deliver!

BAFTA = poor choice

I was somewhat aghast last night whilst watching the BAFTA awards on TV.

The first shock was to see that One Born Every Minute was a nomination in the Factual Series category. The second and most awful shock was that the programme actually won.

The team, upon receiving their award, proudly expressed their joy and delight. One of the main reasons being that they didn't use commentary as they did not want to lead the viewer.

What they did do through careful editing, was to lead the viewer to believe that ALL birth is dangerous; that the woman needs to be saved; all birth support (men) are a total waste of space and that the midwives seemed reluctant or unable to demonstrate the support skills necessary to promote normal, spontaneous births.

Oops...I forgot, there was a 3 minute segment of a waterbirth and let's not forget the wonderful work of midwife Lorraine, who managed at least, to get one woman off her back to have her baby.

Massage - Grounding Stroke

Within the pages of my book, 'Birthing Positively', there is a section on comfort measures using massage. Below you will see the pictures from the book set in a time-line video sequence to help you follow the flow of the massage...

Sneeky Peek

For those of you who want to have a sneeky peek at my first publication, you can! Simply click on the following link to be taken directly to a preview page...

http://www.esprit-yoga.com/item/323