Using acupuncture during pregnancy can be an excellent form of treatment due to its limited side effects on the unborn child. In some cases, acupuncture is used for pregnancy complications (such as morning sickness or back pain) or used to help achieve conception with fertility treatments. Today, we are going to discuss a case of using acupuncture to induce labor at a full-term pregnancy.

Inducing Labor: A Recent Case

Recently, a female patient came to my clinic who was at the full-term of her pregnancy that very day. She felt healthy, but was worried that the baby was not going to come out on his own. Her husband, another patient of mine, recommended she come in to see if we could induce her labor naturally with acupuncture. The couple hoped that this would help them avoid using any labor-inducing pharmaceuticals, such as Pitocin ® (oxytocin injection, USP), or the need for a cesarean section during delivery.

She responded well during treatment and could feel the increased uterine contractions during the hour-long session. Within 24 hours, I received a message from her husband that they were “on the way to the hospital”. During her short 3 hour labor, she required no pain medications or any other pharmaceuticals to help her through the birth of her first son, giving her the completely natural birth she wanted.

How Does Acupuncture Help to Induce Labor?

During her acupuncture treatment, a variety of distal acupuncture points were used to increase her uterine contractions. The points were all located on the hands, feet, and lower legs… safely away from the baby and any other vital organs. Several acupuncture points are considered contraindicated during pregnancy due to their effects of activating the uterus, and these are exactly the points we used during her treatment. The treatment included well-known points such as Spleen 6 (Sp6), Large Intestine 4 (LI4), and Gallbladder 21 (GB21), as well as several Master Tung style points (Ling Ku, Da Bai, and Hua Bao).

Overall, everyone was very happy with the outcome of this treatment. In some cases, daily treatment for two or three days is required to induce labor.

Supporting Research

The benefits of this form of treatment is even being noticed by the maternity wards of hospitals. A study published in May of 2009 (only a month ago) examined the use of acupuncture in hospitals during labor and delivery. The researchers reported the following: a reduced need for cesarean sections, hospital staff subjectively observed patients being more comfortable, and patients themselves reporting that they felt acupuncture helped. Hopefully, more research on this subject will lead to the integrative use of acupuncture during labor and delivery nationwide.

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