Optimal Foetal Positioning, another stick to beat us with?

[wahwah]

I have to confess that I guiltily ignored all the information about OFP with my first pregnancy and my son's presentation was fine. At the time I couldn't find any proper research to support the conclusions and decided that my need to collapse on the sofa was greater than supporting some crazy agenda.

So was I just very lucky? Is there a proper research basis for this? Or is it all an old (mid)wive's tales? Does anybody actually know?

there seems to be a lot more talk of OFP recently, which makes it feel like a beating stick (and excessive preoccupation) to me, too. Although luckily, all my babies lay LOA, anyway.

Personally, I think it's a silly thing to worry about, only reason to worry is if it's not head-down!!

it really isn't a silly thing to worry about. dd was head down but face presentationa dn back to back. she wasn't going to come out that way.

i think being aware of the importance of position is a good thing.

If you have ever had back to back labour you would know it is not a silly thing!!!

But is it worth the amount of stress that some people get into worrying about it? "Oh I must sleep on my left side every night", etc.? Especially in a 2nd or later pregnancy when babies often shift positions even during the last few minutes of an active labour?

Honestly, there is no easy way to give birth and it hurts an unbelievable amount almost no matter how the baby comes out.

I had a leaflet about it with my first and did all the things and my baby came out fine with no tears for me or nothing so I believe in it.

oh well jennylee it must be true then!

Mmm - in a way I guess it's not worth worrying about because I don't believe that you can do much about it anyway (like Pruners said it's anecdotal evidence and you can't do a study to prove it works)

I had a back-to-back labour with dd and was "saved" at the last minute (almost literally) when dd turned just before she was born. And I did no OFP stuff during labour at all - in fact I was flat on my back for about the last 5 hours.

This time round I don't want another one the same, obviously, but I'm not sure I want to put all my faith in OFP in case it doesn't work. I think like someone else said I don't want to feel like I've "failed" at it.

I'm not sure you can 'fail' at sitting on a ball though Doggie, if it doesn't work it doesn't work, it's not because you sat on it wrong! Plus doing it isn't really that much of a pain.

Does anyone know if you could substitute the ball with a hard-backed chair, like ones you get for the table? Is this OFP thing just because you are tilted backwards on the sofa?

i think that for some women, the shape that they are will dictate how baby lies.. this can possibly be excacerbated by sedentary lifestyle, unlike scheherezade and slouching etc...

you cannot do any harm by sitting on a different chair or a birth ball

it might work it might not

i had a persistent op baby, and she was born face to pubes. apart from a long and hard latent stage it was not so terrible

back to back presentation is not the end of the world, if you know baby is OP you can take steps to make labour more comfortable , biggest thing being not lying flat on your back !

Failed = you did everything "right" and then your baby is still back to back

And like SheherazadetheGoat's experience, you might then get people suggesting it's your own fault

It might sound defeatist, but I am getting a wee bit "que sera sera" in my attitude with this pg

I hear you lulumama

But I had an epidural and then had to have IV antibiotics (because waters broke early)

So I had to be flat on my back, & couldn't do anything about it

I did beat myself up about it at the time.

But I do agree that sitting on the ball can't do any harm, so why not I suppose

see, that is a shame, as you were forced into a position that was not good for labour ! you are 'allowed' to request to lie on your left side or have a mobile epi so that you are not forced to lie down flat. but if you don';t know that at the time or are advised by MWs, you don;t want to argue, whilst in labour, do you ?

Thanks for all the responses to my question. I sincerely did not want to dismiss people's feelings about the benefits of OFP, after all I believe that we should all do whatever makes sense to us. However, I was interested in empirical evidence as I feel that there's enough to worry about in pregnancy without introducing something anecdotal, untested and unproved as my midwives did to me (I don't want to be too critical though, these were the same women who were my rocks through a lengthy home birth!)

In relation to it being a 'stick', I think you've all answered my question. It really is...

really , you think that?
wow, i guess a lot of women would be glad to have MWs who pointed out and gave them info about things like OFP. as a lot of women have not heard of it...

as i said, it is a choice , you don;t have to take it on board at all.

diffrent strokes, and all that

Why see it as a beating stick? Why not see is as a harmless tool for taking your mind off things - at worst it might improve your posture habits.
I personally think aromatherapy is a load of tosh but would not be bothered (mildly amused perhaps) if a MW suggested it as pain relief for labour.

lol SheherazadetheGoat it is not that it must be true then, I was just saying it worked for me, I may have been the only person it worked for or maybe even without the ofp I might have had exactly the same birth, who knows , was just adding that I felt it worked for me. if thats okay.

