Unborn babies toss and turn and hold many different positions within the womb during the gestation period; pregnant women everywhere will attest to the fact that their children always start up the gymnastics at bedtime. When the due date nears, the importance of the baby’s position becomes less of a joke and a serious point of discussion. The different positions that your baby may take in the womb will play a role in how he is born.

 

Head-Down 

Most babies flip and turn with great frequency throughout pregnancy but generally end up in the “head-down” position around the 33 to 36-week range, according to the American Pregnancy Association. Head-down literally means that the baby’s head is pointing toward the birth canal, and his feet, when his legs are fully extended, are in the vicinity of his mother’s ribs. Babies at this advanced gestational age most commonly stay in the head-down position for the remainder of the pregnancy and may not move as much as in the earlier months, mainly due to space constraints.

Breech 

Breech is the position in which the baby’s buttocks or feet are nearest to the birth canal. A breech baby’s head is close to her mother’s ribs. This position is less desirable than the head-down position for birth, and breech babies have an increased risk of birth defects or trauma during the birth. Your doctor may try to turn the baby around in a procedure called a version, deliver the baby in a breech position or perform a cesarean section. Abnormalities in the baby’s anatomy or the shape of your uterus may prevent the baby from turning around.

There are three variations of a breech presentation:

• Complete breech: When the buttocks are pointing toward the birth canal (downward), with the legs folded at the knees. The feet are near the buttocks.
• Frank breech: The buttocks are toward the birth canal, but the baby’s legs are straight up in front of their body and the feet are near the head.
• Footling breech: One or both of the baby’s feet are pointing downward toward the birth canal.

Transverse 

A baby that lies sideways in his mother’s womb is in a horizontal position. The baby’s head may point to the left side of your body and the feet to the right, or vice versa. Transverse positioning at the time of birth is extremely rare; only one out of 2,000 babies takes a transverse position. Like breech presentation, a baby who lies sideways may not be able to turn around due to structural abnormalities in the uterus. Pregnancy Today explains that babies who are transverse are delivered by cesarean section to ensure a safer delivery.

Risk Factors for Transverse Lie

Women with the following conditions are at a high risk for transverse presentation:

• A high ratio of amniotic fluid to a fetus
• Uterine abnormality
• Placenta previa
• Fibroids in the uterus
• Factors preventing fetal head engagement in the mother’s pelvis
• Narrow or contracted pelvis
• More than 2 babies in the womb

Diagnosis of Transverse Presentation

Abdominal examination— In transverse position, the presenting part of the fetus is typically the shoulder. During an abdominal examination, the head or the buttocks cannot be felt at the bottom of the uterus and the head is usually felt on the side.

Vaginal examination— A shoulder may be felt during a vaginal examination. An arm of the fetus may even slip forward and the hand or elbow may be felt during the pelvic examination.

Confirmation – An ultrasound scan of the uterus confirms the transverse lie position.

 Complications of Transverse Lie

A transverse presentation can cause serious complications during delivery. Some of the consequences are listed below:

• Obstructed labor
• Umbilical cord or hand prolapse
• Postpartum hemorrhage
• Birth trauma
• Rupture of the uterus

Posterior

Babies in the head-down position most often enter the world with their faces facing their mothers’ backs. Posterior is the term used to describe a baby in the head-down position with her face facing the mother’s stomach, in other words with her face turned up. The altered positioning of the baby’s body may lead to back labor in the mother, rather than cramping in the abdomen.

Can I turn my baby? 

Occasionally, a baby may not end up in the correct position for delivery. It’s important to know if your baby isn’t in the occipito-anterior position right before birth. Depending on the exact position, it could lead to complications during delivery. There are some methods you can use to coax your baby into the right position.

You can try the following ideas:

1. When you sit down, tilt your pelvis forward instead of backward.
2. Spend time sitting on a birth ball/exercise ball.
3. Make sure your hips are always higher than your knees when you sit.
4. If your job requires lots of sitting, take regular breaks to move around.
5. In your car, sit on a cushion in order to lift up and tilt your bottom forward.
6. Get on your hands and knees (like you are scrubbing the floor) for a few minutes at a time. Try this a few times a day to help move your baby into the anterior position.

 

Unfortunately, these tips don’t always work. If your baby stays in a posterior position when labor starts, it may be because of the shape of your pelvis rather than your posture. In some cases, a cesarean delivery will be necessary.

