Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Face all your fears...

I've had the nagging sense that I should be doing research on breech. Sure enough, babe has been breech for the past week. I can feel her wobbly little head above my belly button and her feet down below.

At first, I panicked, seeing my HBAC plans fly out the window, but then I calmed down and decided that I should research, find a provider who catches vaginal breech, and try to do everything I can to turn the baby.

The good news: I'm only 32 weeks, so there's lots of time left. Babe has lots of room.

The not-so-good news: No one in my community will catch a vaginal breech, so I need to go farther afield. My midwife is helping me find someone in/near Vancouver and I'm even looking as far away as Washington state. The practitioner will have to be either an OB or an unregistered midwife as registered midwives are prohibited by the BC College of Midwives from attending vaginal breech births.

Off to do breech tilts.

3 comments:

Avital said...

Hello. Your blog showed up on my google alerts for "midwife bc" and I thought I'd let you know that my baby was breech until 37 weeks and Nicole Seguin from Bloom Community Midwives (downtown Vancouver) and I emailed a couple of times. She has delivered two breech babies herself. You might want to contact her as she seemed willing to deliver my baby if was breech.

Also, I went and saw Dr. Stephanie Bonn, a chiropractor who does the Webster Technique. I have a tilted uterus which made optimal positioning etc ineffective and my doctor has many patients with my condition and she said about 90% of them have breech babies because it is more comfortable for the babies to be breech due to the space and shape in the uterus, so I had very little hope of the baby turning.

I didn't think the Webster technique would work, but within a few hours, my baby had turned and stayed head down. Dr. Bonn is fantastic and the Webster Technique is non-intrusive and can't do any harm.

Good Luck!

Bloom Community Midwives
604-609-3550

Dr. Stephanie Bonn
http://www.bonnchiropractic.com/

Sarah said...

Thanks, MamaVee! I have a chiro appt this afternoon and am hopeful Webster will work. I'll add the Nicole Seguin to my list of people to contact should baby stay breech.

Avital said...

I was at the International doula conference this weekend and came across some stuff and thought of you. You'll want to read this article:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/329/7473/1039

The doctor who wrote this article practices in Yellow Knife. I heard him speak this weekend, he's quite amazing, and vaginal breech birth is sort of his favourite subject/passion. He'd probably be good person for your care provider to contact regarding who would be supportive of vaginal breech birth. Another good contact would be Dr. Michael Klein who is a retired doctor and (the guy that did the first episiotomy trial proving they were bad) and a researcher at BC Women's/UBC. He's extremely supportive of normal birth and would probably also know some good docs.

Hopefully your baby has turned though, and you don't need this info!