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Turning breech babies with hypnosis.
Gilman, Eleanor
American Health , Page: 30(1) , Nov, 1995

A new study suggests that hypnosis a few weeks before delivery is good for pregnant women who are expected to deliver babies in the breech position. Experts say hypnosis helps mothers relieve the anxiety and fear of delivery and reduces fetal movement to allow the babies to turn to a head-first position.

Because breech presentation (buttocks or feet first) during a baby's delivery can cause complications, some doctors try to turn the fetus manually to the head-first position a few weeks before birth. Or they may elect to deliver the baby via cesarean section if it doesn't turn by itself. A recent study at the University of Vermont College of Medicine suggests there may be an option that requires no physical intervention: hypnosis.

One hundred pregnant women whose fetuses were in the breech position close to the time of delivery received four to five hours of hypnosis, during which they visualized images of nature and were guided in reducing pregnancy-related tension. The women were also given tapes of the sessions to use at home. The researchers compared this group with 100 women who had not been hypnotized and who gave birth to babies who had been in the breech position in the weeks prior to birth. By the time of delivery, 81 fetuses in the hypnosis group had turned to a headfirst position, whereas only 26 had done so in the comparison group.

Why might hypnosis work? Dr. Lewis Mehl, a family physician and clinical psychologist who conducted the study, speculates that an expectant mother's anxiety or fears can lead to increased fetal movement and tightening of the lower portion of the uterus. Consequently, the fetus's head--the heaviest part of its body--doesn't settle into the mother's pelvis. Mehl tailored hypnosis sessions to specific concerns, which included (ear of delivery or motherhood and worry about the father's acceptance of the baby. When the women relaxed, Mehl says, "gravity was able to do its work and turn the baby head-down."

Mehl notes that hypnosis isn't widely used for this purpose. "But since it poses no risk to the fetus," he says, "there's nothing to lose by trying it."

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