If you had an asynclitic labor, tell me about your next baby and how that labor compared

[Dot-to-Dot]

My labor with dd was prolonged and the worst thing I could have ever dreamed up.  I failed miserably with Hypnobabies once I hit 5 cm and the hip labor set in. (I think they should put a disclaimer on there that it works unless you have an asynclitic baby who gets stuck!)  I'm almost 38 wks now with dd#2 and thinking quite a lot about positioning.  I have NO idea if she's in the right position or not (yes, yes, I've looked at spinning babies until my eyes were bleeding and I still am unsure).

I'm just trying to wrap my brain around the possibility that it COULD be easier....maybe, than last time.  Trying not to sabatoge that possibility.  And at the same time, trying to prepare myself for a repeat if my pelvis happens to be one of those that houses babies that way for a reason.

What happened with your next labor AFTER your asynclitic labor?

[Dot-to-Dot]

*bump*

Nobody out there had any asynclitic issues?

[kitkat5505]

My first was asynclitic and ended up in a c/s after 20hrs labor, 2hrs of pushing (and I had an epidural and knew nothing of positioning stuff at the time). My second I had long back labor (I believe he was posterior much of the labor) but his head came out straight with no problems, 20hr labor with about 30min pushing. Third malpositioned (not asynclitic, arm wedged in front of his face), 2 day labor, 2+hrs pushing ending in crash c/s. The twins came flying right out, 2.5hr labor including pushing. So only #1 was asynclitic, #2 and twins came out easier and #3 was all sorts of crazy lol.

[ursusarctos]

I was asynclitic. Apparently the midwife reached up and adjusted my head and then I was able to be born. My mom had 3 more children, one breech and two normal head presentations. I think it might just be chance a lot of the time.

[Dot-to-Dot]

Originally Posted by kitkat5505 

 My second I had long back labor (I believe he was posterior much of the labor) but his head came out straight with no problems, 20hr labor with about 30min pushing.

For your second, in that 20 hours, did you try specific positions to relieve back labor/posterior issues?  Or was it only in hindsight that you think he was posterior?

[kitkat5505]

Originally Posted by Dot-to-Dot 

For your second, in that 20 hours, did you try specific positions to relieve back labor/posterior issues?  Or was it only in hindsight that you think he was posterior?

It was only hindsight that had me thinking he was posterior because of the back labor and the fact that even before labor he always had his feet and hands at the front of my belly so I knew he faced that way a lot. During labor I walked a lot and had my mom or husband provide counter-pressure on my lower back during contractions while I leaned against whatever was close, which was very helpful. I also had a great nurse who suggested different positions to labor in like hands and knees and sitting on the birth ball leaning against the bed.

[cinderella08]

My 1st was LOA -   26 hour labor and led to a c/s.

My 2nd was asynclitic and posterior. - 7.5hr labor and VBAC.  I had difficulty pushing him out, but I did it.  Asynclitic babies CAN be born vaginally.

All during labor to alleviate and help with the pain and malpositioning, we did used a rebozo and a rocking chair - both helped TONS with with the pain, but didn't get him in a better position.  I pushed him in out in about 1.5 hrs.  He had a horrible cephalohematoma from being stuck between the bones for so long and bruising on his eyes as well.

[Dot-to-Dot]

This is interesting.  My asynclitic baby resolved the issue (I guess) right before birth and I pushed her out in about 20 minutes...but the hip labor before that was the worst and totally paralyzing part...I couldn't utilize position changes WHATSOEVER.  I felt like if someone would have laid a feather on me, my pelvic bones would have crumbled and broken right then and there.  Dilation was super slow and I had a lip that wouldn't allow me to dilate to 10.  It sounds like my labor was different in that the pushing part was actually easy...the HIP labor was excruciating and did not follow a come-and-go pattern like contractions - it was constant and bone crushing for many, many hours.  That's the part where I felt she was very, very stuck in my right hip and not applying even pressure to my cervix.  I hadn't prepared for that sort of thing and wouldn't have known what to do even if I hadn't been paralyzed in pain.

[AutumnAir]

DD1 was posterior and asyclitic.  21 hours of active labour (I'd had on-off contractions all day before they really kicked into a regular pattern - which is when I start counting).  Was 'normal' for a while - regular contractions every 5 minutes, lasting about a minute and gradually getting stronger and longer and closer together.  Just as you might expect.  Then, all of a sudden about 6 hours in it went from normal labour to unbelievable pain.  There was no longer any break between contractions at all - it just felt like one huge never-ending contraction.  I couldn't move, speak, even think - all my energy was focused on just breathing enough to keep from passing out.  I had no idea what was going on - in all my reading about labour, I'd never heard of anything like this.  If I'd known I would have tried to communicate a need to try position changes etc. to DH/midwife, but really there was no way I could have moved on my own.  I was 8cm at 8am when the MW arrived and checked me, 10cm with a lip 2 hours later.  And still 10cm with a lip 5 hours later when we transferred to the hospital.  I never had a pushing urge - and when I tried to push without it, it was even more painful, so I stopped.  (I wish now I'd kept trying and/or persuaded the MW to hold back the lip for me).  We ended up with a forceps delivery with no pain meds as punishment for attempting a HB.  The whole thing was intensely traumatising.

