The baby can be breech or head down throughout the pregnancy and it’s of no real concern until 34 weeks gestation. At that point, the baby’s head is big enough and firm enough that it can be palpated and a reasonably good assessment can be made by a clinician. This is also the point in the pregnancy where it makes sense to take steps to encourage the breech baby (3% of all pregnancies) to turn to head down through Webster technique (chiropractic), knee/chest position, or external cephalic version by an obstetrician.

For birth workers, these are some of the things I’ve observed about pregnant women carrying the baby in a breech position. They are not 100% diagnostic but can alert you to look closer for breech position. If the only thing that is concerning in the final weeks of pregnancy is “What position is this baby in?”, it’s possible to have a “one swipe” ultrasound. An ultrasound technician can do a very brief scan and see where the baby’s spine, head and bum are. There’s no need to do a time consuming (prolonged ultrasound exposure) scan just for position. If the baby is breech, you’ll want to know where the placenta is located as well. If the baby is head down, the scan can stop and the parents can go celebrate.

These are some signs that the baby could be breech at 34 weeks and beyond:

1 heart tones heard with fetoscope (not doppler) in upper segment (belly button level or higher).
2. Woman has feeling of a hard ball in her ribcage. Woman tends to squirm and press down on the top of her uterus when sitting.
3 head is slightly firmer than the bum on palpation after 35 weeks gestation age.
4. Abdomen has a more tight/taut sausage shape/quality than the usual round/squishy orange shape/quality.
5. Where are the baby hiccups felt? If high (woman’s belly button region), breech is suspected.
6. If the woman has had a previous breech birth, check carefully because a fibroid or a bicornate uterus (or other unusual anatomy) may predispose to carrying all her babies breech. (One woman I have worked with had 7 breech births. She had 2 uterii.)

I must admit that the best breech births that I have attended are the ones that were NOT diagnosed in advance. Women who have a surprise breech are spared all the worry, over-testing, over-lecturing and general misery that diagnosis of breech can bring.

Please let me know in the comments if you have any other tips or techniques for spotting those little beings who want to back into life. Thanks Gloria