What this blog means to me

Cup of coffee in hand I start the morning with excitement. I couldn't sleep last night. As only a writer, that has had their hands hoovering over the keyboard waiting for that first stoke to hit and having nothing to say, can understand what is like to get their muse back. I was awake until past 2 in the morning with ideas floating in my head and wanting to get up and write!

Birthing by the breech (the blog) means many things to me. Most of all it is about the life challenges that present themselves every day that shake your comfort zone. Creating this venue allows me to open up and take on those challenges so that I can achieve the goals I have set for myself and to find that inside myself to "get the job done".

My awareness of learning how to overcome personal challenges began when I first saw my daughter (my third child and the one pictured above) on an ultrasound at 20 weeks. I knew I had a challenge before me. Now, many a times I said to myself..."don't think it into being", but I could not get my head away from that little body hair pinned inside of me with her bum right where it stayed the whole pregnancy.

I was walking the right road. I hired my midwife and planned a home birth. Keeping it simple till it proved no longer simple was my thought. With great excitement I attended each midwife appointment. I loved the attention she gave me. Also at the time I was studying for my post diploma certificate in perinatal nursing, so it all meant a great deal to me both physically, emotionally and intellectually.

Then came 37 weeks and baby had not turned.

I stayed the course and did what needed to be done. But, regardless of how much chiropractic Webster's Technique, slant board inversion with cold peas and music I applied to myself and my belly, baby stayed breech. I consulted with my very pro-homebirth family doc to discuss my options about a potential breech birth and who would "attend me" when I went into labor. The visit went as well as it could. My amazing doc took almost 2 hours of her time with me and was not so gentle in her opinion of my situation. Not because she didn't believe I could push this baby out, but that I had come to her whining about "needing" something outside of myself to get the job done (at one point I was a called a homebirth primadonna spewing intellectual bullshit). I was shaken to the core by her words, but as the birth passed and I reflected on that conversation I realized she was right. I was going to the books to solve my answers, I was seeking outside information to support the "of course I can do this" attitude. What I was not doing was finding the way within myself to birth this baby in the best way I knew how.

When labor day came I felt like a rock star. I birthed her in hospital and then went home where my midwife fed me peanut butter sandwiches and a glass of milk while I lay in bed with my daughter at my breast.

Against all odds, I birthed her the year after the Hannah Breech Trial said all breech births should be a cesarean.

So what did I learn by birthing by the breech? I learned that you might think you have all the answers and know what your doing, but in the end you probably still have your head up your ass if you are depending on others solving your problems.