Footling flip!

It’s Tuesday morning and we are back in the waiting room for another ultrasound. I’m nervous. I think the baby has flipped and is head down, and our midwife a week ago said that she thought he flipped as well. This would be GREAT news as it would mean that we wouldn’t have to have a c-section. But I don’t want to get too excited. Either way I’m ok with the outcome. But … I have this feeling like he is head down, and I would love to know that my intuition was right.
But … the thing that is making me nervous is that last night he was moving around a lot. And I just keep thinking, oh man—what if he flipped and then flipped back. I keep feeling my belly, but I just can’t tell. I feel like the confidence and intuition that I had the last 5 days has dissolved. And of course, the wait is taking forever. After an hour and some change we get called in.
Thankfully this technician is super nice, already a pleasant switch from our last visit. I get up on the table, she puts the goo on my belly and the wand does it’s magic and then we hear the magic words—“he’s head down.” Chad and I look at each other with huge smiles and we high five. Yay!!!!!!! I’m so happy and relieved. I really felt like he had flipped to head down, but getting this kind of reassurance was just wonderful.
So … this means … no c-section. At least not a planned one. Everything looks happy and healthy and perfect for a regular vaginal birth. And I’m so glad. Yay!
I will tell you that since hearing the news that he was footling breech, I did a bunch of reading online of different methods of turning the baby. However, with this kind of presentation, it was very unlikely this late in the pregnancy (at that point it was 36 weeks).
I’ll share a few of the things that we did that I think might have helped our little guy get into “launch position.” I read quite a bit on the website spinningbabies.com, but I’ll admit that it was kind of information overload for me. A resource that I actually found very helpful was this video.
I used a number of the positions that she recommended, along with just trying to focus constantly on allowing my hips and pelvis to open. Another thing we did that I think was helpful was we shone a flashlight at the very base of my stomach and Chad read to him. We have started doing this every night, with either me reading to him or Chad, with the flashlight at the base of my tummy, pretty much even with my hip bones. I can feel him moving towards the light and interacting with it, and I believe that earlier on in the week this helped him to want to be head down and to make the switch.
At the end of the day, I feel like we worked together, me, Chad, and baby, which is so cool. I can’t wait to meet him in person! My due date is back to being March 7^th, and I couldn’t be more excited.