Hello, my name is Dr. Alex Coleman. I'm the owner of Maximized Chiropractic here in Bismarck, North Dakota, and today I wanted to talk to you about a topic that we deal with every single day, which is breech babies. There's a lot of misconceptions about what chiropractors are doing and a lot of unknowns, so today I'm going to talk to you about what chiropractic is and what it does and how it helps with you getting your baby to be in the right position.

So first, let's talk about what a breech baby is. There are many different positions that a baby can be in that aren't ideal. Breech is just one of them. This picture here, you can see a few different options of what a baby can look like when they're in the womb. We have footling breech, complete breech, frank breech… those names don't really matter, just different shapes of how the baby is tucked inside of there. We also have this one here; this is called transverse. Transverse holds its own set of problems, and we have the same outcome as breech. Transverse is going to be kind of lumped into the same boat here. Here's a bunch of other pictures of babies that are in some okay positions and some in not-okay positions. I want you to take special note of some of these that are head down, like this one that you can see how that's not ideal for a baby. This is a different version of the same one, same as this one. Their head and neck are extended so far back. If we were like that for a few minutes, we would be miserable. Now imagine being a baby who is growing and developing when they're tucked and extended that far back. We also have different positions that aren't ideal, where the head is sideways, either direction. So, going back to transverse, this baby doesn't look like their head is cranked too far, but a lot of transverse babies, their heads are like this and they're cranked to the side really far because they just don't have enough room.

A few of these are okay, so you can see how these ones are actually pretty good. This is kind of what we're looking for right here. When we talk about a baby being in the right position, this is kind of ideal, with their head down, their back kind of towards the left side of the mother. This helps a baby corkscrew and spiral out the way that they're supposed to. This is where a vaginal delivery is going to be the easiest, compared to the other positions.

So why does this matter? Why does a baby being in not the ideal spot matter? Breech specifically, or transverse… If a baby's head isn't down, in our state, I've never heard of or seen an OB that is willing to deliver them vaginally. So, in Bismarck, North Dakota at least, a C-section is essentially required to minimize any risk from having a breech delivery. Babies who are stuck breech for any amount of time have a much higher rate of hip dysplasia. And they also have a higher rate of retaining reflexes. Reflexes are things that… when a baby comes down the birth canal naturally, their reflexes get stimulated. It's a very healthy process for a baby, and every C-section baby has a higher chance of having retained reflexes. Breech specifically has a higher chance of having hip dysplasia also.

So, these are just some of the big headliners for why C-section babies have a harder time. A lot of moms think that C-sections are these super gentle environments because they're controlled. Yes, they're controlled, and they're in a sterile room, and they have doctors and supervision, but C-sections can be pretty traumatic. Picture having a little tiny Ziploc bag opening, it's like this big, and having to take a baby out of that hole. It's not easy. They have to reach in, and usually the first thing they find is their head, and then they take their head, and they pull. That pulling, for a moment, is the equivalent of picking your baby up and holding them by the head for a little bit. It doesn't take a lot to see that that can be pretty traumatic for a baby. Now, that's not saying that C-sections are not warranted, or I'm not saying that C-sections are bad and shouldn't be done. I'm saying that they should be done when they're needed. And if we can find ways to reduce the need for C-sections, we can reduce the damage that some of these procedures can cause.

So, let's talk about some of the causes of breech babies. There are a few different medical reasons for babies to not want to turn head down. These can be very serious, and things that a baby should be breech for, because if they dropped head down, there could be problems. Things like a cord being too short, or a cord being wrapped around the baby's neck. There are situations where, if the baby would drop head down in those environments, it could cause problems, and the baby knows better, so it stays up and stays breech, or stays transverse. Too much fluid or too little fluid in the uterus can cause a baby to be more likely to be breech. And really, there's other possibilities, but most of this is kind of unknown.

