Fatigue

Getting enough rest and sleep is essential if you are to combat the inevitable fatigue of the first weeks of caring for your newborn baby.

Try to rest whenever you can, especially during the first week or so when you will still be recovering from the exhaustion of labour. Avoid climbing stairs and heavy lifting as much as possible, and get your partner or someone else to help you with the baby and the general housework. Take advantage of your baby`s daytime naps to rest or nap yourself, and try not to waste these valuable chances for rest by using them to catch up on the ever-present chores.

Make sure that you get enough sleep. At night, go to bed half an hour or so before you plan on going to sleep, and unwind slowly. Try sipping a warm, milky drink, listening to music, watching television, or doing a little light reading to relax you physically and mentally before you sleep.

If you are breastfeeding express milk into bottles so that your partner can share the night­time feeding duties just as he would if you are bottle-feeding.

A healthy diet is an essential part of combating fatigue, but don’t eat too much late at night because digesting it might interfere with your normal sleep pattern.

Breech Birth

If your baby is in a breech position (buttocks down), and your obstetrician decides that he can be delivered safely without a Caesarean section, he will be born vaginally. The breech birth should not be thought of as an abnormal birth — it is better to think of it as a variation of normal, because four out of every hundred babies are born in the breech position and most of them do so i smoothly and are healthy.

In most breech births, the buttocks are delivered first, then the legs. In some births the feet descend ahead of the buttocks. The body slips out next. Before the head is delivered, you will almost certainly have to have an episiotomy because the head is the widest part and your baby`s bottom will not have stretched your birth canal sufficiently for his head to pass through it without some pressure being applied.

Once the baby`s body is born, his weight pulls the head down. His body is then lifted upwards by the midwife, and one more push is usually enough to deliver him. Forceps may be used to protect the baby`s head (see column, opposite).

It is now fairly common practice for you to be given an epidural if you are having a breech birth. This is so that if you need a Caesarean section it can be done quickly and simply without further anesthesia, and you will be able to hold your baby as soon as he is born.