I was doing a bit of reading up about the back-to-back position yesterday evening. It seems there are two reasons why babies fall into this posterior position:
1. The type and shape of pelvis that you have may make it more comfortable for baby to settle in the back-to-back position as their head is resting in the widest part of the pelvis.
2. Doing lots of sitting/leaning back rather than being upright/leaning forward makes it more likely for baby to swing round and lay against your spine.
There’s not a lot that can be done about reason one (although I suspect this might be the reason for me given my mum’s similar problems), but reason two can be worked on. Even though I make a conscious effort to sleep on my side overnight, I am guilty of slouching back on our sofa during the day and in the evening. It’s the sort of sofa where your bum sinks down, causing your knees to go above the pelvis; something that it is advised to avoid.
So from now on I’m going to be much more aware of my posture and positioning. Some tips I picked up were: spend at least 10 minutes twice a day on all fours, sit on a hard chair the wrong way round so that your knees are below pelvis level and lean forward as much as possible. This is what’s known as optimal fetal positioning and helps encourage baby into an anterior position. Non of that sounds particularly comfortable, but it’s worth a try. The consensus from the web was that back-to-back labours are longer, more painful and more likely to result in an assisted birth, which is exactly my experience from last time. One which I definitely wish to avoid if at all possible.
Apparently about 1 in 10 women go into labour back-to-back, so it’s not uncommon at all, but I will do my best to try not to be part of that 10% this time around!
Life with Peachy & Polp 