Pre-birth and induction acupuncture for big babies

Has your obstetrician or midwife told you that your baby is tracking on the big side? Are they recommending early induction, for example at 40 weeks?

Are you wondering if acupuncture could help you?

This is a common situation in our clinic and we’re here to help you.

We find that it’s common for obstetricians or midwives to recommend that people seek out acupuncture for this exact situation.

Our standard practice for pre-birth acupuncture and induction acupuncture

Our standard practice for labour preparation is informed by research evidence, combined with our clinical experience:

• Pre-birth acupuncture from around 37 weeks gestation, once per week
• Induction acupuncture* from around 40 weeks onwards, tailored to respond to changes such as cervical dilatation, baby’s engagement and baby’s position

Our special practice for early medical induction

In cases where:

• there’s a recommendation for induction before 40+10
• the pregnant person would like to avoid medical induction if possible
• there is support from the medical team for induction acupuncture
• there is consent from the pregnant person

then we change this standard practice. We can bring forward the “induction points” to begin using them earlier than 40 weeks.

We can also begin the Pre-birth acupuncture earlier than 37 weeks, using modified protocols.

As with our standard practice, we tailor the treatments to respond to changes, and integrate closely with medical practices such as membrane sweeps.

We often suggest treatments more than once per week, especially when closer to the medical induction date.

Other supports

We like to bring comprehensive support to allow your body and mind to open.

This may include:

• teaching you how to do acupressure at home to continue your progress between acupuncture treatments
• helping you feel supported to have productive dialogues with your medical providers so it feels like you have all the support in your corner and everyone’s on your team with you
• personalising your acupuncture treatments to also help with sleep, anxiety, muscular pain or other issues

Getting started

• If you’re ready to book in and get started, please head to our Bookings page. You can book online or fill in the form and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
• If you’d like to find out more, then please feel welcome to book a Free 15-minute Consultation using our Booking Request Form, to speak with one of our practitioners about your unique situation.

We look forward to supporting you towards your best birth.

* We use the term “induction acupuncture” because that’s how it’s widely known. Technically, acupuncture belongs in the same category as membrane sweeps, colostrum expressing and so on. Shown to have a helpful and meaningful effect – however, for a method to be called an “induction” method, it needs to reliably bring on labour, within a certain window of time. Only some of the medical methods could be truly known as “induction” methods. Acupuncture is a method of resourcing the body to become more efficient in the natural program of baby and mother readiness for birth.

With acupuncture, we use “pre-birth” and “induction” to show that they are different protocols. Pre-birth protocols usually include only one or two acupoints that are “forbidden” earlier in pregnancy. The points are forbidden because of their potential to stimulate the uterus, relax the cervix and pelvis and so on. Induction acupuncture usually includes a larger number of these forbidden points or strategies.