Doctors schedule a cesarean when a baby is lying sideways in the womb and the due date is less than a month away. This may be because it is rare to have the transverse lying baby move on their own to a head down position.
The transverse baby lies sideways across the top of the pelvis and can’t be born naturally.
Transverse lie is normal in early pregnancy until about 26 weeks or so. By 29-30 weeks we expect baby to be head down.
Common Strategies for a baby in the Transverse position after 30 weeks:
- Wait and see (less likely to help)
- Manual External Version (doctor manually turns baby)
- Cesarean (baby can’t be born naturally when lying sideways)
Spinning Babies offers an uncommon strategy:
Dr. Carol Phillips, DC and Gail Tully taken after one of Carol’s weekend workshops.
Dr. Carol Phillips, DC, friend and teacher of Gail Tully’s, developed the Forward-leaning Inversion after watching the sudden ease of a birth following a ride down three flights of stairs in a gurney to the ambulance. The mother had been pushing and not able to move the baby. Dr. Carol had done all the techniques she usually saw get good results. So the midwives decided to transfer from the home birth to the hospital and get the baby born there. They just didn’t want mom walking down three flights of stairs at ten cm just in case baby did come out on the stairs. So they called the ambulance crew in to help. They carried mom down on the stretcher head first -in case the baby came out on the stairs. When they put the mom into the ambulance, swoosh, out came baby crying and kicking.
What made that possible, Carol asked herself? The ride down the stairs head down! What anatomy did that effect?! The utero-sacro ligaments to the cervix!
Dr. Carol figured out a posture to replicate the ride this mama took. The Forward-leaning Inversion was born.
Now we find it the perfect solution to the transverse lie.
Read on the website about dangers and risks before you go upside down, please.
Here’s the amazing story which came in today. Lynn had emailed a couple times this pregnancy and she had the same issue with her first pregnancy and used Spinning Babies to help in that pregnancy as well. Let’s see what she says:
“Dear Gail,
I have fantastic news for you. So to update you in my last email I mentioned that I was 39 weeks pregnant and had a fall 10 days earlier due to which my baby changed from head down to transverse lie position. My gynac [she may mean Obstetrician-Gynecologist] had scheduled me for a c-sec at 39 weeks 6 days because the baby was too big and they didn’t think it was possible to change positions so late in the pregnancy. I consulted a second gynac who said the same thing. I had 3 days in hand to do your exercises and see if the baby’s head would turn down.
On 16-18th December, I did the forward-leaning inversion and pelvic tilt. On the 17th, I felt the kicks higher up but wasn’t sure where the head was. So to be sure we got admitted to the hospital at 1am so we could check the position of the baby before the scheduled csec at 8am. To our disbelief the head was down and not only that, the loop of nuchal cord around the neck was also gone.
My [OB GYN] was in utter disbelief that the baby had turned for the following reasons:
1- the baby was fairly large – 3.6kg
2- she manually tried to spin the baby and it didn’t move
3- I was 3 days away from being full term
My labour only lasted 45mins from start to finish and I would also owe this to you for your tips of opening up the pelvic area to make labour easier. I am truly grateful to you for all your guidance on your website. It not only worked to spin my first baby back in 2014 but worked this time too. Your tips and exercises on the website were instrumental in helping me otherwise I’m sure I would have had to get a csec which is something I didn’t want.
I didn’t end up purchasing the video but would like to donate to your organization. Please can you give me the details of how to go about it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am spreading the word to everyone I know and my gynac will also recommend your website to her patients.”
Learn how to do the Forward-Leaning Inversion properly in this video excerpt of the Spinning Babies Parent Class. Purchase the full class here.