Thoughts on ECV? (manual turning of breech baby)

boscobel · March 18, 2012

Tomorrow is the first day of my 38th week and baby boy is still transverse breech. He flips around a lot, but only from side to side, he's never been head down. I've tried various things, sitting in certain positions, yoga poses, etc, and he still isn't in position.

Tomorrow is my monthly ultrasound and if he is still breech, they want to schedule an ECV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_cephalic_version) for Wednesday. For some reason, the thought of this scares the shit out of me. It just seems unnatural and painful to me and I'm really unsure whether I want to try it or not.

I told my midwife of my concerns (unsuccessful, painful, and baby moves back) and she confirmed that these are all kind of true. She said that her experience is about 40% success rate, and it's more of a discomfort then pain, and that the baby only tends to move back if it's not a first born child.

My thoughts are that women have been giving birth to babies for millions of years and the baby knows what he's supposed to do. If he's not turning maybe there is a reason. Maybe he isn't meant to be birthed vaginally. Maybe he doesn't fit that way in my pelvis. Maybe, maybe, maybe, I know.

Probably my biggest fear is that he would turn and then we would go through an attempt at a vaginal birth only to have him NOT fit through my pelvic canal and end up having a c-section. I really don't want to double tax my body by going through basically both types of birth when my body was telling me all along that he wouldn't be birthed vaginally.

Then I think, do I sound like a crazy person? WTF am I supposed to do? I'm so confused! Thoughts?

-Kate- · March 18, 2012

I have no thoughts really, just one experience to share and let you think about:

When I was preggo with my first I had to go into the triage room for monitoring 2 days before I was induced for pre-eclampsia. There were 2 other pregnant women in there with me. One was having an ECV done. It did not sound pleasant. I don't know if this woman was a drama queen or had a low pain tolerance or what, but I have never heard someone making such awful sounds in my life. I swear of all the memories of child birth that have faded away, that sounds still sticks in my head. She was in some serious pain based on that sound.

As a side note, the other lady in the triage room happened to be in my birthing class. When we had our reunion after we all had our babies she and I talked about that other lady for like a half an hour and about how scary that was. So it wasn't just me thinking she sounded in agony.

boscobel · March 19, 2012

That's kind of how I envision it too. PAINFUL. Plus the pain that I'm already having near my belly button, makes me really not want to do this. But I watched some you tubes today and it didn't look so bad, in fact one that I watched the woman was smiling the whole time. I was doing some reading on forums too and some people said that they get an epidural before. That seems extreme to me though, like I don't want to do something that needs an epi!

boscobel · March 19, 2012

YAY! So baby boy is finally cooperating and is in position today, so no worries of an ECV for me for now. They did warn me that he can move back but for now, we're all set.

~Nicole~ · March 23, 2012

Oh wow, I didn't even know they still did that! I don't know anyone that's had it done thats for sure, but I'm glad its not a concern anymore! I can't believe you're already 38 weeks!