Having been a midwife for nearly 5 years, a few months ago I came across the first lady who used yoga for coping with her labour.  At first, the new experience baffled me as the woman gave me little conversation, somewhat in ‘her own world’ as she breathed through her contractions, using only the TENS machine, and used visualization as a coping mechanism, which I had never encountered to this degree.

While listening in to the baby, I detected a marked deceleration in the baby’s heart rate and on examining the cervix found it to be fully dilated, with the presence of meconuim (quite common when a women is past her due date).  The woman felt a slight urge to push and I encouraged her to follow her body’s instinct.  From my previous experience a woman with no pain relief at this point finds the urge to push overwhelming and proceeds to push.  The woman continued taking long and slow deep breaths through, as I was about to encourage her with a more active push.  As I was keep for this baby to be delivered as the heart rate contained to markedly decelerate, I was amazed at how the baby was advancing so quickly despite the lack of any actual pushing and the woman being so calm and in control, delivery proceeded and a healthy baby girl was born, with no tearing to the perineum as the woman had continued breathing through her contraction at this point.

I told her I had been amazed at how calm she had been and how the delivery had been so rapid considering she had never actually pushed, she informed me she had used the techniques of breathing and visualization learnt at a local pregnancy yoga group.  Keen to learn more about this, I contacted Patricia Grube who taught pregnancy yoga in the area.  I was in the process of providing classes, incorporating coping mechanisms for labour and was keen to include what I had experienced with this woman working so well into my class.