Engagement can be a funny thing. I used to check DD's engagement daily and more in the last 2 weeks of PG (she was born 11 days past EDD). The MW would check - 2/5ths. I would go home, go for a swim, check myself - completely free. Later on, check again - 1/5th. The next day, again, free while reclining, 3/5ths while stood. That evening, free while stood. Babies with room (i'm 181cm) CAN and DO move up and down. The first time i felt her fully engaged (widest part of head in the pelvis) i had had 5 hours of contractions and my waters had been gone for all that time. Right up to the day she was born she could have appeared too big to fit, but she wasn't at all. Glad i didn't have to get her out posterior though! Any pointiness your DD had that went away in the first week or two after her birth was moulding, if that helps.
Honestly, i think he's probably trying to drum up business, but that there will also be SOME truth in what he is saying.RE; the evolution/natural selection thing - I do remember my Chiro telling me that your back and hip alignments etc are usually worse then the generation before you. Is this true or is he just trying to drum up business?
The incidence of posterior labour is higher in the west than in the east, because women here sit on sofas or up a desks all the time, whereas there they sit on the ground or squat, both of which do much to help bubs lie anteriorly. We do not (in general, i know some do) exercise our bodies well - women in India and North Africa are hard muscle and bone and little else because their lives are physically very demanding. By contrast western women have weak core muscles (abs/lats) and pelvic floors. Stress incontinence in African girls is almost unheard of and even after a baby (past the first week or two) it is rare, in the west it affects a high enough percentage of women that many rather than seeing the doctor just buy incontinence pads as if it were a normal thing!
Because the chiro sees a lot of people he probably sees the older generation who had very physically demanding lives and jobs when they were young and growing, who have far better muscle tone and alignment than younger folks who do not do heavy work. But this does not mean that the bodies of the younger generation are defective; anything a chiro can fix is aquired, not genetic. If it was genetic it would be un-fixable - a chiro can fix a functional leg length discrepancy (where the pelvis is tilted on the spine and thus one leg SEEMS shorter) but only invasive and risky surgery can fix a leg which is genetically shorter.
The problem with all out technology, as wonderfully easy it has made life, is that our body is MEANT to move. Muscles waste if you don't use them. If the first time you need tone in your pelvic floor is when you're lifting 30litres of water onto your 12-year-old head to carry it home then by the time you give birth it's going to be really strong and able to help your baby turn, with a great blood supply to allow an easier birth and post-partum time. If the first time you ever need it to be toned is to push your baby out you might be in trouble.
If you look at Ina May Gaskin's stats for the farm birthing centre she has run since the 70's which looked at the outcomes of 2028 pregnancies 1970-2000, they show that if you don't interfere at all (they give NO drugs unless you have a PPH, no pain drugs unless you need to be stitched after, nothing during labour), don't prioritise speed as a marker for a "good" labour, and support the woman as fully and as lovingly as you can, around 95% of women will birth vaginally, at home, without major problems. Those who did not either asked to transport to hospital by choice, or had to because of medical emergency. Their c-section rate is 1.4%, forceps is 0.5%, vacuum extraction is 0.05%. They have had 0.5% face presentations, all but one delivered vaginally, 0.4% brow presentations, of which half were born by section, half vaginally. Their VBAC women made up 5.4% of the whole, 108 women attempted VBAC, 106 succeeded. These are every kind of american woman, from hippies to middle class ladies. The only thing they all have in common is the desire to birth their babies in a home-like environment (you get a little birthing house when you go to The Farm) gently and without medical interferance. From when you arrive you are expected to work and help out on the farm every day, pregnant or not. They get your body moving and working so your labour will be easier on you.
I know it is hard to believe when we are surrounded by and our ears filled with the stories of labours gone wrong, but it really doesn't have to be this way. The human body almost always works if you let it. Every step one takes away from the completely natural route comes at a cost and takes you one step closer to the surgical route. There are always risks to be weighed but more often than not they aren't worth it. And how can a woman ever know until it is too late? So many of us grew up believing birth was hard and labour hurt like hell - in some countries they have a different WORD for the pain of a contraction - the word describes the harmless pain, not the pain of danger and injury. How we think about things, and how much we know about things makes such a big difference.
Take induction - it is a STANDARD response to a woman dilating slower than 1cm/2hours. But the book's "1cm/hour" is an AVERAGE, some women will take 4 hours to go from 4cm-5cm and then go to 10cm in the next contraction. We do not trust our bodies to labour, we do not think our butt knows how to get the baby out. But the SECOND you intoduce artificial sinctocin you introduce risk - some babies cope fine, many get distressed, some labours progress well, many progress fast towards the point when they can no longer continue because the slow start would have re-positioned bubs slightly had it been allowed to play out, some uteri (plural of uterus anyone?) cope well, others rupture.
The uterine rupture rate for post-dates induction is the same of that for VBAC, one is done as a matter of course once 10-14 days have passed after the EDD, the other warned against, discouraged, frowned upon.
Ah, this has been mammoth, it is close to my heart. I have known about The Farm stats for 8 years now, and i look around me at the women in the UK hospital system with their outcomes and i just see that SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE. If you do little but love and support it works 95% of the time without instruments or knives. If you do it "properly" in hospital it doesn't even work 55% of the time. Terrible.
Bx
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