PUSH! It's a familiar instruction to women giving birth, and an important one for those on body-numbing drugs. Epidurals and spinal injections can make it a struggle for women to push their baby out. But a new device that signals the baby's progress can help women to learn when and how to push, speeding up labour and reducing the risk of problems.
Pain-blocking drugs are given to about one-third of women giving birth in the UK, and are known to prolong labour. The longer the duration of the pushing stage, the higher the likelihood of adverse outcomes, such as perineal tears, infection or the need for forceps delivery. This is because the drugs dampen nerve signals, which can reduce cues from the body to push.
M. Bardett Fausett at the Women's and Children's Hospital in Lafayette, Louisiana, and his colleagues have developed a device that effectively tells women in labour how well they are pushing. Electrodes on the baby's head and the mother's perineum are connected to laptop software that signals the baby's movement: a successful push is marked with a graph spike and an ascending musical tone – the tempo of which matches the outward movement of the baby.
In a trial of 45 women who used the device and 24 who did not, Fausett's team found the average duration of the pushing stage of labour dropped from 77 to 58 minutes for those trying the software, and adverse outcomes were reduced. "The patients and their families loved it," says Fausett.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Musical software ups the tempo during birth"
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