Week 29: Spinning Babies

I had my mega-28 week pre-natal appointment last week. It was something of a full body assault: hideous oral liquid for the glucose tolerance test (served humorously in a champagne glass by the midwives), followed by an extraction of three vials of blood, an anti-d shot in my bum and a final, humiliating swab for strepB.

The good news is that I still don’t seem to have developed gestational diabetes despite consuming vast amounts of chocolate.

The bad news is that baby is sideways, technically called a transverse lie.

Now this shouldn’t really matter until 34 weeks, when the lack of room in the womb makes it difficult for baby to swing around, but after a hideous posterior labour last time I’m quite sensitive to the whole foetal positioning-thing. If I can do something about it now, then I’d like to, especially as a transverse lie almost always necessitates a caesarean birth.

A friend recommended a site called “Spinning Babies” for all sorts of strange exercises one can do to encourage a baby to move into the optimal head-down, bum up, anterior (back of head to the front of your tummy) position.
Gail Tully, the midwife behind Spinning Babies, says that,

Most of the time, labor contractions and vertical birthing positions help the baby rotate.

Sometimes, though, the position of the baby’s head makes fetal rotation more difficult. The reason might be that the mother’s soft tissues are not in balance. Ligaments may not be symmetrical or muscles may not be well-toned. In other words, the support to the womb may be too loose or too tight.

She recommends using balance, gravity and movement to assist a baby to rotate. This basically translates as less couch slumping and more exercise.

Then there are specific positions to practice. In my case, it looks like I need get upside down for a couple of minutes each day. Easier said that done, at 30 weeks pregnant!

Here is a woman practicing this ‘inversion’ technique on a staircase.

Looks like fun. So if you dojn’t hear from me next week, I may be in hospital with a head injury!