Just a quick note – we’re going in at 9am tomorrow for the ECV to see if this stubborn baby will turn or not. The doctor says it’s 50% effective – and we’ll know quickly. And, reassuringly, less than 1% of ECVs result in fetal distress, so Amy and I are both reassured. It’s a very slim chance baby Trotz will arrive tomorrow from complications. But if the ECV doesn’t ‘take,’ we’ll will likely schedule the Cesearean birth between March 21st and 31st. Mark your calendars!

So, we’re in week 37. Can you believe it? But baby Trotz has decided that nestling transversely across Amy’s pelvis is the place to be. We are heading into the doctor’s today to determine if a external cephalic version (ECV) is in order – that’s when the doc tells you to take a deep breath, and manually pushes the baby around in your womb to try to get them head first. In preparation for this, Amy has been lying more or less on her head (supposedly makes the baby move around to a more comfortable position). But any slight moves by the baby in the right direction seem to go away as soon as Amy starts playing her horn. Baby Trotz seems to want to turn their head right back to the bell! A budding musician, I guess. Did I mention that our house smells like an opium den now?

Last night Amy broke out a Chinese herbal ‘do it yourself’ solution. The heat from burning moxa sticks can also be used to stimulate the baby’s movements and encourage it to turn. There’s a great site which explains the procedure, and the basis for the process in Eastern medicine.

Traditional Chinese medicine uses moxibustion (burning herbs to stimulate acupuncture points) of acupoint BL 67 (Zhiyin, located beside the outer corner of the fifth toenail), to promote version of fetuses in breech presentation.

The process involves burning these sticks less than 1″ away from the little toes on either foot (see photo). I hope it works, cause they stink up the house something awful! Anyway, this treatment is succesful with approximately 70% of patients.

It’s just amazing. That’s all I can tell you. At this point, with 41 days to go, the baby’s head can be felt clearly, pushing against Amy’s belly on the upper right side. That puts the feet down near her bladder. And since the little one seems to like practicing soccer goals, Amy isn’t enjoying all that activity. The baby is also getting sound sensitive. When I make noises near Amy’s belly, the baby moves around. And when Amy was playing her horn yesterday, the baby actually settled down and stopped moving. I told Amy that either the little one is entranced by the music, or petrified by the blast of sound. You be the judge.

The last several weekends have been a blur of activity. Several hours of breastfeeding classes, followed by trips hither and yon to seemingly every baby store in the Greater Atlanta Metro area. There is just so much to buy in preparation for a baby, and the military-industrial complex (by that, I mean Babies-R-Us) makes you think you need to buy two of everything in their stores. But if Baby Trotz arrived tomorrow, we’d be just about ready – just need to buy the 600 diapers the books suggest we have on hand at the outset. I’m most excited about the gadgets (read the extended entry) and the print we selected for the nursery. We’re going with an Animal/Zoo theme, and this retro/mod print from Carousel Designs is cute without being annoying. What do you think?
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