Wynnie Is Breech
At 35 weeks, we went for an ultrasound to check how my csection scar had healed and check baby’s growth. This is when we found our perfectly sized 35 week baby sitting very comfortably with her butt in my pelvis. As the doctor pushed baby out of the way to get a look at my internal scar and realized she was pushing her bottom and not her head her words were “she’s breech and you want a vbac? That’s not promising.” I was immediately taken back to that small hushed feeling I felt when my care was with an OB. I simply said “well she has time to turn” and we finished up and left the appointment.
We met back with our midwife the next day, we got all the tips and tricks for turning a breech baby, and we scheduled an appt with a chiropractor. For the next 2 weeks, I spent a lot of time upside down, I held a flashlight to my lower belly, Justin talked to my lower belly, I lived on my exercise ball, and I got several adjustments from the chiropractor all in hopes that baby would turn herself around. But she didn’t and I honestly knew she wasn’t going to. I had this feeling that she needed to be in that position and I was trusting that she had chosen to sit that way for a reason. So, at 38 weeks, my midwife let us know that we had 2 options – a vaginal delivery of our breech baby at the birthing center or a csection at the hospital. Justin and I agreed without hesitation that this baby was coming out how it was designed to and I was not going into another OR.
You don’t easily find providers that have experience with breech birth because it’s no longer taught. A “lost art” if you will. The midwife at our birthing center happened to be relatively experienced in this area. By experienced, I mean 9. She had done 9 breech births. That’s how rare it is – 9 is a pretty good amount of experience compared to the most experienced breech providers across the country. But as she explained all of this and we talked through it, I could feel her confidence in her experience and more so I could feel her confidence in MY abilities. So she sent us home with homework to do our research and get familiar with breech birth. We did. We read the risks and we prepared ourselves for a few possible outcomes. We wrote a birth plan should we had needed to be transferred to the hospital. I read all the breech success stories and we watched all the breech birth videos we could find – which wasn’t many. 3% of babies are breech at full term. The number of those mothers that are given the opportunity to think they can have those babies naturally is even smaller.
I won’t lie, the risks of a breech vaginal delivery are scary and the chances of them happening aren’t any less scary. As I looked into it, that voice of fear really tried to sway me. Then I found a breech vbac story in which the mom was referring to the 1.5% chance of uterine rupture and said “if I couldn’t give that 1.5% chance to God, I had no business calling myself a Christian.” That is what I carried with me for the rest of the pregnancy leading up to Rowynn’s birth. I had been given an amazing opportunity to trust in the Lord, to allow Him to cast out fear, and to let Him SHOW UP. So from that point forward, I reminded myself to trust in the care of the team I had been lead to and the abilities of the body I was built with.
I’m a woman and I was made to make, grow, birth, and feed my children. Each of those things have come with some painful trials for me. But trials make a success that much bigger. Every birth story is amazing. A completely natural delivery of a breech baby less than 14 months after a csection? That’s badass.
So my mind was made up. I tried to be discreet about sharing the details of the birth we were waiting for because when you tell ANYONE you’re knowingly going to birth a breech baby outside a hospital, they all have the same “you’re crazy” look. Most people don’t know that anything other than a csection is possible with a breech baby. Anyone I shared details with was clearly worried for what was to come even if their verbal response was supportive. But I knew where my faith stood, and all that was left was to wait for baby Ro to be ready.
