Turn, Baby, Turn

Almost every day, I lie in bed and feel my belly, trying to recognize body parts, trying to guess how my baby now lies.

For, during the last couple visits to my midwife, my baby has been in the breech position (head at the top). She showed me how you could tell it was the head—it is hard, and when you push at it with two fingers held a few inches apart, it bobbles back and forth but does not move the rest of the body. Whereas, when you push at other body parts, this often moves the whole body, or else the baby pushes back, so you know you must be prodding a leg or an arm or something.

It seemed easy enough to locate, but now, left for weeks on my own, I can never be sure what I am feeling. There are so many body parts, so many hard surfaces—is this the back, the bottom, or what? I feel movements in so many places, and I try to imagine what kind of contorted position my baby might be in that elicits these jabs and rolls from all sides. I palpate my fingers along the sides, bottom, and top of my uterus to try and distinguish a rough shape, and sometimes I think I’m on to something. But ultimately, I have to give up and let go. It’s too hard for me to tell for sure, and it’s too early to really start worrying.

They say that there is still plenty of time for him to turn, and I know this is true. Something like 50% of babies lie in the breech presentation at some point during pregnancy, but only 5% stay in that position for delivery—which these days usually means a c-section. OBs aren’t even trained in vaginal breech deliveries anymore. Some midwives still do breech deliveries, but fewer and fewer have the experience—and in turn, fewer will pass on this knowledge to their students. It is a dieing skill. Breech vaginal deliveries used to be common, until sometime in the 1970s when a study was released that found c-sections to be the safer alternative, although some might contest this. Today, a very small percentage of breech babies are delivered vaginally.

To my surprise, I learned that my midwife actually does breech vaginal deliveries. She speaks of her experience with a calm confidence, and says that they do not scare her. This news filled me with both gratitude and trepidation. I’d simply assumed that if my baby was breech I’d have a c-section like all the other women I’d talked to. (And I seem to know quite a few women who have had breech babies, considering that they supposedly only occur in 5% of births.)

But I haven’t wanted to go here yet. I haven’t wanted to start weighing the pros and cons, tapping into my intuition, and discussing in detail with my husband and midwife what we would do. For everyone tells me we still have plenty of time… I’m at 32 weeks, and it’s usually around 35 weeks or so that babies assume the position that they will stay in. Yet even then, plenty of babies turn at a late date. My friend’s baby, in fact, flipped into the breech position in her last week of pregnancy. Babies know best, some say, how they want to be born.

So, with the exception of a few quickly scanned articles, I have resisted the onslaught of Internet research and statistics for now that would no doubt make me feel stressed out and worried. And I have resisted talking to too many people about this, for fear that talking and thinking about it too much will make me more anxious. Instead, I have tried to concentrate my energy on encouraging my baby to turn.

There are many things one can do, with varying reports of success. For example, talking to the baby or playing music down low is supposed to help, as babies will gravitate towards the sounds. Or doing flips or handstands in a pool. Or lying with your pelvis elevated and feet up against the wall at an angle. Or taking pulsatilla, a homeopathic flower. Or acupuncture and moxibustion. Or visualizations. Or putting an ice pack up high, and something warm down low. Or shining a flashlight down low. Or later, a more invasive procedure where the doctor manually tries to push your baby into a new position.

I’ve tried a few things from the list above, and later on, if my baby still hasn’t turned, I will no doubt try more. But for now I am trying not to obsess over the process; and trying every single strategy on the list would, for me, constitute obsessing. You don’t want to worry about it, my midwife said, for stress itself can keep your baby from turning.

Easier said than done of course. Not worrying about something for me usually means not thinking about it at all. But it’s hard not to carry some worry, however far back it lies in your consciousness, when you are suddenly given this new list of things that you should be doing, in addition to all the things you are already supposed to be doing—like getting 70-80 grams of protein a day, plus all the necessary nutrients, omega-3s, vitamins, and vegetables; like drinking enough water, exercising five times a week, doing Kegels, and prenatal yoga; like buying infant car seats and figuring out where he will sleep, choosing a pediatrician, reading up on childbirth, taking classes, identifying support systems, and a million other little things that one could possibly do to prepare for childbirth and parenthood.

So, my husband and I have made a tape of our voices talking that I can play each night at the bottom of my belly when my husband is away; I’ve been taking pulsatilla; and I bought a maternity bathing suit and have started going to the pool (something I haven’t done since I was a child). Floating, stretching, and moving through the water has felt wonderful, and I am grateful for the way this ‘turn’ in my pregnancy has gotten me to do something so therapeutic that I wouldn’t have done otherwise. I am also thankful for the way this process has forced me and my husband to talk more to our baby, and to think about all the ways in which he is listening.

