Labour and Delivery
Christa Angell, has completed training in Labour and Delivery with TCM and Acupuncture 1 & 2 with renowned practitioner Claudia Citkovitz.
Christa describes the week spent working and studying along-side Claudia as an amazing and exciting opportunity. Claudia Citkovitz is the Director of the Acupuncture Program at Lutheran Medical Center, a 466-bed community hospital in Brooklyn, NY. Through the program, she provides care to inpatients in the Neurological/Orthopedic Rehabilitation and Labor and Delivery units, hosting licensed practitioners, PCOM Master’s students and ACTCM and OCOM doctoral students for didactic and clinical intensives.
Christa learned that the treatments for Labour and Delivery can start as early as 32 weeks and women often continue with treatments post-partum.
She had the opportunity to see the many benefits of TCM for Labour and Delivery in practice. These include:
Labour (s) may be shorter, with fewer complications, caesarean rates are reduced, there is less need for oxytocin to speed up labour, and women request less pain medications and epidurals. As a result, there is an overall greater satisfaction and harmony with the mother’s birthing experience.
Acupuncture specifically benefits the following:
Cervical ripening
Pain Managment
Increase in contraction strength and frequency
Back Pain
Exhaustion
Anxiety and fear
Co-treatments and TCM dynamic approaches for common interventions (induction, cervical ripening, epidural etc.) as well as difficult labour and associated complications ( pre-eclampsia, olig/polyhydraminos, ruptured membranes, etc).
When the due- date is near, TCM and Acupuncture treatments can provide physical and emotional support to a woman during labour, birth, and the immediate post partum period.
