One Mother’s Story:

While I've never been induced, I did have back labor with my 2 previous pregnancies. When I got pregnant with my 3rd, I knew I had back problems - specifically with my sacro-illiac joint, between pregnancies I had been to a chiropractor and had x-rays taken that clearly showed the source of the problem - so I started going to get adjustments on a regular basis. I had my UC baby on Oct. 1st and the chiropractic visits paid off! Labor was managable and I didn't feel "out of it" like I had with my previous 2 labors (which were unmedicated BTW). I felt in control - empowered if you will - that I was able to labor and birth lucidly and be able to feel all the different sensations my body was giving me. FWIW, I have heard that induced labors are worse because they stimulate artificially hard and long contractions, making it harder to cope without medication. With my 2nd birth, I had my attendants applying counter pressure on my back as hard as they could - sometimes applying heat too. This time that was not needed.

Around this time, I received my copy of Jean Sutton's book Optimal Foetal Positioning. The morning I read it, I cannot describe the fear and panic it instilled in me. Far from my home birth, it raised a likely spectre of a managed labour, even a caesarean. It frightened me sufficiently to change midwives: it was clear to me that I needed to have my baby's position properly diagnosed and have some help if possible in trying to change it; and so I eventually changed my booking to independent midwives.

Following their first visit, my suspicions were confirmed that my baby was in fact posterior, and I was very relieved to get a proper diagnosis. My midwives were very understanding of my fears, but managed to convey a calm and confident attitude that it was perfectly possible for posterior babies to change. They gave me exercises to do, and I wrote out a list that I left in each room of the house of postures to aim for and avoid.

Three times a day, I would spend 20-30 minutes per day on hands and knees, or lying on my front. In the mornings this tended to be reading on my front propped up by cushions in bed, and at night on hands and knees in a warm bath. I did a lot of house painting on my hands and knees. This was, admittedly, difficult to maintain as it made my heartburn very much worse, and I would sometimes feel quite sick afterwards.

I was very strict about never using backwards leaning postures, always sleeping on my side, never sitting back on the sofa (the hardest!), only sitting on a special back chair that allows you to lean forward with your knees lower than your hips, or sitting forward leaning on a bean bag. I also had a large 'birth ball' (available through the Active Birth Centre catalogue), which I would sit forward and rock my pelvis on. I am convinced that it is the birth ball that made the real difference for me: after 5 or 10 minutes of rocking on this, I would feel the baby start churning movements, and if I then went into the kneeling forward positions I could almost feel her fall forwards.

The feeling of agitation that had previously been my instinct that something was wrong now became more definite: the baby was trying to move and I could help her to do so. It is worth making central to our understanding that babies themselves seem to want to move into the right position. Research has begun to recognise that it is babies who instigate the birth process2, and it therefore seems highly likely that they are active in trying to find the right position in which to do so.

I was still occasionally woken up at night feeling uncomfortable; now I went and rocked on my birth ball, and did the exercise my midwife gave me of walking up the stairs sideways, two at a time. I had a difficult weekend of pre-labour pains when the agitation peaked, and I awoke constantly with a feeling of bones grinding in my pelvis. It was at this point, discouraged and worn out by pain, that I eventually resolved to really work at it, thinking clearly that my baby had to turn at some point: it would be much less painful to do this before labour than during, possibly with the help of forceps or venthouse. This was a passage through which I had no choice, so weary as I was, I might as well get on with it.

In the last weeks of my pregnancy, my midwife suggested that I go to the swimming pool every day, floating forwards in the water for 20 minutes or so. I'm sure the local swimmers thought I was mad; but the combination of relaxed muscle tone caused by being in a warm pool and the forward leaning posture seemed to do the trick as, at my last antenatal visit, direct anterior was diagnosed and I went into labour shortly afterwards.

The main reason I think the exercises worked on the second attempt is that skilled support enabled me to 'walk into' the discomfort (which I had anyway been experiencing but which the exercises made worse) and go beyond it. It became clear to me that this agitation was in fact the experience of the baby trying to move; fairly painful in itself, and therefore more painful as it is successful. On my second attempt at trying to turn her, my baby's head had already begun to engage.

We were successful as a family at birthing our posterior presenting babies! I can say they have a distinctly upward outlook in life, just as they were born!