So, the most common cause of breech that I see in my office, and the type of breech that we have the most success with, is pelvic twisting, or the passage of your birth canal being shrunk. This creates an environment where your baby looks down and doesn't like it. It doesn't like the size, the shape. It's not comfy, it's not open, it's not wide. There's not enough room for baby to drop head down. When your pelvis twists, it causes a narrowing of your birth canal. Kind of like in this picture, you can see how this pelvis is nice and open and wide, and when we start to twist it, it shrinks the birth canal and causes all the muscles and the ligaments inside to start to be an issue. This can put direct pressure at the bottom of your uterus and can make it harder for babies to drop head down.

So, let's talk about what we do in my office and what chiropractic can do specifically. There's something called the Webster Technique that we've used in our office for many years. This is kind of the gold standard of prenatal chiropractic care, and it's basically a way to evaluate your pelvis, see how wide and open your birth canal is, see how relaxed the ligaments and the nerves and the muscles around your birth environment are. And if they're less than ideal, then we make gentle, correcting adjustments to your pelvis to help make sure that the birth environment is perfect and ready for baby to drop into the right spot and to come out as easy as possible.

So, using the Webster Technique and seeing a chiropractor consistently… This is obviously what we do in our office, but we also add a few other things that help with babies turning head down. Home exercises is a big part of a breech baby in our office. When a mom says that they're breech, we give them exercises to complement the chiropractic care at home. We provide some guided meditation, which we'll talk about in a minute, and also acupuncture. Acupuncture has been a wonderful addition to our clinic. We just added that this year, and it's been a wonderful thing to complement all the other services that we're doing.

So, what does chiropractic care look for in a mom who comes to us and says, "I have a baby who is in the wrong position?" So before I talk about this, it's really important to note that chiropractors are never turning babies. Turning a baby is practicing obstetrics; that is not what we are doing. Our job is not to turn your baby. Our job is to make the environment in your pelvis so enticing that that baby can't resist but dropping head down. So, there's a very big difference between working on your baby and working on you. When you see us, we work on you. We make your pelvis and the birth environment perfectly ready, optimal, open, and ready to go. That makes it much more likely for your baby to drop head down.

So, if you come to us and you happen to have a baby who's not in the ideal position… Every single mom is unique, but I wanted to make kind of a rough estimate for you because a lot of people have no idea. Like, maybe you saw a chiropractor one time your last pregnancy, and your baby was breech. I don't want you to say that chiropractic didn't work in that situation because, unfortunately, chiropractic is kind of like brushing your teeth or working out. You've got to do it more than once for you to get any change, and consistency is the key. How much consistency? That's what we work out with you, one-on-one, for you specifically. But on average, if you wanted an answer… If you're less than 28 weeks, on average, we see you about weekly. And then if you make it to week 30, like 28 to 36, then we double that, and you're seeing us about twice a week. Less than 30… 30 to 34 weeks, if your baby is breech, I'm much less concerned about it. I haven't had a single patient in my whole career who had a baby that was breech at that stage that stayed breech. At that stage, if you're over 36 weeks, we're getting to crunch time, and that's when we see you, yes, every single day. Now, every day at this stage isn't for very long. Usually, we're talking a week or two, and things are better. But every single day needs to happen because you're in crunch time, and you waited till the last second to change things. But that's okay. The reality is that good things take time. This is no different. This is just another healthy thing that you are doing that takes time and repetition to make it happen.

The home exercises that we prescribe… The goal of these exercises is not, again, to turn your baby. The goal is to relax your muscles that are around your pelvis, to help get them to open. They are to reduce adhesions. I have moms that have endometriosis, had a C-section prior, that have extra scar tissue or adhesions inside or around their uterus. These exercises do a really good job of helping to open up everything, like I've said, and allow baby to drop into the right position on their own. These exercises do a great job of complementing the chiropractic care that people receive in our office.

