stubbornly posterior baby

[TheSugarPlumFairy]

just wondered if anyone had any experience of this.

am 40w+1 with no sign of impending labour. Baby is as the thread title suggest, stubbornly posterior. right now she is sitting right on my tailbone and causing me no end of excruciating back pain.

I have been on my birth ball constantly, sitting forward, rocking my pelvis and all sorts of other exercises suggested by midwife to try to get her to turn so we can get this show on the road but with no luck.

Now as i understand it if things dont progress i will be offered an induction sometime in the next 12 days. If she hasnt shifted to AO then odds are that it will be unsuccessful and i will wind up with a forceps birth or having a CS.

I guess i am just feeling frustrated, impatient and cranky tonight and i wondered if it would be possible to just cut through the process and just ask for a c section at the earliest opportunity.

I don't have a burning desire to have a vaginal birth. It would be nice but no big drama for me if it didn't happen. All i really care about is the safe arrival of DD1 and ending this crippling back pain i am currently experiencing. Also if I am brutally honest i am also a little terrified of the concept of forceps so if it came to a choice i would prefer a CS to the use of forceps.

Am supposed to be seeing midwife on Wednesday and was thinking of raising it with her. would be interested to know others experience in this type of situation. Did they make you go through the whole induction thing or were you able to choose?

i am 35 weeks and baby has been moving between breach and diagnal (cant remember the medical term!) for the last 6 weeks, can feel baby tring to turn but have got a small bump and to honest dont think there is any room for the manoover any more! I have spoken to midwife and hospital and as far as i am aware you have the right to make the choice between c-section and delivery with forcepts...like you i would much prefer a section...i feel the intervention of forcepts and the other possible risks of breach delivery are not what i want to choose. You just have to speak your mind and make sure your heard!! good luck

both my babies were back to back

DS didn't turn but i delivered him naturally with gas and air

DD was back to back when i had my sweep - i went into labour 2 hours later and she turned (she came out with just 2 pushes)

babies can and do turn in labour - try a water birth to help you remain comfortable and able to move more easily

can you have a sweep or 2? I would certainly go for this option before an induction

Sorry this is a bit of a long post as baby position is my current obsession too!!!

My DS1 was back to back same as yours despite my doing endless bouncing on birthball etc throughout last trimester. He did eventually turn during the labour, but I have to be honest it was a long-drawn out and difficult labour ending in EMC. However I'm still glad I did the labouring bit rather than ELC, and not all back labours are like that - some seem to be pretty straightforward - see thread on MN some weeks ago.

This pgy I have been doing all the techniques on the spinning babies website obsessively since 28 weeks but to absolutely no effect (now nearly 37 weeks) so I empathise with your frustration. If you haven't already been to the spinning babies website (I bet you have though if you're up at 2am online!) you could check it out and see if there are any exercises you haven't come across yet. YOu never know

There is an interesting book that no one mentions called back labour no more by Janie Mccoy. Unfortunately it is expensive to get hold of as it's only available through amazon.com in the US. It's also written in a very annoying style. But the basic technique of the book is the abdominal lift which is also described (for free) on the Spinning babies site and elsewhere if you google it. Apparently this technique can be helpful in speeding up a back labour and taking away the back pain beforehand. I read somewhere however, to only do for a few seconds at a time as small possibility that you may be putting pressure on the cord when you lift.

If you do go into labour with baby still posterior, the things I wish people had told me beforehand about back labour are:
a) to do open knee chest position for 45 minutes(being on all fours apparently not enough)as this can turn baby early on.
b) that for some people (not all) the painful contractions can kick off really early on, say at 2cm dilation, and will not necessarily get any worse - so don't start thinking (as I did) how much worse is it going to get?! and panic - in fact, it will probably get no worse.
c) that you can get pain between contractions (bummer), but apparently the abdominal lift helps with this too. I've yet to try it.

hope you get some action soon!!

my second baby was op, stubbornly too, like yours, there was NO way he was moving.

i had a homebirth, 6 hours, no pain relief... all was fine.
Midwife did express some surprise when he came out face-up, she said she wasn't expecting it! lol

there is no reason at all why you would need induction, or why it would fail and lead to a c-section.

of course if you feel happier with a c-section then that's what you should do. I too would prefer c-section to a forceps delivery. But I don't think there is any real reason to believe you baby won't/can't be born in an op position

I was born face up, mum says that it hurt differently, but for her at least wasn't any worse than the next three. (didn't seem to put her off the idea at least!)

I think that in a lot of cases, just being afraid of what can go wrong can tense you up and make it worse, the more I read about other people's experiences, the more lucky I feel that when I've spoken to my mum about it, the overwhelming impression is that she felt like the worst thing about giving birth was how long she was forced to go without a cup of tea! The no-fuss, no-fear attitude is very comforting.

I was born face up, as was my DS. As was my oldest neice. My mother, sister and I all survived.

However, ds was induced a week before due date due to my having high blood pressure. At the urgent advice of the midwife, I had heavy duty pain relief (diamorphine). Mind you, this was just to cope with the induction - they didn't actually notice that he hadn't turned until they tried (and failed) to get a monitor onto his skull after he finally got moving!

I managed to give birth vaginally w. op baby. She is my first, so no experience of the differences etc