What To Do If Your Baby Is Breech
WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF YOUR BABY IS breach?
After my conversation about VBACs, I wanted to go more in depth about breech presenting babies. Along with VBACs, breech positioning is a topic I get a lot of questions about! The ideal and most common position for a baby to be born in is called cephalic presentation, which is head down with chin tucked and facing the mother’s back. Breech is when your baby has their head up in your ribs, instead of down in your pelvis, and happens in about 3-5% of births. This positioning is not considered ideal and most commonly results in a c-section for safety reasons. I had a breech baby resulting in c-section and then went on to have a VBAC for my next birth. Actually, four of my babies have been in breech position at some point after 20 weeks, but most babies don’t settle into their final position around 32 to 36 weeks, so I knew I had plenty of time to get them to flip- and boy did I try!
Something I’ve come to accept and I think is really important to remember is that when it comes down to it, baby often calls the shots. As much as we don’t want to admit it- it's true! And not just in the specific instance of baby being breech- in pregnancy, labor, and postpartum there are things that are in our control and things that are out of our control. We can only work on things that are in our control. So in the instance of baby being breech, there are things you may be willing to do to make the environment more open to encourage baby to flip, but that doesn't mean they're going to. And that’s okay- you did your best!
MY experience WITH BREECH BABIES
My first baby was breech from the time of his 20 week anatomy scan, all the way through labor beginning and me going in for my c-section. When I first found out my son was breech I started doing some tricks like handstands in the pool, shining a light at the bottom of my belly, putting cold at the top of my belly and warm at the bottom. Just anything to get this baby to flip! I even tried some of the Spinning Babies techniques, which you can check out here. I also considered doing an external cephalic version (ECV). External cephalic version is when a doctor uses ultrasound technology to apply pressure to the mother’s abdomen to turn the breech baby to be in a head-down position. However, my son was too lodged up in my rib cage to preform an ECV and I would end up having a c-section.
My second baby was head down the whole time, so that (plus a couple of other boxes checked) meant my doctor agreed I was a good candidate for a VBAC. When I was in active labor with her and once we got checked in at the hospital, I was already dilated to six centimeters. Then labor stalled. I kept having to use the peanut ball and switch positions a ton because she was hung up on my pelvis somewhere and couldn’t fully descend. After so much flipping back and forth, we ended up being able to get her in the right position to be delivered vaginally. So all that to say, given my history with my first two births, I began to think I must be off kilter somewhere because I always have bad sciatic pain during pregnancy and then have to be flipping, flipping, flipping during labor. Which is normal and fine! But that’s what prompted me to work with a physical therapist and chiropractor in subsequent pregnancies.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO flip A BREECH BABY?
Let’s get into what you can do if your baby is breech- The things that are in your control, like I mentioned above! When I found out during my most recent pregnancy that baby was breech at 27 weeks, I immediately went to the store to get an exercise ball because my physical therapist recommended doing pelvic circles, pelvic side-to-side, and pelvic forward/backwards movements to get some relief before I made it into my next appointment (it can be painful to have a head in your ribs and feel those kicks down low!). My focus was going to be doing things with my anatomy to try to open up the pelvis more to help baby want to go head down. But ultimately I can't force them to do that. It's going to be up to them. I think mentally knowing that and understanding that did help me prepare the possibility of having another c-section. Like hey, I did everything in my power, to encourage the baby to flip over, but maybe there’s a reason that they’re not doing it and that’s okay. I know that mentally it can be hard- I understand that completely!
After having the experiences of my prior two babies- one being a c-section because baby was breech, and the other being baby getting caught somewhere in my pelvis- when my third baby flipped breech later in pregnancy, I knew I needed to get to work making the environment favorable for her to flip. I ended up going to a Webster Certified Chiropractor around 30 weeks. I saw them weekly for adjustments. I think this helped so much because at 34 weeks, my baby ended up flipping and I was able to have another successful VBAC. So I can not recommend seeing a Webster Certified Chiropractor enough!
If you’re getting to the end of your pregnancy and baby is still breech, you can talk with your provider about an External Cephalic Version (ECV), which is where your doctor or midwife, under ultrasound guidance, will manually try to flip your baby over to head down and then go from there. This is a conversation to have with your doctor though because there are some people that are better candidates for that than others. With anything in pregnancy, there are always both benefits and risks. I was not a candidate for that with my first due to how he was positioned and how lodged he really was. So it’s worth chatting with your provider about and they can go through the risks versus benefits of trying to get baby to flip this way. For some people it works phenomenally and they’re able to have a vaginal delivery because of it and for others it doesn’t and that can be disheartening too. There’s always two sides to the coin and only so much we can try and do in this situation. I hope I was able to answer some questions on breech babies and what you can do to help them flip!
