bladder biter

Ok everyone, we are going to play a roll-playing game! This requires the participation of both the husband and the wife so if you don't have one of those, go get someone to play along. The wife is going to lay on the bed and be the pregnant lady with the breech baby. The husband will be the doctor doing an external version. If you like, you can prop up a stuffed animal at the bedside to be the pregnant lady's speechless, horrified husband. Now the one playing doctor is going to place one hand on either side of the patient's tummy. Ready? Now push your hands together squeezing just as much of the tummy just as hard as you can. Are you pushing! Hard?! Com'on, I don't hear any groaning--PUSH!! You may need to work out a bit if you don't think that you are really putting vice-like pressure on that tummy. Wasn't that fun? That is what we call an External Version!

Fortunately, I think it was worse for the horrified, stuffed animal husband than for the pregnant lady. It went exceptionally well. This procedure can take ten to twenty-five minutes. Our baby flipped in about 90 seconds--a record for our doctor. Jaime felt discomfort and is a bit bruised. She is having pains in her back that seem to be showing up in the monitor as contractions--but not real ones. She describes the change as feeling distinctly different and very weird. Now the baby's head is on her bladder. At one point her bladder was full and the head was on it and the discomfort was acute. Jaime described it as feeling like he was biting her bladder.

The whole thing was monitored with a sonogram with which we were able to see the baby again. Good strong heartbeat, lots of activity, definitely a boy.

One of the nicest things about this was the enormous amount of prayer and encouragement we got from everyone. We were inundated with emails and phone calls expressing love and support. It felt great. Thank you to everyone.