Mrs. Juliet Magdalene Acquah, an expert in save motherhood skills, has designed and manufactured two new modernized tools to aid comfortable delivery positions during labour.
The Birthing Stools have been designed to give clients the option to choose a desirable delivery positions and provide clients friendly delivery service.
The two stools designed for sitting and squatting during labour is aimed to improve the utilization of supervised delivery services.
The stools are still in the ‘evolution phase’ and modifications are also being made based on feedback from clients as well as service providers to make their use friendlier.
The Birthing Stools were made known during the Second Mid-Wives Annual Review Workshop the theme, “Accelerating the attainment of MDG’s 4 and 5: The Role of Mid-Wives” organised by United Nations Population Fund in Kumasi.
The three day workshops was aimed sharing best practices for improving maternal and newborn health care delivery and provide platform for leadership development of mid-wives in public and private sectors.
It brought together about 40 senior and junior Mid-Wives from all the regions in the country.
In hospital, women in labour are made to stay in bed and when the time comes for delivery; their feet are put in stirrups. This position enables the attending Mid-wife or Doctor to have easy access and a clear view of the goings-on. But what is good for the doctors is not necessarily so good for the mother who feels uncomfortable and humiliated to push her baby without the helpful force of gravity.
Mrs. Acquaye said currently enlightened practitioners were encouraging expectant mothers to labour in any position they may feel comfortable and deliver in positions far different from the usual ‘flat-on-the-back’ pose.
She said lying flat on the back was least effective delivering position of all adding, any position that enlists the aid gravity was likely to yield speedier results.
“Lying on your back with a full-term baby inside your uterus can put pressure on important blood vessels, possibly compromising blood flow to the baby”, she noted.
Mrs. Acquaye said she was compelled to design the Birthing Stool because most laboring women preferred to be delivered by Traditional Birth Attendants due to the flexibility they offered by way of delivery positions.
“I, therefore set out to encourage the provision of options for delivery at our facility to encourage expectant mothers to utilize supervised delivery services”, she said.
She mentioned some of its advantages as enhancing baby’s rotation and descent in a difficult birth, helpful if one does not feel the urge to push, requires less bearing down and reduces incidence of vaginal and perineal tears.
Mrs. Acquaye said the new innovations had received positive feedback from clients and was constantly being modified to accommodate the needs of both clients and service providers.
She hoped inventions would encourage more women to utilize supervised delivery services to enable Ghana achieve MDG’s 4 and 5 by 2015.
Source: Ghana News Agency
