My experience of acupuncture during pregnancy

I was lucky to have two uncomplicated pregnancies and I am now mother to two lovely boys. I had acupuncture before and during my pregnancies and it helped me tremendously with the tiredness that was inevitable from growing and carrying two heavy babies. It also helped me cope with heartburn caused by the hormones released during pregnancy relaxing the smooth muscles that line the digestive tract.

I went two weeks overdue with both my children and was advised by the midwives that despite the baby and I being well and comfortable that I was a candidate for medical induction. The advice from the ancient Chinese was that a woman at the end of her pregnancy ‘’loosens her belt and waits’’,¹ which echoes the comment from my own grandmother that ‘’the apple will only fall from the tree when it is ready’’.

The threat of medical induction led me to get out my needles and try to induce labour using strong stimulation of acupuncture points at the bottom of the spine. During my first pregnancy the acupuncture did not get things moving and I went into hospital for a final cervical sweep. If the sweep failed then I was going to be induced using a prostaglandin gel. Luckily I went into the very early stages of labour and was able to avoid any further intervention.

In my second pregnancy, acupuncture successfully stimulated the onset of labour. This wasn’t a sudden and rapid movement into contractions, but a gradual building from a heavy sensation in my lower abdomen and back into early labour.

I am heartened by the gentleness of acupuncture during pregnancy and how it does not force change, whether that is starting labour or turning a breech baby.

There are safe acupuncture protocols for the treatment of pregnant women and the points an acupuncturist can select throughout the different stages of pregnancy are clearly established. Interestingly, a study published in 2015 investigated the safety of acupuncture points ‘forbidden’ during pregnancy and found that the use of these points did not increase the risk of adverse events such as pre-term labour or miscarriage.²

My own experience of receiving acupuncture during pregnancy has reassured me that it is a gentle safe method of helping women cope with the discomforts associated with pregnancy.

1. Rochat de la Vallee, E. Pregnancy and gestation. Monkey Press, 2007.
2. Carr DJ. Acupuncture Medicine 2015;33:413–9. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4680134/pdf/acupmed-2015-010936.pdf)