We try to imagine what she will be like. We did the same with Colette. I imagined some bald, rumpled, crying infant with skin too fragile to touch. Funny, because when she came, she was nothing like that. Nature is brilliant - because Colette was baby wholeness and ripeness and perfection.
I am a strange pregnant person. Perhaps I am simply unwilling to delve into my pregnancy feelings and let go of my discomfort to "feel" the baby, but honestly, I don't feel like I know this baby at all yet (it was the same with Colette). She is an ache, insomnia, insides thrashing. I know that when she is born that will all change and I will become unhinged and beside myself, swamped with protective force. Inside, she is embalmed in protection...
That was my thinking until I went to an appointment today and was told she is breech at 38 weeks. Only about 4% of babies are breech at term. Head up, bottom down. I was so mad walking out of that appointment. A breech baby in the health care system to which I have access means a cesarian section. There are things you can try, but at 38 weeks - it is pretty late in the game. A breech baby changes my thinking - my desire to know her inside my belly. Now her thrashing is meaningful - every movement since I received that news has become a fixation. Is she pivoting? At this point, the chances of her positioning herself head down are pretty low - there is just not room. Still, I will do everything I can to encourage her...handstands and somersaults in a swimming pool, chiropractor: Webster Technique, External Cephalic Version on Thursday (please say I don't go into labor before then!), music low in my belly - ice at the top, pinky toe massage, inversion poses (lots of down dog with Colette).
I'm trying to make peace with the real possibility of a cesarean since my midwives are not open to doing a vaginal breech birth. Either the baby flips or that is what will happen. The most daunting part of a cesarean is recovery - little Colette who still wants to be picked up and held all the time. "Hold you" in her words...
