Before the arrival of her second child, Vanessa Fisher and her husband, Nick, created a birth plan together. The couple decided that they wanted to have a home birth with a midwife and even intended to do a lotus birth, where the baby’s umbilical cord isn’t cut and instead is left attached until it naturally detaches. The mother from Texas was quite nervous about attempting to deliver her baby son naturally because he was breech.
“I think we had a lot of questions and a lot of concerns and a lot of Googling,” Fisher said. “It just sounded intimidating to birth a baby breeched.”
Babies should typically turn at 32 weeks. If not, there is a greater chance that a breech birth will occur, therefore the couple began looking into alternate procedures.
“I would like bounce on [a medicine] ball or do figure 8,” Fisher said. “We would put headphones in my pocket and try to get the baby to try to get curious and try to listen down at the bottom of them.”
“We took the ironing board out and started to plank. I used to spend around 20 minutes at a time lying upside down on the ironing board. All of those things fell short. He didn’t move, she continued.
She decided to opt for a procedure that would attempt to manually turn her baby.
The mom and dad, who had worked with a midwife for their pregnancy, were eventually referred to Dr. Frederick Cummings, an OB-GYN, and they had a consultation with him.
The infant refused to turn when Cummings first tried to turn him. They eventually scheduled a formal appointment to deliver their baby naturally at 38 weeks and avoid having to have a cesarean section.
Fisher’s husband, Nick Fisher, caught the moment on camera because they wanted to be able to look back at the moment.
They eventually shared the photo with family and friends who posted it online. Many people commented on how composed Fisher seemed during the surgery as it immediately gained popularity.
Fisher said the procedure wasn’t really painful, but there was just a lot of pressure. For other ladies to be aware of their alternatives if they also had a breech baby, Fisher stated in her caption that she wanted the video of her treatment to be shared.
Thankfully, the couple gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Ashton Nathaniel Fisher, on Jan. 16.
