Some of the special circumstances techniques should not be used unless the fetal position is known!
- Don’t do a true open-knee chest for a head-down baby during pregnancy. This position needs regular contractions to keep baby head down. Most people think knee-chest or child’s pose is open-knee chest, but it is not. See the article in Techniques.
- Don’t do a forward leaning inversion if the mother has high blood pressure, a risk of stroke, glaucoma -or just plain heartburn at the time. Be careful where there is an unusual amount of amniotic fluid or the head-down baby is above the pelvic brim. Don’t invert more than the 30 seconds. Inversion is helpful for the head-up (breech) or sideways (transverse lie) baby.
- A short, 30-second inversion is ok for a head-down baby.
- If you don’t feel comfortable inverting, don’t do it. See the article when to do it and who should not do this.
Proceed under your own advice. Women have been inverting with yoga for decades. While I know of no study for statistics ongoing upside down in pregnancy with a head-down baby and having the baby flip breech, it may happen rarely. On the other hand, 3-5% (yes, 5%) of American babies are breech at term, so one in 20 is potentially breech and that means they flip breech at some point, not always in the second trimester, but the third trimester, too.
The question has to be, do babies flip breech less often or more often if mother’s do a 30-second inversion once a day throughout pregnancy.
I know that these moms doing daily inversions are reporting less discomfort and lots of breeches, though not all, are flipping head down.