Malposition of Foetus- Must We Always Interfere?
Posted on July 13, 2009 by Yael
Lately I heard a lot of success stories about using BL67 for malposition of the foetus.
You know what I mean, a woman comes around the 34th week of her pregnancy, the baby is breech and won’t move.
These women have a very un-pleasent (to say the least) option via Western medicine, and are facing a more friendly approach that Chinese medicine provides. Bothmethods claim to work well, but with both methods there is a strong possibility that the baby will go back to breech.
And I wonder- should we always try and “fix” the baby’s position? What about the times we shouldn’t do anything? How can we tell?
The background story for my thoughts
Two and a half years ago my boy Shahar was born by C-section.
During the pregnancy everything was fine and he was always with head down, but during the 9th month, he started turning around quite often, until he decided to stay breech. I was offered the two methods to turn the baby, I thought only of BL67 with moxa, but didn’t get to it and finally had the C-section.
As it turns out, after Shahar was born, he had a Bochdalek diaphragmatic hernia, which allowed the spleen and part of the intestines to come up to the chest cavity, preventing his left lung from developing.
As you can probably imagine, Shahar’sbreathing after the birth wasn’t too great, but thanks to the very quick diagnosis of the pediatrician, the problem was treated as soon as possible and today, we have a healthy boy with normal problems (like terrible two and so on).
I”m not telling you all this to make you sad, but because it all made me think:
What if I would have been applying moxa on BL67, and it would have worked- then what? Maybe Shaharturned to breech because nature is smarted than all the doctors who say that the best way to give birthis a vaginal birth, and therefore try to turn the foetus around?
From my personal story, I will take it to the more general debate:
Should we always interfere? When do we know when it’s the right thing to do, and when do we know to step back and let nature do it’s own thing?
No answer
There’s no one answer.
With all the tests that we made during the pregnancy, nothing indicated of the problem, and we went to a very experienced and well-known gynecologist in Israel, some say that the hernia happened in later weeks of the pregnancy, so when we did go to the doctor everything was indeed OK. And even if we did know, we would have done the same thing- C-section and then Shaharwould have been rushed to surgery. The c-section is one of the things that gave him an advantage for a quick recovery. So if I would have had treatments with moxaon BL67, I feel obligated to ask the difficult question- what would have happened if the treatments worked and I had a vaginal birth? What were Shaharodds to survive the birth and the surgery?
Intervention
Man is a part of nature and doesn’t control it- no matter how hard man tries.
But we also developed, through Western medicine, very important means for saving lives, ways to save the mother and the baby. Nothing can come instead of those means.
We live in a society that is very baby-crazed, many tests even before the first pregnancy, many tests during the pregnancy, never ending debates about the “right way” to give birth, and after birth we have confusing issues such as vaccines, breastfeeding, educating our children and of course, c-section.
So many people ridiculewomen who have c-section, including doctors, but they forget that there are many good reasons to have a c-section, and it’s not always done because the woman would like the birth to fit in perfectly in her busy schedule.
There are people who think they have the “one true answer”, when reality teaches us time and time again, that there is no one answer. There is the best answer for the individual child and his parents.
I think it’s important to think what is best for the baby.
Is it the right thing to do- trying to turn the baby from breech? Because maybe, like with Shahar, the best thing is to let it be breech, because this is the thing that was so important for Shahar’s recovery?
On the other hand there are those babies that turning them from breech will be the best thing for them.
How can we know?
Over to you
What do you think? Any thoughts? Experience? I am very interested to hear your comments, leave your message here.
Tags: bl67, bochdalek hernia, c-section, diaphragmatic hernia, malposition of foetus, moxa, moxa on bl67
Categories: Personal notes, Practitioners notes, Students notes
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Hi Yael,
You bring up something that I think about often, which is what is the meaning of being a healer. Is it we who affect natural circumstances? Or rather are we to find that which is following the natural path and encourage it. What I like about acupuncture in general is that if done with the intention of letting nature take its course, it does. We could try Bl 67 in these cases, and if the baby turns then that it quite natural. If not, then that is ok too. I think of Bl 67 to turn a baby as a suggestion which may or may not result in the baby turning back.
I love that you point out we don’t know for sure which situation is best. We never do! The best situation is always the one happening right under our noses.
R
I see another challenging issue here, which is the question of our responsibility as parents.
How much our we willing to risk the health of our child because of our beliefs?
This is a personal choice. What happened with Shahar is a good example. Do we really know how acupuncture works? I mean – well enough to be confident that we’re not risking our child’s life? I have to admit that as much as I love this medicine – I love my child more, period. I can keep debating these things with myself as long as I like, but ensuring the safety of my child comes first, especially when dealing with the mysteries of Chinese medicine. I think it’s important that we not take chances when dealing with issues we’re not sure about. I do tend to agree with the approach that Bl67 functions as a kind of “suggestion”. But am I sure about that? Is anyone?
Roy
Oh – and one more thing: I wouldn’t take advice from anyone who is not a parent herself…
Hi Roy,
I’m not sure I agree that we shouldn’t take advice from people who are not parents. Would you take the advice of an oncologist who has never had cancer? Are male practitioners incapable of treating menstrual disorders because they have never had a period? How are first time pregnant women to decide what to do when they have not yet had a baby?
Physicians do not necessarily need to have personal experience with a condition/issue to treat it well. In fact, I have not dealt personally with 99.9% of the issues I have seen clinically.
Hi Richard,
I too haven’t dealt, thank god, with 99.9% of the issues I have seen clinically. I didn’t mean it that way. What I meant was specifically on the issue of “to breach or not to breach”, and the dillema Yael presented. Unlike the work of an oncologist or a male practitioner treating a female one, I don’t think this is a something we know how to “treat” better than the patient. This is more of a decision to be made, and Yael’s post proves that we are not smarter than our patients in this case.
So it’s a matter of taking advice on taking a risk, isn’t it? In this case, I would prefer hearing it from someone who might relate more to the dillema, i.e.: a parent.
Roy
Richard and Roy,
As always, you make interesting comments.
We can never be 100% sure, that is a given. But we can be 80% sure and that’s sometimes enough. If we can’t be sure of what we do, if we can’t have a prognosis (is the spelling ok here?….) then we probably don’t understand exactly what’s going on with our patient. And then our treatment won’t be good- or the best that we can give.
I don’t think that health involves a choice between Chinese medicine and western. It’s not an either/or situation for me, it was and always will be both. There’s no reason why my child shouldn’t benefit from both medicines, and others- if needed. I think they can work great together, and it works very well for us- all of us actually. So I don’t think it’s a question of who you love more- your child or CM.
And personally, there are somethings in life that you really need to go through in order to understand the deep levels of the situation. I’m not sure that this example is one of them, but maybe another woman would say that it is.
As with everything- it’s individual.
Thanks guys!
Yael