Back to top

Katie Heath

Award Received: 
Midwives Award
Project: 
putting on a Biomechanics for Birth Professionals workshop for her midwifery and obstetric colleagues
Year awarded: 
2023

I was delighted to have been awarded an Iolanthe award to facilitate a multidisciplinary physiological birth workshop for my colleagues at NHS Lothian.

Across the country we are seeing an increase in rates of intervention during birth, and I was keen to look at physiologically-informed approaches that can be applied to promote spontaneous vaginal birth. I learned about the work of midwife Molly O’Brien, an experienced biomechanics practitioner, and was keen to host her to run her Biomechanics for Birth workshop. The Iolanthe award helped me to do this.

 

Molly teaching the ‘Shaking the apple tree’ rebozo technique, designed to reduce tension in the large muscles attached to the pelvis

Molly’s workshop was extremely informative, and very good fun too! It was attended by 14 midwives (myself included) and 4 obstetricians, with a range of practice backgrounds and experiences. Molly guided us through some of the theory of biomechanics, reminding us of basic anatomical and physiological principles that facilitate vaginal birth. We were then able to get involved with some practical elements which included learning rebozo techniques and using different positions to encourage optimal fetal positioning.

I particularly enjoyed Molly’s philosophy of encouraging women to move throughout their pregnancy so that they know how their bodies work when it comes time to birth. I will certainly be encouraging my caseload to dance everyday!

Molly encouraged us to reflect in groups, sharing our practice and experience

At the end of the day we took the chance to reflect as a group on how we can apply what we learned to our practice. One thing we did note is that although a lot of the movements and techniques we were taught are founded in common-sense, that there is not necessarily robust evidence to support their use, and that this may affect how our colleagues perceive their use in everyday practice.

A small group of us have agreed to come away to work up an internal guideline for when different moves are safe to use and how we can support women and birthing people to use them. We hope this will encourage their use in practice.

Feedback from participants 

This was an absolutely wonderful study day - so relevant and sharing up to date knowledge. I loved that it is focused on midwives work and gives practical solutions to problems we face every day.”

I found it really helpful to hear description and demonstration (from videos) of positions that can optimise physiology to help labour dystocia, I don't think I have been specifically taught or shown that before.”

Our workshop was attended by both midwives and obstetricians from across our sites at the Royal Infirmary of

Edinburgh, St John’s Hospital Livingston, and the community and homebirth teams