Doing Somersaults

After my last visit with Dr. Cunningham I started doing my reading on breech delivery. I did my reseach and decided that I still plan on delivering him vaginally even if he stays breech....but I would prefer for him to turn in to the correct position. I began to stress about the possible complications of a breech delivery. I shared some of my worries with Josh, who was very encouraging. He explained to me that God loves me, him, and most of all, Tres. And God is not going to allow his birth to be a bad experience for us. I just need to trust the Lord and have faith that he has the best interest of all of us in mind. Breech or not breech, Tres' birth is going to be a beautiful experience.

I am very blessed to have a husband that has the gift of encouragement. He gets this gift from the Lord, but it has been amplified by the example of his mother, who is also an extremely encouraging person. Having both of these people in my life, especially during this season I am walking through, has been a treasure beyond words. God is constantly using one of them or the other to uplift me and remind me of God's promises. I am relieved that both of them rely so heavily on the Lord because I do not have the gift of encouragement at all, therefore the encouragment usually goes unreturned. I soak it up like a sponge, but never seem to expell any back to either of them. It is difficult to me to try to encourage others in grim situations. Even if I feel the need or want to encourage them on the inside, I am usually unable to find any words that I feel would be able to help the situation.

Inspired by Josh's pep talk I decided that I was going to do what I could do to get Tres to turn. This consisted of some exercises that I found online during my research, praying, and enlisting others to pray.

As I started my exercises they proved to be amusing. This was partly because several of the exercises consisted of propping myself somewhat upside down. Even if you have never seen a woman that is seven months pregnant hanging upside down you can probably still imagine the amusement that this would provide. The other aspect of the entertainment came from Tres' newfound experience with a different perception of reality. I am fully convinced that he loved it, because in those times where my hips were higher than my head is the most active he has been.

Shortly after starting my exercises I am convinced that he flipped from head up to head down. If felt like he flipped. So I checked with my fetal heart rate monitor, and sure enough instead of finding his heartbeat a couple of inches of the right of my belly button(as it had been for weeks), I found it down low and to the left. I was excited! The exercises had worked and it had only been a day and a half since I started them!

I was a bit discouraged when the following morning his heartrate had migrated its way back up to its previous position. Back to the exercises. After several days of doing the exercises and there not being any change, I realized that my strongest tool is not going to be the exercises, but prayer. Technically Tres doesn't have any room to flip, no matter how much inverted comical hanging upside down I attempt to do. Even though his size is probably somewhere around a pound and a half and 13 inches long or so, a womb with no amniotic fluid is more like a cocoon than a bubble. Normally a baby that is breech at 26 weeks would not be a concern because the baby is still small enough to flip fairly freely. But space, not size, is the issue here.

I started doing less laying on the slant board, and more praying. I prayed that God would give Tres room. I prayed that even thought he looks crowded on the ultrasounds and there is no amniotic fluid, that God would place his hand on this child and put him in His own special bubble. I asked the Lord to give him room to move a grow, despite what appears to be reality.

This Saturday evening I got in the bath tub and I felt Tres flip again. As soon as I got out I checked his heartrate and, just as suspected, his heartbeat had moved from high right to low left! Victory! Monday morning when he was still head down I called the doctor and asked if they could do a quick ultrasound and check his position. On the way to my appointment I asked Tres if he would please be head down and not make a fool out of Mommy. He cooperated. His little head was down, just as I had thought.

Once again, last night when I checked his heartrate(this is part of my nightly routine), his head wasn't down anymore. I never felt him somersault back up, so I am assuming that he did it during the night. When I realized that he was breech again I started to be disappointed. Then I remembered that this was an exact answer to prayer. I had been praying that God would give Tres room to move, and apparently he did! I considered his movement to be an answer to pray. Especially in light of the fact that before the somersaulting began he had been in the same basic position for over 6 weeks.

As I have said before and will continue to say, God is good. His mercys endure. He is watches over all he has created. He even provides room for his smallest of children to do gymnastics in the womb.