With your baby and body nearly ready for birth, baby is likely head-down. If your baby is breech, the doctor or midwife may have already tried to turn baby manually to a head-down position and may offer to do so again this week. Keep doing our breech balancing techniques or following our 6-day program for Helping a Breech Baby Turn. Even if the baby is already head-down, comfort in pregnancy is a worthy outcome of self-care with the Fantastic Four fascial release techniques.
If this is your first baby and they are head-down, they may start to engage or “drop” into the pelvis in the coming weeks — one step closer to meeting you! What helps babies engage? Walking. Balance in the body helps, too, as does keeping the pelvic brim open by resting in smart maternal positions that use gravity. If this isn’t your first child, they will likely wait for labor to engage.
If you know your baby is head down but posterior (facing your front), we hope that baby’s chin will be tucked and that baby will rotate before engagement. This is most important if your baby is still high after 38 weeks and is your first child, or if you are hoping for a vaginal birth after a previous cesarean (VBAC). Labor contractions will help the baby’s position when accompanied by an Abdominal Lift.
Avoid spending much time now in a squat, child’s pose, or knee-chest (see why this is not Open-knee Chest).
If self-care doesn’t help your baby drop this week, seek the help of a bodywork professional who sees a lot of pregnant people. Otherwise, keep balancing and rely on the uterine contractions of actual labor to help rotate and engage baby. The more you do to prepare (without doing too much) the easier this will be in labor.
