Flip!

I had my 38 week appointment today, with the main goal of discovering whether Kermit had flipped to be head down during the past week. When we discovered last week that he was transverse breech, Dr. M had given me a home exercise to try, which he said was "occasionally" successful in turning babies into the proper position. The birth instructor that I had with LL had also given me some exercises. And in the comments on my last post, eulogos pointed me to this site with yet more exercises to try to get a late-term transverse baby to cooperate.

The exercises from these three sources were all different, but they amount to the same thing: get your butt higher than your head, then hang out like that for a while. Gravity will pull your uterus towards your throat, stretching the ligaments in order to widen the bottom of the uterus to make room for baby's head, and at the same time, gravity will also pull the baby up away from your pelvic bone, hopefully dislodging him enough so that when you stand upright again, he'll settle into a head down position.

Sounds great, right? A few minor problems. First, when your uterus is bulging with some 10 pounds or more of baby + placenta + amniotic fluid, it is supremely uncomfortable to hang out upside down. Those 10 pounds are more or less free-floating in your abdomen, so flipping over so that gravity pulls them towards your lungs and other organs makes you feel really ill. It's hard to breathe, too. And the blood rushing to your head doesn't help, especially if you're like me and you've been battling dizzy spells and light-headedness all pregnancy anyway. Also, once you're nine months pregnant, you're not exactly at your most nimble. Once you're done being upside down, it is nontrivial to get back up again.

But, I really wanted the baby to turn! So, I spent the last several days hanging out upside down like a bat. And apparently my efforts were successful, because as of today, Kermit is head-down. Woo hoo! I don't think that I actually felt the moment when he settled that way, but by last night, I was fairly certain that he had turned, so it was nice to confirm it this morning. Everything else at the appointment was also good -- blood pressure is low, urine is clear, I lost 2 pounds (!), heart rate is good, fluid levels still appear to be normal. And we got a really clear view of Kermit on the ultrasound, including a close-up of his hands, which appeared to be holding onto my uterus for dear life. He didn't look like he wanted to vacate anytime soon.

So... vertex baby: check! Next step: spontaneous labor. If all else fails, Kermit's eviction is in 10 short days. Everyone may now begin thinking happy labor thoughts for me!