Don't beat me with a stick or anything lol

I suppose I see it as a stick because the proponents of this practice suggest that if you do not follow this suggested behaviour, you are more likely to bring on yourself a difficult labour for being a lazy sloucher and not sitting straight like a good girl!

That doesn't sound too neutral to me and being a bit on the scientific side I want to see data before I get involved in anything which is harmless nonsense at best and at worst could be harmful? How do we know it's not harmful and more likely to cause complications, if it's not been tested?

i am not sure i understand how you think it is harmful? sitting in a certain way, or being on all fours is not harmful.. these sorts of things have been written about and suggested since the 60s AFAIK, in terms of promoting natural and active birth.

as with all these things, you can choose whether to do them or not

if a midwife suggests OFP or other things that are anecdotally known to promote a good foeatal postion, then you do not have to take her advice. but it will be given to HELP you. to try to get baby in a good position.

as i said, i think some women, myself included carry OP, becasue that is the way they are made. but an OP baby is not the end of the world.

i lay on my left side, and sat on a birth ball a lot etc but had a persistent OP baby.

never occurred to me to be angry at anyone about it for either encouraging OFP or not.

never occurred to me that any advice that had the potential to help a woman in labour would be deemed as a stick to beat you with !

if you feel that your MWs spoke to you in a nasty way and implied you were doing something wrong, then that is a whole different issue, and i have no qualms with someone complaining about being treated with lack of respect or being treated like a child when they are a grown woman

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agree pruners, i think that is what i was trying and failing to say !

Good grief, don't get me with the stick . I really am not suggesting that being on all fours will damage a baby, not were my midwives anything but kind to me. I support the idea of people having choices-I just want the choices that I make to be grounded in evidence and I hoped that given OFP is fairly mainstream in terms of its dissemination, there might be someone who had some idea if there was any. From the little I've seen, the idea of OFP is not borne out by anecdotal info from midwives in Saudi, so it doesn't seem to translate cross culturally, but then that's anecdotes on top of anecdotes!

If you're convinced by OFP, than that's just great, but I'm the kind of person who wants more than anecdotes as in my experience a lot of nonsense can get spread around unless people critically examine it. For the believers, there's a sense that it won't do any harm and could help, so why not try it? Of course once you couch it in those terms then it almost becomes daft or even unreasonable not to -and there's the stick-it's not a big scary one, but it's still a little stick!

lulu can I hijack for a minute please? are you saying that you think some women are physiologically more likely to have OP babies? I had a very difficult OP delivery (not helped by fact that no bugger KNEW he was OP until his head came out ) and would very much like to avoid another

I would definitely advise people to consider OFP - I tried many many different exercises and positions and managed to turn him from breech to OP - a great improvement in my book

Crikey. There are, I will be the first to admit, lots and lots of sticks (big and small) used against women in pregnancy and childbirth. I spend a fair amount of time on here arguing against them.

It never, ever occurred to me that a bit of 'try sitting on a birth ball and see if that helps' was one of them, though.

I do see your point to a degree, wahwah, re: empirical evidence. But, particularly where pregnancy and birth is concerned, there is always going to be LOADS of stuff that can never be 'proved', usually for ethical/logistical/sampling reasons. You can't do RCTs on pregnant women in a lot of situations. Having said that, I think there is a trial somewhere about women who were given OFP advice against those who weren't, so I'll try and find it for you Not everything can be tested under lab conditions but it doesn't necessarily make it invalid advice.

Fwiw, I am a big fan of Jean Sutton and am of the opinion that OFP makes a lot of sense from a physiological perspective (and a historical one too, although perhaps less strongly).

If you ignored the advice about OFP and your labour was fine then, great - you were obviously someone who didn't need the advice! But if I see someone in a/n clinic whose baby is lying OP, I'll give them OFP advice in the hope it might do the trick. It's not 'some crazy agenda' - it's just something that might work, or it might not.

This is reminding me a little of the 'swallowing prostglandins' thread, you know...