Twisting mother if baby's shoulders jammed

The Spiritual Midwifery centre at the Farm in Summertown, Tennessee, is on the cutting edge of midwifery research. One technique they learned from Mayan midwives in Guatemala, for instance, has been written up in medical journals and is now being incorporated into family-physician training.

The technique, for delivering babies whose shoulders get jammed in delivery, simply involves rolling and twisting the mother. 'The baby then 'pops right out.'

Mainstream doctors, on the other hand, opt for a caesarean in such cases. In a study of 59 such caesarean cases, two babies died and four had permanent neurological damage, three women had their pubic bones cut and two had emergency hysterectomies, and five babies ended up with arms that will never work.

The Farm midwives, by contrast, delivered 40 babies using the Mayan technique without a single complication. The Maya claim they learned the procedure from God.