 

Resources:

https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/baby-positions-in-womb#turning-baby

https://www.livestrong.com/article/204490-different-positions-of-a-baby-in-the-womb/

When you think about it, pregnancy is an amazing thing. You are growing a life, a child inside your body. It’s incredible. However, there is also some kind of strange things about pregnancy, some of which are kind of gross and others that are just a bit unusual.

 

12 Amazing Pregnancy Facts

1. Unborn babies can feel, see, and hear

When people bump into you, can your baby feel the knocks inside your womb? Babies have a sense of touch and respond to being stimulated within the uterus from about 17 weeks, but your body is clever and protects your baby from bumps.

2. Second trimester onwards, babies pee in the uterus. Then they drink it.

By about 12 weeks, your baby is producing urine. It can be seen swallowing amniotic fluid, which is digested and filtered by the kidneys and urinated back into the uterus.A fully formed baby in the womb is known as a fetus. Between fourteen and fifteen weeks of pregnancy, the external genitalia of the baby is more developed, and on the scan, they can be seen to suck their thumbs. As the uterus grows it presses on the bladder and mums find they need to pee more often.

    3.  Your baby is growing more bones than you

By the time your baby is born, it will have 300 bones in that tiny body – but adults only have 206! The bones in your baby’s body will fuse together to create the adult number. This is because babies have more cartilage than bone. A baby’s skeleton is mostly made up of cartilage. As a person grows up, most of this cartilage turns into bone in a process called ossification.

4. Babies cry in the womb

A baby’s first cry may happen in the womb long before its arrival in the delivery room. New research shows that fetuses may learn to express their displeasure by crying silently while still in the womb as early as in the 28th week of pregnancy.

5. Babies can taste what the mother is eating

Very early. Research shows that what a woman eats during pregnancy not only nourishes her baby in the womb but may shape food preferences later in life. At 21 weeks after conception, a developing baby weighs about as much as a can of Coke — and he or she can taste it, too.

6. A woman’s uterus expands to more than 500 times its normal size

Think of your uterus as a stretchy rubber balloon that expands on an as-needed basis. This muscular organ is located above the bladder and in front of the rectum. It is held in place by strong ligaments, and it is remarkably elastic, stretching to about 500 times its prepregnancy size. It grows in weight too, from a couple of ounces to more than 2 pounds. When your pregnancy is over, the uterus returns to its original size.

7. A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months

A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months. When only a small fraction of the way through its development, a fetus will have already developed one of the uniquely human traits: fingerprints.By the time a fetus is six months old and approximately 12 inches in size, his fingerprints and footprints are fully developed. The ridges on a fetus’s fingertips have formed three main patterns by this time, categorized as arches, loops, and whorls, with numerous patterns in between. These patterns are found on the fingertips, palms, and soles and are used to grasp things.

    8. Your baby is learning a language

Sensory and brain mechanisms for hearing are developed at 30 weeks of gestational age. A new study shows that unborn babies are listening to their mothers’ talk during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy and at birth can demonstrate what they’ve heard. Babies only hours old are able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language, scientists have discovered. The study indicates that babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought.

9. Your baby’s heart is incredible

That precious heart takes hold and changes the world. From the development in the womb to the times when something can go wrong, baby’s heart is an amazing muscle that means more than many can even imagine. It controls the blood flow, and might even give a clue to the baby’s gender.

10. The lungs are the last organs to develop in the baby

The lungs are some of the last organs to develop in your baby’s body during the prenatal stage. Some important parts of their lungs don’t develop until the end of pregnancy.If your baby is born prematurely, their lungs may not have time to develop fully. This can lead to a variety of breathing disorders.

11. Contractions don’t stop after birth. The muscle cramps are the body’s way of stopping excess blood loss.

After the delivery of the baby, the muscles of the uterus normally tighten, or contract, to deliver the placenta. The contractions also help compress the blood vessels that were attached to the placenta. The compression helps prevent bleeding. If the muscles of the uterus don’t contract strongly enough, the blood vessels can bleed freely. This leads to excessive bleeding or hemorrhage.

12. He might be a dreamer

Babies start to sleep for 4 weeks after conception. But what’s more, the REM sleep waves associated with the eye movements of dreams have been identified by 30 weeks after conception. So your little one might even be having a dream or two.

 

“A baby fills a place in your heart that you never knew was empty”

 

 

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Resources:
https://www.netmums.com/pregnancy/12-amazing-facts-about-your-unborn-baby