***

Faith, acceptance, and hope are tricky mind-heart states to balance. I’m trying to trust that my baby will turn (and I know the statistics are in my favor), at the same time that I’m trying to hold the awareness that whatever happens will be okay. That in the end, he either will or he won’t turn, and there won’t be anything I can do about it. All I can do is make the most informed and most intuitive decisions possible, each step of the way.

Next week, I have a prenatal appointment, one I’ve anxiously been awaiting. My midwife will be able to tell me again what position my baby now lies in. He is definitely an active one, moving all the time, but I don’t think he’s turned head down yet, because I have yet to feel his kicks up real high. But then again, I’m really not sure—for, by now, his legs might be wrapped up around his body, and surely there must be plenty of positions he could be in that I can’t visualize.

For now, I try to remember to breathe and send my baby love. To feel calm, rested, and at peace as I lay in bed with my hands on my belly. To let go of the fears and what-ifs, at the same time that I pray for a gentle birth-- for both me, and my child.

I pray that whatever decisions I may still have to make about this pregnancy and delivery will come clearly and easily.

I pray that I can carry an open acceptance about whatever needs to happen.

And I pray that my baby hears my voice whispering, now, turn, baby, turn.

Birth Day

Today is my birthday. Happy Birthday to me. I sit in my bathrobe and check my email after writing in my journal and drinking coffee on the day-bed by the window. This is what I do most mornings, being a mostly-unemployed writer and all, but on this day, I remind myself that I needn't feel guilty for it, don't need to measure this day's success by how many things I check off my to-do list.

I feel better today than I did yesterday, I feel the love coming in, the calls from old friends, the one-liners on Facebook, the small ways we reach out to people and strive for connection each day. But I must admit, I've been feeling melancholy the last few days... mostly hormonal I suspect, and yet, what do hormones do but bring out to the surface what is already there? Latent sadness, depression when checking craigslist for jobs, feeling overwhelmed by the hugeness of my goals and the smallness of my accomplishments.

I used to always feel a certain melancholy on my birthday. I wanted to be honored and surrounded by my friends, and yet I also carried a certain heaviness, a desire to be alone, contemplative and silent. I wanted to throw parties and bring together the small scattered community that I knew, yet I also did not like being at the center of attention. I remember throwing a small party one year and not even telling people it was my birthday. In truth, I wanted the attention, but I feared opening myself to that wanting and then being disappointed.

Today, I mostly feel gratitude. Gratitude for the constants in my life, the deep souls that are with me, the support and the faith that people share with me, the knowing that I have made conscious choice after conscious choice that have led me here to this moment, and that I don't need to be anywhere else than where I am. I know my own challenges, goals, fears; I sit down each day to face them logically, calmly, as I cross things off a list, and then wind down at night to face them emotionally, passionately, drinking wine and listening to music, sometimes reading back on what I've started by day and editing from a deeper place that has no tolerance for half-truths or evasion.

The other night I had one of those moments of sheer gratitude, looking back and taking in all the work I've done, knowing I wouldn't have done it any other way, even if that means my resume reads as a series of one contract job to the next, trying to cover up all the gaps, and even if that means that I sometimes only feel qualified to write, or teach writing, or to help people go deeper into their stories and unmask the deepest intentions of their heart.

I guess what I want to say on this day, my birthday, my day of official of striving for no guilt or judgment for doing what I'm doing and being who I am, is to remember to honor yourself in this same way, every day. To remember that you are beautiful, and that all of us, no matter how we present ourselves or seem to be in life, are just trying to figure things out, trying to find love and happiness and balance, trying to figure out what is most important to us, how we can pay bills and feel safe and secure at the same time that we stay rooted in our deepest, wildest essence. That, my friends, is not an easy thing to do.

I wrote to myself this morning that I know when I am old I will look back on my life and shake my head and think, "Child, you worried too much." I need to remember that we don't ever finally arrive at that plateau we were always striving for, that THIS is it, and if we don't grasp it now, if we don't hold on and love and shine and laugh and celebrate our beauty and freedom now, we never will be satisfied. This is the place from which I want to live and love, this place of gratitude, vitality, deep breaths, and tears. Yes, tears. I welcome them when they come, a shedding of skins, a cyclical outpouring, releasing what has slowly risen day by day and now overflows at the surface. I am not afraid of tears-- yours or my own.

Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to you, may you walk this day with gentle acceptance, may you cradle your own heart in the palm of your hand, may you stroke your own hair with the same tenderness that you would a child, may you never forget how precious you are and how far, how far we have all come.