Right-Side-Up is the New Up-Side-Down

36 Weeks, 6 days

Judy, our midwife, and Kasey, the midwife in training, came to our house on Tuesday to check out the space where we are planning on having the birth. We discussed the location options and decided to have it set up in the nursery. Outside on the deck was a thought, but the deck is old and I was concerned about the weather too. We talked about the last few things we need to get together and that we should have them all ready to go.

There was some discussion about the tub for the waterbirth and the fact that she only has 3 tubs which are all out right now. Two of them are at mother's houses that are due on the 16th. As long as one of them delivers before I do, I will be the next in line to get the tub. I figured they can't both go overdue, so I am bound to get one of the tubs. Also, we thought there was very little chance that I would go into labor this week or early next week anyhow. In a pinch, our own bathtub would have to do. With that settled, we moved on to the regular appointment stuff.

Kasey, the midwife in training, took my blood pressure, checked Piper's heartbeat and measured my belly. I weighed myself and all looked good. She then felt around my belly to see where Piper is lying. She thought that Piper was still in the proper head-down position. Judy asked if she was sure, she was pretty sure, somewhat. With that, Judy checked my belly.

She felt around for a long time and kept wiggling Piper from side to side. She told Kasey to feel my belly too, I was a bit concerned. Apparently, I have a lot of abdominal muscle and it is very hard to feel the baby's pieces and parts. There are just two obvious lumps - one in heads the other tails, but which is which? Judy said she thought the baby had flipped again and was once more breech. There was a lot more feeling around and discussion. Finally, Judy wanted to do an internal exam to see if she could feel anything that way. At this point Griffin had to leave for a meeting. I was on my own.

We went upstairs and using olive oil as a lubricant, Judy dug around inside me. Oh, how I hate internal exams. There is no dignity in pregnancy. She couldn't feel anything. Piper was so high up in my uterus that she was out of reach. Other steps would need to be taken to determine what was going on.

Judy called the back-up OB office and told them that we needed an ultrasound STAT (okay, she didn't really say stat, but she got an appointment for the very next day anyhow).

Griffin and I went to the office yesterday and they confirmed that Piper is breech. The next step is to have an 'external cephalic version' performed. This is a procedure where the doctor attempts to gently turn the baby from the outside. It is successful in 60 to 80% of the cases and there are very few complications involved. They will give me an IV of a muscle relaxer to help loosen things up. This is done in the hospital, just in case, so the OB called the hospital and told them we needed an external cephalic version, STAT! (Now I just like saying it.) We got scheduled for the next day, which is today.

So here I am, Thursday morning, waiting to have the ECV performed at 11am. I am not allowed to eat or drink anything in case they need to perform an emergency c-section. I am fairly calm and quite hopeful that this will work out just fine. The c-section option would happen only if there was an extreme emergency, which is very rare. I am not happy about having to go through this, but hopefully it is the final hoop I have to jump through until I give birth.

I have also been thinking about how it will be a lot more comfortable for me not to have Piper's head wedged in under my ribs. Perhaps that's why I can only eat a few mouthfuls of food at a time now.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of "As the Baby Turns"....