Doctor Shows How Pregnant Women Can Dance Away Their Labor Pain

Anyone who’s been in labor knows it’s no walk in the park. Different women have different ways of coping with contractions and dealing with all the pain that leads up to actually giving birth. Some ask for a ton of drugs to numb the pain, others just latch on to their partner’s arm and let them share just a bit of that pain. Just a bit. But one doctor is trying something new to relieve women from their excruciating experience. Meet Brazilian doctor Fernando Guedes da Cunha.

Dr. Cunha supports this method with his medical experience in order to convince mothers-to-be to take him seriously and to actually try it out for themselves. So you are probably wondering what exactly this method is. Well, it’s dancing. The doctor has posted videos and photos of himself leading a dance routine with pretty pregnant women to some of the songs that they love.

He turned to his Instagram to post all these photos and videos and it looks like these women are having a blast! In fact, they barely look like they are in any pain. Dr. Cunha wrote on his Instagram, “Dance, walk, activities with a ball of physiotherapy and squats, are part of the patient’s verticalization, which greatly favors labor. We are increasingly trying to implement human measures to improve assistance to pregnant women.” Dr. Cunha first got discovered after he posted a video of himself dancing to Despacito along with a patient at the hospital he works at, Unimed Vitoria.

Again, you can’t believe that this woman is about to give birth when you see her do all that smiling and moving! According to Cunha, the moves that these women are doing are proven to reduce pain during labor and generally make giving birth way easier. The dance routines typically consist of squats, hip movements, and shimmies.

Dr. Cunha wrote in one of his captions on Instagram (translated from Spanish), “You come to work and your patient goes into labor! She asks for the music, we invent the choreography at the time so that the exercises help the childbirth.” It sounds absurd but it works, according to the doctor. More than that, it makes the time of labor fly by. Just imagine dancing to your favorite song and bam! Time for the baby to arrive.

INSTAGRAM @drfernandoguedescu

According to a 1998 study in the The New England Journal of Medicine, dancing helps relax the muscles. This results in helping the baby descend way easier and get into the best position for birth. More and more hospitals are sharing the belief of this doctor. The New England Journal also notes that women who walked or moved around during had shorter labors. Sounds like a win-win if you ask me.

In another study done in Nursing Research in 2003, the more that women in labor lied down and stayed still, the more they were prone to back pain. According to Dr. Regina Kaplan, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Ocean Medical Center, the whole point is for the baby to move through the birth canal, so the more mommy moves, the more she’s helping out her baby to move. She adds, “It will help shift the pressure of the baby pressing on maternal skeletal structures and organs.” Check out the video of Dr. Fernando Guedes da Cunha dancing with some of the mommies-to-be! It might even get you to dance as well.

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