Sunday, May 06, 2007

OFP - do you have an opinion?

OFP is something I have come across in my quest for greater knowledge about what will be happening to me in about 2 and a half months time.

The book Sit Up and Take Notice! by Pauline Scott was spotted in Epsom library the other day and I devoured it in one night. Now I am looking for feedback on the concepts that it promotes.

If you have personal or professional comments to make on the idea of Optimal Foetal Positioning, then I would really appreciate hearing them. My reason for asking is a purely selfish one - will this make labour quicker/easier/less stressful for me? And will it help to reduce undue stress on Miss OhWailyWaily too?

I'm not much of a hook or needle sort of person outside of my craft hobbies, so I'd really rather avoid the need for any of these (presumably) metallic instruments to be deployed during my daughter's debut.

So briefly, the idea is for the baby to be not only head down, but also in the anterior position to allow for the path of least resistance into the world. The best side being the left side, also.

It all seems to be fairly sensible, but then I don't have a medical background in human physiology. If it gives us a good start to the process, then I am all for encouraging a left-sided baby.

If I can transform myself into a side-lying sleeper to avoid the possibility of constricted blood flow, then I can certainly transform into a left-sided sleeper to encourage the young Miss to be a lefty. And if the statistical possibility of going from a 12-36 hour labour to a 2-12 hour labour is even remotely the case, I'm all for better sleeping and sitting positions over the remaining weeks.

Comments, if you have them, please. Thanks in advance.

1 comment:

The Baby: 36 week update « Oh Waily Waily said...

[...] trying to encourage not only a head-down arrival, but a baby that takes up the OFP. (See my previous entry regarding [...]