DD2 - the whole pregnancy I was worried about positioning, but since I'd already been vigilant about OFP with DD1 I wasn't confident that that would help this time around (though of course I did all the usual stuff anyway).  I hired a doula who specialised in posterior labours/difficult positioning and we had all sorts of plans of various tricks to try during labour if need be.  She also did rebozo sifting for me during the last weeks of my pregnancy.  I was mentally prepared (well as prepared as you can be!) for another long and intensely painful labour.  Maybe it was that, maybe it was the hypnobabies (which I hadn't done the first time), maybe DD2 was just in a better position (though she did have a nuchal hand by her ear), but I didn't notice labour until I was in transition.  I didn't fully believe that I was in labour until I was pushing! Total time from 'maybe this might be labour' to baby out was 45 minutes!  So, it is possible to have a better labour the next time around.  

I'd say, expect the worst and hope for the best - if you know what I mean!

[Daffodil]

DD was asynclitic.  As I got to the part of labor where the contractions were really painful, they also began to get further and further apart, and I was dilating really slowly.  At the rate I was going, it looked like it could be a long time before I got to 10 cm, and I didn't think I could take the pain for that much longer, so I got an epidural.  It was after that that the doctor checked and said the baby was asynclitic.  She had me get into a different position, on my stomach, for a while, and that apparently helped.  DD was eventually born vaginally, with help from a vaccuum extractor.

My second labor was so much easier.  At the time contractions were close enough together that we headed to the hospital, they still weren't that painful.  DS was born less than 2 hours after we got to the hospital.  The pushing stage was no more than 10 minutes.

[Dot-to-Dot]

AutumnAir, you labor sounds so similar to mine it brought tears to my eyes just remembering it.  I have a "bag of tricks" this time, too.  I have a very easily navigable document with pictures and quick suggestions for my husband based on if I complain of back pain or hip pain.  I've had him read over it twice.  I don't have a doula and my wonderful mom (my doula last time) will be at home watching our 1 yr old.  So it's just dh and me!  (And my wonderful, wonderful, very pro-natural birth doctor).  I wonder if our bag of tricks are similar.

Daffodil, 10 minutes of pushing, wow!  That's awesome!

[member234098]

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Edited by member234098 - 6/7/12 at 8:18am

[kitkatkaddoodle]

My first baby was asynclitic and hung at 8 cm for something like 10 hrs despite much position changes, rocking, all that. He had a true knot and was wrapped up good in his cord, so I think it prevented him from turning correctly until we finally broke my water which also tightened the cord--we transferred immediately for mec and decels, but it did the trick and with a little vacuum help he came out within the hour of transfer! He would have come out with my pushing a few minutes later, but his heart rate was staying down enough that I wasn't unhappy they helped him out. His head was off-kiltered cone shaped.

My second baby was a precipitous labor where I went from thinking I was having some very uncomfortable early labor for about 5 hrs (random contractions every 5 to 10 minutes--I wasn't sure they wouldn't peter out), then sped up to every 2 minutes for less than an hour. I had her on the living room floor while trying to get everyone ready to take me to the birth center! She weighed almost a pound more than her brother.

[Dot-to-Dot]

Gosh...cord issues really scare me!  My daughter's cord was also wrapped around her neck twice in addition to the other issues and I suppose even if I were able to move, she still might have been stuck coming down the way she did.  A knot in the cord?!  Yikes!  And wow, what a contrast in experiences with your second labor! 

...as of today baby is on the ROT or ROP...

[major_mama11]

My first was asynclitic, ended in a vaginal birth but I was fully dilated for hours and hours before she got into a better position. Short cord, not sure if that contributed.

Second baby was positioned well, and it was sooo straightforward, and much shorter labor. Like night and day.

[wombatclay]

dd1- Posterior and asynclitic (all her molding was over an ear so at first she looked like a cartoon charater standing in a strong wind with her head sort of "swept" to the side!).  I was at 42 weeks, my water broke the day before contractions started, once contractions started I literally flew through labor till I hit 7cm.  Nineteen hours of unmedicated back labor later (and after every trick in the book) I was still at 7cm and off to the OR I went. 

dd2- I was a spinning babies/ofp fanatic.  LOL  Labor started with my water breaking and contractions beginning more or less at the same time, and it was 12 hours from start to finish.  However, I pushed for roughly 4 hours and dd2 developed a true shoulder dystocia so I'm pretty sure she wasn't really well lined up for exit.  Getting her unstuck left me with a 4th degree tear, and she required resuscitation (PSA- if your babe is oxygen deprived at birth but not otherwise critical, DO NOT let them cut an intact/functioning cord... the best treatment is to put MOM on oxygen and blow room air on the babe's face during massage.  This gets more O2 into the babe, more quickly, and without danger to newborn lungs.  But it's a relatively new technique and many care providers don't know about it yet!)

