I was talking with a mom on Twitter today about her breech baby. My son was in the breech position up until 36 weeks, so I offered her some advice on what I used to help turn him. Now, I don’t really know if the things I did allowed Archer to turn into the vertex position or if it was just him waiting until the last minute to get ready for birth. I tried almost everything my Midwife recommended, but what I think really made a difference was seeing a chiropractor regularly, and swimming. The chiropractor used the Webster Technique to help get my pelvis aligned. I had other back problems during this pregnancy, and seeing the chiropractor really helped me out a lot. The other effort I made to get Archer to turn was swimming–well, actually it was doing flips in the water. I was definitely determined, because the week that I was venturing out to the YMCA public pool it was the coldest temperatures we’d had all winter. Not to mention how I had to waddle around a pool full of people with my 9 month old belly and try to “gracefully” enter the pool. I ended up telling a few of the ladies in the pool what I was doing after spending half an hour doing flips. They said they thought I was just exhilarated to be in the water. Ha! Other things I did was to focus on my posture as much as possible. I was taking The Bradley Method childbirth class at the time, so I was already doing as much tailor sitting as I could stand, and also pelvic rocks. The pelvic rocks were great for relieving the pressure in my lower back. We also tried Moxibustion, and the elevating of the pelvis by laying on an ironing board. Let me tell you, laying on an ironing board with your feet elevated higher than your head when you are near 9 months pregnant is rough. Really rough. But, I really wanted to avoid a possible Cesarean Section, so I dealt with the discomfort. Anyway, these are the things I found helpful when trying to turn my breech baby. Like I said, who knows if Archer turned from all my efforts, or if it was just his decision to turn when he was good and ready. I’ll never know. But, if you have a breech baby, it doesn’t hurt to try getting them to turn.
Here are some really good resources for this particular pregnancy issue:
gentlebirth.org
spinningbabies.com
naturalpregnancyproject.com
Tags: turning breech baby
