Bottoms Up

All but 4% of babies turn to be in the head head down position naturally by the time they are born (yes, some flip during labor although not common). But it can be difficult to know what you can be doing yourself to help Baby turn if baby is in the breech (head up) position when you are in the last half of your third trimester. Unfortunately, most OBs don't offer much by way of support other than offering to schedule a c-section usually right away. Midwives usually have more resources or ideas to offer. Hopefully your provider is one of the types that will actually catch a breech baby, as was always done previously. While it is not possible for everyone, it may be worth looking for a provider who will support a breech birth. Some OBs will do an external version when you full term (usually at least 38 weeks).

While The Bradley Method (and I myself) always recommend that you start with your doctor/midwife to ask for their recommendations, it is also up to you to ultimately make choices and ideally it is best to know what the options are, right? So here a link that you may find interesting if you find yourself (or rather Baby) in this position.

Your hospital's C-section rate

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While the national average is about 1 in 3 births by C-section, the Bradley Method students are significantly much lower at less than 1 in 10.  Hopefully you are learning all that you can about how to potentially avoid this serious surgery that is not without risk, and doing all that you can NOW while you are pregnant so that you hopefully do not have a need for a C-section. If you do end up needing a C-section, you can be thankful this amazing technology exists and that you did the absolute best you could for your baby and you.


What about your hospital? Check any CA hospital's rates out here.

C-section video

We didn't have time to view a C-section video in class, but in the unlikely event that you have one, you may want to see one.

C-section statistics for twins

For the "twinning" mom and dad amongst us, there was an interesting literature study (meaning no experiment was performed, only gathered the existing data) about the increasing rate of C-sections for twins published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Obstetrics and Gyneocology this month.