I just spent an hour with my rear resting on a stack of pillows, couch cushions and crocheted afghans and my head on the floor on doctor's orders. I'm due in three weeks, you see, and I learned this past Monday that little Everett is in Frank Breech position.
Frank Breech is code for head up, butt down and legs over his head. It's like he's frozen in some sort of gymnastic tumble from the rings. Can you tell I watched the Olympics this year?
The radiologist who oversaw my ultrasound made the comment - to his med student, not me, I was invisible to him but for my uterus - that "she will have a tough decision ahead of her."
What he meant was that there are only three choices to make at this point when you have a Frank Breech baby and are working on your 38th week of pregnancy.
A) Have an external version - which my OB nixed just this morning because she can't feel the baby's head at all in an abdominal exam so has nothing to push on in order to force him to turn. Which I was willing to try but am somewhat secretly happy to not have to deal with since I've been told they are so painful some doctors administer epidurals during the procedure. That, and there is some small risk of injury and death to the baby.
B) Have a c-section - this is the easiest route to go at this point and despite the fact that I originally wanted a home birth with a midwife and no drugs I am amazingly fine with the idea of my new OB slicing into me after some nurse taps my spine. I mean, if the baby is breech the baby is breech.
C) Try for a breech birth and possibly end up with a c-section anyway - having read the procedure for a breech birth and seen the frightening angles the baby's body is twisted while his head would still be lodged in my pelvis...I'm definitely not feeling the confidence on this one. Have I mentioned he's a large baby? The OB says he's 68th percentile but he's got his father's big head and long legs. It's the head I'm worried about.
As it turns out we're going for option D) hoping he turns in the next week and if he hasn't scheduling a c-section. Which is how I came to be resting on the floor of my inlaws' tv room with my rump on a stack of pillows, couch cushions and crocheted afghans and my head on the floor. We're hoping gravity will make the baby turn and he will lodge in the pelvis becoming unable to flip around again. I'm only half convinced this will work, but I did feel some less than comfortable movements in the desired regions so who knows. The OB also mentioned moxa sticks, an ancient Chinese remedy involving incense wedged between the pinky toe and its neighbor and then burned, but I have neither the time nor the nose to give that a try.