Today we had another doctor’s appointment. When we arrived, the doctor was doing a C-section so we had to wait for a little while. The nurse asked us if we wanted to wait or just have her measure the belly and baby’s heart rate. We opted to wait because I wanted to be “checked” to see if I had made any progress towards birth.
About fifteen minutes later, Dr. Hodges arrived and asked us how our Easter was, etc. Next he confirmed that I wanted to be checked even though it was obvious since I was sitting there with my pants off covered with a sheet. As he was checking, I made a mental note that it seemed like he was doing a little bit more checking than last week but dismissed it as my full bladder making it seem slightly more dramatic. After he was finished, he quickly proclaimed in an almost surprised manner, “she is breech.” What he at first thought was a head was, in fact, the two cheeks of her buttocks.
He immediately started telling us about a procedure to turn the baby that he performs with his wife who is also an OB-GYN that he claims they are successful with over 70% of the time. I found the following information from babycenter.com:
Babies who are still breech near term are unlikely to turn on their own. So if your baby is still bottom down at 37 weeks, your caregiver should offer to try to turn your baby to the more favorable head-down position, assuming you’re an appropriate candidate.
This procedure is known as an external cephalic version (ECV). It’s done by applying pressure to your abdomen and manually manipulating the baby into a head-down position. (If your caregiver is not experienced in this procedure, she may refer you to someone who is.)
ECV has about a 58 percent success rate in turning breech babies (and a 90 percent success rate if the baby is in a transverse lie.) But sometimes a baby refuses to budge or rotates back into a breech position after a successful version. ECV is more likely to work if this isn’t your first baby.
Apparently Team Hodges has a much better success rate than the normal doctor. Our doctor is not one to boast, but he does say that he is quite successful turning babies, implying more so than others. He is also known for being a very good surgeon, which we thought was not going to benefit us, but with this new information, is much more possible it will. If they are not able to turn the baby, we will have a scheduled C-section most likely during our 39th week (last week in April.)
Tomorrow morning at 7am, we go into St. Lukes Labor and Delivery for a ECV procedure. They did an ultrasound this morning after the breech news and verified that I am a good candidate for the procedure (have enough amniotic fluid). The risks of the procedure is that it could cause me to go into labor and they have to do a C-section right then and there. It could also put the baby into distress and result in a C-section. These were definitely not the birth scenarios we were hoping for, but at this point, we will go with it and see what happens. Wish us luck. Hopefully Belén is in a cooperative mood tomorrow.
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