Discovering that your unborn child is breech this late in the game sends everything into a bit of a panic. Your first reaction is a sense of regret. You start to second guess everything that you’ve done up to this point in the pregnancy. Did she slouch too much? Was she too active? Was she not active enough? Should she have avoided the ‘breech stew’?
After it sinks in that, indeed, our child is a stubborn little guy/gal that would rather sit comfortably inside Mom rather than actually assume a position that would allow for easier ejection, you begin to look for ways of ‘nudging’ said fetus in the right direction. Or at least helping the process along. Decades ago, I’m assuming that discovering ways to turn a breech baby would involve a) a trip to the library b) a call to the local women’s rotary club or c) a pilgrimage into the jungles of Costa Rica to find a reclusive shaman named D’Atumbo who, legend has it, can turn breech babies simply with his gaze. Today we have the Internet.
Go ahead, search for “turning a breech baby” in Google. I’ll wait.
A lot of results, eh? (Incidentally, by searching in Google you are apparently qualified to offer said results to medical patients should you ever become a sonographer). Yessir, turning a breech baby is apparently one of those topics that generate a large number of ‘home-brew’ solutions, which far and away underscores the fact that there is no good solution to the problem. Granted, many of the solutions list alongside their instructions that this or that particular method is “80% effective” or “works 90%” of the time. This immediately raises red flags for me – if it was indeed that effective, wouldn’t our doctor advise us to “go get adjusted” or “burn sticks and stick them on the pinky toe”?
Regardless of the odds of these methods working, we began in earnest, Operation Flipper (Flipper, King of the Womb). This consisted of a broad scale assault on the breech, and involved a variety of tactics. The most common of which had Kim either lying on an ironing board leaning on our couch, her hips well above her tummy. The converse to this was her on all fours, rocking back and forth ‘Mecca style’ with her head near the floor and her hips up in the air. She did this numerous times a day. Of course you are supposed to do these (and in fact all methods) when the baby is moving. And of course as soon as Kim assumed these hilarious positions, the baby stopped moving. He/she undoubtedly shares my sense of humor.
As the blood rushed to her head, Kim tried a few other ideas. First was putting music (a wide variety of styles was tried, from classical to country to Polish rock-operas) at the base of her stomach, with the idea being that the fetus would “swing down to investigate.” Along the same lines, I sat there with a flashlight and traced a path from the top of the fundus down to the bottom of the womb – this time the baby would “go towards the light.” In desperation, I began using Kim’s belly button as a telephone to Chi-Baba, in the hopes that even if the baby wouldn’t come to Toby Keith, he might come to my voice. I should’ve known better – I can barely get the cats to look at me when I yell at them, let alone a tiny human trapped in a bag of water.
We talked to an acupuncturist, inquired with chiropracters, consulted with a foot reflexologist, and even talked with a geologist. (He had no ideas on the baby, but suggested slate for our back patio) The foot reflexologist had me pinching Kim’s big toe, which apparently causing the spleen to move, which will tickle the baby’s foot and then cause it to turn. Well, I pinched her toe. A lot. And other than a bruise on her toe, the baby stayed put.
This baby is going nowhere. All we have left to do now is to try and have this thing manually turned, something that is done by our OBGYN and happens in Labor and Delivery in case something should happen. It is our last chance if this thing doesn’t decide to flip on it’s own.
Kim tells me almost every day that the baby has the hiccups. But you know, I’m just not so sure – I think that the baby is just in there, all day, laughing it’s butt off at us.
