Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Update

I must begin with an open letter.

Dear whiny pregnant ladies on YouTube,
This morning I pinched my finger in the hair gel lid, and THAT was more painful than ECV. If you thought you were going to die to death when your doctor tried to turn your baby around, I wonder how you survived childbirth.
Seriously,
Barb

If you've been wondering how things went yesterday, well, no dice. This baby is wedged. But I'll get to that in a minute. We went to the radiology department at the hospital where I was liberally doused with sonogram gel. Probably half a tube. Our doctor was finishing up a morning surgery, so the sonogram tech got started taking measurements and readings and figuring out the baby's position. What I thought was baby's head is baby's head. But what I thought was baby's rump, is baby's shoulder. Thus endeth my fantasy of delivering a 6 pound baby. The little one is not transverse as we suspected--the baby is oblique breech (that means slanted or diagonal), which looks like this:








Baby's head is in the right side of my ribcage, while baby's butt is parked in my pelvis, legs crossed like Buddha, rear aimed at my left hip. When our doctor arrived, she squeezed out the other half a tube of sonogram gel on me and went to work. There was no local anesthesia or injections to relax the uterus. Just my doctor manually encouraging our baby to do a somersault. The procedure looks like kneading bread dough. Yes, a day at the beach would have been more fun. And I was glad that I didn't stop at Denny's for the Grand Slam Breakfast on the way to the hospital, but overall the procedure wasn't a big deal. I would 100% recommend trying external version to any woman carrying a breech baby. Oh, and buy stock in sonogram gel.

And yesterday was more definitive than any paternity test in proving that Robb is the baby's father because the stubborn little rascal refused to budge, just ducked its furry head further under my ribs to evade capture. The baby's butt wouldn't move at all. Our doctor checked the sonogram imaging out again to see if there had been progress, and this is what she saw.

Tomorrow at our weekly appointment we will schedule a planned c-section. As our doctor said, it is easier to reserve a spot in the surgery suite early and cancel later if we don't need it than it is to schedule something at the last minute. If baby turns on his/her own, great; but if not, we'll be prepared.

6 comments:

old dog said...

Baby Mowery must have enjoyed the massage! Also sounds like you got a big baby in the cooker. Glad it went well and it sounds like a good plan.

Tmomma said...

I love your humor! On a more serious note, has anyone walked you through each and every step of what happens when they do the c-section...knowing all the little details made it a ton easier and I knew what to expect. I hope little stubborn turns but I'll call and talk with you if you want anyway. Can't wait to meet little Mowery!

Barb Mowery said...

Theresa - "Massage" is a good word for it...if you've ever had one of those really forceful, more painful than relaxing kinds of massage from an NFL linebacker. Know what I mean? Baby M is about average size. The sonogram tech estimated 7 lbs 4 ounces (with a 14 ounce margin of error either way) at the beginning of week 37. So if we go the full 40 weeks, he/she will be around 8 pounds.

Tmomma - I need to give you a call to talk turkey!

Mo said...

I love how this man-handling actually is classified as a medical proceedure. Done by professional medical people. With degrees.

Sounds like you might have to talk turkey. Like, a turkey baby. Yikes.

Anonymous said...

You are hysterical. The pic of the baby giving the finger. lmbo. Baby M seems like a typical first baby to me... stubborn! I had like 8 sonograms with AJ because every time he would make impossible for them to get good shots of whatever they were looking for... his brain, his heart, etc. He was head down though but that didn't mean he wanted out. He was a very long and hard delivery. 2+ hrs of hard pushing. So if your baby is already exhibiting signs of unwillingness to vacate, a scheduled c-section sounds like a winner of idea! Hang in there! The end feels like the LONGEST!

Robin said...

Hey prego massage is a good thing as long as you don't massage between thumb & forfinger which relaxes the U. Very exciting, your almost there! Sorry about the pending c-section. Stubborn baby!