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QUESTION:
My midwife said a lot of very painful unproductive labour and
C-sections are caused when a baby has a posterior presentation: ie.
when the baby faces the mother's stomach, rather than the mother's
back. She says this is called back labour as well and can cause
unbearable back pain in late pregnancy.
She says this is not an irreversible problem and can also be prevented.
I found the following summary of what you can do, for those interested:
How to Prevent a Posterior Labor
Here are some ways to prevent a posterior labor...these exercises
should encourage baby to rotate to anterior. They should be started at
least 6 weeks before the due date for a first pregnancy and 3-4 weeks
before the due date for second and subsequent pregnancies. Although
don't get discouraged if you are really close to your due date,
it's really never too late to start! Some babies turn right away with
this amount of encouragement. It should be noted these exercises
won't turn an anterior baby posterior, so if you are not sure of
position, do these anyway, since they can't hurt!
- Avoid all reclining positions. If you have a soft reclining seat or
couch, best to put a pillow under your bum and tilt your pelvis
forward.
- Keep knees below your pelvis at all times, back straight. A large
birth ball is the perfect 'chair' for this position. Those nifty
office chairs with knee rests are also great. The goal is to keep the
pelvis tilted forward at all times.
ANSWER:
just to confuse matters I had back pain late in pregnancy with one baby I
also had a posterior baby, but they were different pregnancies! Also
contractions felt exactly the same and despite very poor application of the
head to the cervix I still dilated very fast, I managed the feat of 2nd
stage being longer than 1st stage!
#1 was posterior and I had him vaginally and the whole back labour business
bloody well hurt! No break in the pain between contractions at all!
I talked to #2 and sent him visualisations and talked to him the whole time
about coming out the *right* way 'round. Then doubled my efforts when he
was sideways!!!
Nuts or not, #2 came out facing down like a nice baby. Hey, he may well have
been headed that way anyway, but I wasn't taking *any* chances!
do I remember that well. Both my babies were posterior babies
with no pain meds and flat on my back. The delivery doctors could never
understand why I never quit screaming even when a contraction wasn't
happening, it was cause it hurt every dam second :)
It sounds nuts perhaps but it isn't. I advise communcating with the unborn
child for overdue labor, prolonged labr, and posterior presentaion to name
just three times when this technique is invaluable.
and it works remarkably well. IF you don't like the idea of talking with
your baby,
you can always think of the baby as metaphor for our inner self and taking
to the baby is just an incredibly effective way to tap your inner resources.
I have seen it work seeming miracles in prolonged labor and failure to
progress
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