Suggestions please :)

[starangelk]

Hi ladies

I am due early next week and hoping to go into labour before then. I had a CS last pregnancy and hoping to get a chance to labour this time. If I don't, I will cope - I have no CS fear after last time but I am hoping for VBAC from a recovery viewpoint as my other LO is still quite young. I had some mixed news at my Ob appointment today. My cervix is softish and lowish and he's written 1.2cm.....would that be the length? Is that good or bad? No idea. Anyway, my problem is that the baby's head is not engaged, well 4/5ths. I think the baby's head needs to engage to put pressure on my cervix to get labour started right? I've been having acupuncture heaps and taking and drinking the RLT, bouncing on my fitball, eating spicy food, we even DTD!!

Any ideas on how to get the baby to engage or help me progress things before my next appointment on Monday???

[Mumtastic]

Hi Starangel.... the baby's head doesn't need to engage, but it certainly helps. Just going from my own experience: in my first vbac, my baby engaged at 35 weeks but I went 12 days overdue and got induced. In my second vbac, my baby still wasn't engaged after 30 hours of 'spurious' labour and I was only 2cm dilated (so not in 'real' labour - it was real to me!!) but I went from 2cm to her being totally born in about an hour - and at the last VE an hour before she was born she still wasn't engaged. So you can see there's a lot of variation and being engaged or not engaged is no guarantee of anything.

But just as you say, having that pressure on the cervix certainly helps. You are still really really early - not even at your due date yet. Statistically ,more pregnancies go *past* the EDD than don't, so odds are that you are going to still be pregnant for anohter 10 days or so. I thnk the 1.2cm is the length, which means that there's been a lot of shortening happening which is the main job for hte cervix in a first labour. It sounds like you are doing everything you can to optimise your body's preparedness for labour, so I'd really just relax for now and keep going.... (sorry to sound annoying lol).

Your body can go from seeming quite far away from labour (in terms of hwat your cervix is doing) to being in labour very suddenly - your cervix can change a huge amount overnight - so I guess what I'm saying is just keep taking it day by day and your body will do its thing soon enough.

Good luck, it's SO exciting to be this close to meeting the new little person in your life.

[onthefly]

It's not necessary to start labour, no, and it's quite common for babies to engage during labour.
Have lots of sex. Or at least orgasms.

[zap]

My ds was not engaged till my waters where broken and 9 minutes later he was born! Positive labour vibes coming your way!