Anonymous wrote:Spinning Babies is woo anyway

Actually Gail Tully has a far better understanding of pelvic anatomy and how to help labor progress using positioning than most midwives I know who are CNMs. Home birth midwives often need to have more tools in their toolkit to get babies out vaginally when CNMs who deliver in hospitals often just have the regular tools that OBs have, like pitocin. That said, I would still never deliver with a CPM or do a homebirth but she does have some knowledge that is important. Pelvic architecture and understanding how to facilitate labor progress through position changes isn’t woo.

Spinning Babies is woo anyway

Everyone is an n of 1 PP. If your baby got shoulder dystocia and you had a severe tear you wouldn’t be going on about this. Everyone has a different experience of birth. Your positive experience doesn’t mean it will be like that for everyone.

Anonymous wrote:From the post: Good fetal positioning, good flexibility in the pelvic joints and balance in the soft tissues help the natural labor progress.

Do you really think all babies are well positioned and tolerate labor well? Frank breech, asynclitism, occiput posterior, etc. etc. I could go on. Do you really think all women have good flexibility in their joints? Especially now that many women sit all day and are giving birth 10-20 years from their biological prime? Do you think all labors progress well? Mother Nature is cruel, and women’s bodies aren’t perfect. That doesn’t mean we don’t believe in women, it means we acknowledge reality.

Baby's position is changeable. Not only do they flip and twist around on their own, there are often things you can do and not do to help get them in a better position.

And sitting all day and not being in your biological prime is not a problem for many, I would bet most people. I'm living proof - I sit all day at a desk job, don't exercise very much, and at nearly 35 my body needed no help to push a medium size baby out in <9 hours. One small tear, but otherwise no averse effects. I know others who had this experience too, so I'm not a unicorn. I'm sure there are factors that make labor longer and more painful, but I don't think women need to have some optimal physiology to give birth vaginally.

From the post: Good fetal positioning, good flexibility in the pelvic joints and balance in the soft tissues help the natural labor progress.

Do you really think all babies are well positioned and tolerate labor well? Frank breech, asynclitism, occiput posterior, etc. etc. I could go on. Do you really think all women have good flexibility in their joints? Especially now that many women sit all day and are giving birth 10-20 years from their biological prime? Do you think all labors progress well? Mother Nature is cruel, and women’s bodies aren’t perfect. That doesn’t mean we don’t believe in women, it means we acknowledge reality.

Anonymous wrote:Really PP? Women can have narrow pubic arches or poorly positioned babies or immobile and unbalanced pelvic floor muscles and different pelvic types that make vaginal birth hard or impossible. It’s not just a matter of, you own a vagina so you can therefore birth a baby vaginally. There is a massive range of pelvic anatomy as well as tissue mobility, labor types, baby sizes and baby positions. Stop promoting magical thinking. https://spinningbabies.com/learn-more/birth-anatomy/

I love spinning babies! But it doesn't say those things make vaginal birth for some women impossible. It says they usually can be resolved with different positioning techniques and movements. True cephalic disproportion is rare and typically is seen in women who had rickets or were malnourished during their development.

The only magical thinking here is that so many women's bodies are dysfunctional!