ds- My second VBAC, I did my best to follow spinning babies/ofp and I did hypnobabies again but with two young children already running around (and being a newly SAHM so without the "personal time" of commutes/lunch breaks to practice in) it was more "do what I could".  That birth was just about 4 hours from start to finish, and DH said I pushed for about 45 minutes.  It was super intense (hypnobabies did nothing, but then again, the shot of narcotic I got didn't do anything either!), his shoulders were sticky but never stuck.  I did have screamingly painful nerve pain during pushing... the pain was only on my left side and only between contractions (I think maybe the contraction over-rode the nerve pain because I felt "fine" when pushing but once a contraction was over I thought someone was sawing off my leg at the hip).  So again, I think ds may have been a bit "off" in terms of exit trajectory.

I'm expecting my fourth child this Sept and am hoping for another VBAC.  I have an anterior placenta again this time (had one with dd2) and I know that can contribute to posterior presentation, and that a babe who starts out posterior has a greater chance of becoming asynclitic.  So I'm doing what I can, keeping my fingers crossed, and hoping that having had several kiddos already will give this babe a bit more room to move around (since muscles, ligaments, and bones have all gotten looser and more accustomed to wiggling themselves!).

Good luck!

[savithny]

WIth #1, the placenta was anterior, he liked to hang around posterior all during the pregnancy.  I don't know what position he was in when labor started, but I suspect he was still posterior.  

I had nothing but back labor -- nothing..  Felt nothing across my belly, labor pains only were waves of cramps-to-stabs across my back, beginning about 1am when I started shedding mucus plug.   I went to see the midwife to get checked out around 9am and was 4-5 cms dilated, so she suggested we hit the hospital.   I hung out in the tub for awhile until I didn't feel like it anymore - preferred to rock in the rocker or pace.  That turned out to be transition.   My water broke at the end of that and suddenly I had overwhelming pushing urges -- uncontrollable, irresistable.  Even with that, though,  it took about 45 minutes of pushing to move him down and out, and I suspect that was becuase he had to turn to come out because he was posterior.   No ultimate troubles though -- and the endorphins were so high that instead of a Ring of Fire I felt quasi-pleasant throbbing as he emerged.

#2 was NOT posterior, so was right in launch position.   However, with her I figured out that some of my back labor is just the way I'm wired, because while I felt *something* across my belly, I still felt a lot in my back.   I labored in the tub (hospital tub again), alone with just DH - and after only about an hour of that, just as I thought to myself "those last few contractions, they felt a bit different," and I found myself having to kneel upright during them to make them feel better -- I had a full-on fetal-ejection reflex -- one huge contraction, my water broke and she dropped to crowning  all in one go, as I instinctively hopped to my feet..   Then I got all irrational, wouldn't sit back down in the tub, insisted on getting out, and she was born on the bed on the next contraction without any real pushing.  She was 10#3 and I didn't even tear.

So:  non-asynclic baby's birth was so much easier.  Even my ill-positioned baby came out more easily than many babies, but my correctly-positioned baby?  Pretty much fell out of me.

[Dot-to-Dot]

This is fascinating to me!  I wonder how differently women would feel about birth if they knew a little something about the importance of good fetal positioning.  I wonder if more babies would "fall out" of us if we could manage to get them lined up right.  :)  Granted, that was your second, but, still I bet a huge amount of first time birthers would have had a different experience if they'd known what to do during pregnancy and labor for a poorly positioned baby.  (*I understand that some women's bodies simply birth babies posterior and there's apparently a reason and that this doesn't apply to all women*)

I'm being uncomfortably optimistic for my typical self....REALLY hoping I am able to realize an easier second birth, but I don't want to have the hip pain slap me in the face during labor and yank the rug out from under me.  I'm still pregnant.  39wks and 3 days.  Baby is finally sticking around on the left now but still an LOP position.  I keep asking her to please turn to face my spine and tuck her little chin.

[Ms. B. Sprout]

My DD was posterior/asynclitic, a 35 hours very difficult labor that ended in c/s. Like AutumnAir, I was at 10 cm for many hours and never felt any urge to push, baby never descended past -2.

So, what's in your bag of tricks? I'm interested to know what everyone has up their sleeve for next time. Here's mine, and I hope to add to it.

In Pregnancy:

regular chiro

daily spinning babies exercises (a few of them each day, an inversion once a week or so)

walking

staying off the recliner/couch

sitting on my birth ball

In Labor:

again, the spinning babies tricks for labor

rest/nourishment when possible in case it goes long

spend early labor in denial that I am in labor, so it'll seem shorter

hypnobabies

While Pushing:

being open to any position that seems helpful

???

Please add to the list, mamas. I feel like I need all the help I can get.

[Ms. B. Sprout]

Oh, and I meant to say as well -- Dot-to-Dot, I am sending you lots of good birthing vibes!