Rotating a baby

The midwives tell us that Seamus is in a "right occiput" position, meaning that he needs to rotate a few degrees counter-clockwise if we want him to be in the optimal, "occiput anterior" position. And we do want him to be in that position, because labor is somewhat more difficult and protracted when babies are not thus oriented -- primarily because the tip of the baby's pointy little head is not helping to force the cervix open. And, probably not coincidentally, that's the position that best encourages head molding, the process which causes one's child to be born with a (temporarily) cone-shaped head -- a phenomenon which tends to alarm new fathers (e.g. James Herriot and Bryan Drysdale), but which makes delivery easier.

To move him to the "OA" position, there are a number of tricks that one can employ, most of which involve getting into positions that are a) reminiscent of Twister, b) provocative, and/or c) very difficult for a pregnant woman. Nevertheless, with the help of the website Spinning Babies and advice from our midwives, Greta is trying out some of these positions.

If he doesn't go OA on us within the next couple of weeks, we can try other things, such as chiropractors and massage therapists who specialize in helping to position babies.

We also learned that Seamus' head is not engaged in the pelvis yet, which means that his birth is likely still a few weeks away. This is good news to me, because I feel like the more time we have to prepare, the better -- but Greta groaned, "I don't know how I'm going to make it through another three or four weeks of this!"