The Day Nemo Flipped Into a Breech Position

With our firstborn, we had prenatal care from a local midwifery clinic and had a natural home-birth attended by wonderful midwives. Our son was born in our bed, and we were hoping to do the same for our second child. When we found out we were having twins, our plans had to change. In Canada, if you are pregnant with twins, you are automatically considered a high-risk pregnancy.

Twice the prenatal appointments

I was already with a midwife before we found out about the twins so I was able to stay under her care, but because midwives specialize in normal, low risk pregnancies, I also had to have an obstetrician that specialized in high-risk multiple births. Luckily we found one that was willing to work with us. This meant we had twice the prenatal appointments, but we had excellent care. We were able to go to the midwife for our monthly visits and then saw our obstetrician after every ultrasound, and there were a lot of ultrasounds.

Flipped into a feet first breech position

We knew I would have to give birth in the hospital, midwives are not able to attend home births for multiples or high risk pregnancies. We had also been advised that the majority of multiples (but not all) are born by c-section, but I was hoping for a vaginal birth and as close to possible, one without interventions. That all changed when we went for our 30 week scan and found out that Twin A (Nemo as named by his 4 year old brother) had flipped into a feet first breech position, and that Twin B’s (Saturn) head was tangled up in twin A’s feet. If we wanted a vaginal birth we had to try and turn one kid around fast.

Lighting a piece of incense on fire

Thus began weeks of lunges, headstands, stretches, yoga poses, acupuncture treatments and Moxibustion (which involves lighting a piece of incense on fire and holding the ember close to your pinky toe – not painful, but not the most fun thing to do). All designed to try and turn a breech baby. I tried anything that our doctor, midwife or random google search advised to turn that kid, and no luck. Nemo wasn’t going anywhere. At 37 weeks our ob advised us that it was time for the babies to come out. They were born by c-section, both healthy and both weighing exactly 5lbs, 9oz (2523 grams).