Breech Baby

Looking at this picture now, I can kind of see where the baby's head is pushing out on Ashley's right side (left side of the picture).

Well, we got confirmation from our doc and an ultrasound that our baby is sitting breech. Ashley thought that the hard lump sitting below her ribs was the head, and unfortunately, she was right. We’re not too concerned, but it sure will be nice if the baby decides to flip. Our doctor is seeing Ashley every week now to perform the Webster Technique, a chiropractic technique to reduce constraints around the baby that are preventing it from getting in the head-down position.

On a side note, our doctor is a D.O. (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, what Ashley is currently studying to become). In our ideal world, we would been having the baby at home (though, preferably not at our present home – it’s kinda ugly) with a midwife there to assist us. Since there are no home birth midwives in our area, we decided to go with a D.O. (who also happens to be one of Ashley’s professors). She’s very supportive, has an extremely low rate of cesarean births, and we’re both happy that she’s doing everything she can to help Ashley deliver vaginally. She’s also done a lot of physical manipulation to help ease some of the pelvic discomfort that Ashley has had.

We’re doing our part, too. We noticed early on that Ashley’s belly was a little lopsided, with the baby preferring to be on her right side (where the head is now). We both thought it was probably due to fascial restrictions (the webby stuff that keeps all of our innards in place). I’ve recently been doing myofascial release techniques around her belly while she’s been reclining backwards with her pelvis higher than her head. Both of these techniques should create the right space and flexibility for our baby to change its position. The baby is always really active during these times, and we’ve definitely felt the baby’s head move down a bit. We’re coming up on 34 weeks, though, so we’re getting anxious for the baby to flip already.

We’ve also been reading the techniques offered at SpinningBabies.com. They have exercises and positions to help with Optimal Fetal Positioning before and during labor. If the baby doesn’t flip, we may be able to deliver vaginally anyway, it may just be a more difficult labor. I’m voting for an easy labor.