Guided meditation is another modality that we send patients home with. So, this is something that you can do at home by yourself. Our emotions are so incredibly powerful, and especially as parents… I am such a big believer in the innate connection between a parent and their child. Now, we're talking the mom lifting the car off the baby. We're talking about that gut instinct and the gut feelings that you can't really explain, but you end up being right. I feel like there is a connection inside of us. The guided meditations that we do for our patients at home have been working. Your mind connects to your baby, your nervous system connects to your baby's nervous system. You two are connected so deeply. The goal of these meditations is to get you into a deeply relaxed state and switch from negativity to positivity. When we first start seeing moms, it makes me sad, the amount of moms that are negative and scared and disempowered. And those negative feelings have a huge impact on the outcome of your… the position of your baby, the birth, the recovery, how happy your baby is. If you can get into a happy, positive state during pregnancy, this will help you a ton. So, this is something that we help our patients through. We guide them through which meditations we think would be helpful for them, and then you kind of search on your own as well and find one that drives with you.

The last thing that we offer in our office that can help make sure your baby's in the ideal position is acupuncture. Now, this has been something that's been researched really well, and it's been shown to reduce breech presentations by around 40%. There are specific points that can be stimulated that help to balance your reproductive energy. It is something that I've seen such great results with patients in our office. I'm not the acupuncture expert in our office; Dr. Monica is. So, I would love for her to explain more for you the next time you see her.

So, when we combine all of these modalities… The consistent chiropractic care using the Webster Technique, the exercises that you can do at home to balance your uterus and complement the chiropractic care, the guided meditation and imagery, the things that can get your brain into a positive, confident state, and acupuncture… This is why we have so few moms who end up breech at the end. To date, I've had three moms… and I just had my third last week… three moms in my entire career that have had babies that stayed breech through all of these things.

So, the next part we're going to talk about is understanding the two branches of our nervous system. This is something that's important for pregnancy, it's important for labor and delivery, it's important for you to recover afterwards, it's important for your baby, and watching them grow up. Understanding that our body has a stress mode and a relax mode. Sympathetic and parasympathetic. Fight-or-flight, or calm, digestive, healing. These two branches of our nervous system are wired into us because we're wild animals. And being a wild animal, we are designed to survive when we're in danger. And fight-or-flight is something that is stimulated a lot when our body thinks that we're under attack. The reality is, most of us aren't under attack by tigers and bears anymore, but our body still thinks that stress, anxiety, pain… There are a million things that create emotional or physical stress in our body, and that tends to stimulate the sympathetic portion of our nervous system. When that is stimulated for a long time, babies have a much higher chance of being breech. Babies have a much higher chance of being difficult to come out. And when babies are in that stress mode, they end up being crabby and fussy and gassy, you name it. Chiropractic care has been shown to stimulate the parasympathetics, meaning hooking up the brake pedal in your body and slowing it down. This helps to reduce your stress and allow your body to be in the mode that it wants to be all the time, in that resting, calm, healing mode. And it's much better for birth.

Chiropractic on its own… So this is just chiropractic. This doesn't even talk about adding all the extra things that most chiropractors can do. We're able to reduce first-time moms' labor from 14 to 9 hours on average. Second or more moms, labor is reduced from 9 to 5 hours on average. Pain meds are reduced by half. C-section rates are decreased dramatically. 300% better positioning for babies, and 75% decrease in pain during pregnancy. These are all very cool things. These are things that, if you're pregnant and watching this, I'm sure you want every one of those things, right? And something that has so few side effects, and is so gentle and so easy, why wouldn't we want to sign up for all these things?

Who should see a prenatal chiropractor? Honestly, pretty much anybody that's pregnant should see a prenatal chiropractor. But specifically, if you're having pain, if your baby's in the wrong position, if you're wanting to VBAC… Which means you're wanting to have a vaginal delivery. Maybe your first one ended up in a C-section, this time you're wanting a vaginal delivery. If you're wanting a more natural birth… The goal with all these is to do everything that you possibly can to minimize the chances of things going wrong, and to maximize how well your birth canal and your body is ready. Prepping your body and your mind for delivery is a huge part I would love to help you with. Any of these things that we talked about today, and tons more. Call or text the phone number on the screen, our website… You can schedule online. If you're not in Bismarck, I encourage you to find a chiropractor with the letters "CACCP" after their name. This shows that they have dedicated their lives to pediatrics and pregnancy. You can find one at icpa4kids.org. Until next time, guys, have a great rest of the day.