Week 36

This has been a crazy week. We found out at our 35 week appointment from the nurse practitioner that the baby is breech and I was frantically offered a c-section or a External Cephalic Version (ECV) procedure in which the baby is turned externally. I really didn't want either so asked if I could wait to decide. We scheduled an appointment with a doctor to hear more of our options. The doctor recommended the ECV before week 37. The ECV procedure is done in the hospital so they can monitor me and the baby. They have one or two doctors and nurses put their hands on my stomach and physically move the baby around to the correct position. The doctor said it only works about 60% of the time and they did say it is harder to do on first time moms. She said that if they try a couple times and it is not working, they will not push it. The risks involved could be potential rupture of the placenta, they could break the water, it could cause distress on the baby, it could cause labor to begin which all could result in an emergency c-section, but those cases are very rare. Also, it is a pretty painful procedure. We scheduled the procedure for Tuesday 3/15 but we are hoping to avoid this procedure if possible.

In the meantime, we have been trying everything we can, like putting myself in precarious positions trying to get him to turn. I was on my hands and knees with my butt in the air and head down, frozen peas on the top of my stomach and music playing near my pelvis. I know it sounds weird, but it was been recommended.

We tried acupuncture, which is also supposedly pretty successful. Acupuncture was weird. The acupuncturist came to our apartment with his box of supplies. He used moxa, which is a Chinese herb that looks like wall insulation. He rolled it into 20 rice sized pieces. He lit incense, put burn cream on the edge of my pinkie toes, stuck the moxa to the cream, lit it on fire and then waited until I felt the heat. I said "hot", and he quickly extinguished it with his fingers. He did this on each toe 10 times. The baby was moving during the procedure which was a good sign. The whole thing took about 30 minutes and was relatively painless.

I moved on to the chiropractor which promises to be the most beneficial of all of the treatments as she claims to have an 80% success rate of making the appropriate adjustments to help breech babies turn.
I have had 3 adjustments and AJ is moving around a lot more, which is a great sign. This is an article that explains the process if anyone is interested in reading about it.

http://icpa4kids.org/Wellness-Articles/for-many-pregnant-moms-webster-technique-is-the-key-to-a-safer-birth/All-Pages.html

Hopefully we will be able to cancel the ECV it if he flips before Tuesday.

Whatever happens....we are READY to go to the hospital!