Rightside Up

As a general rule, I prefer being upside down.

Exhibit A:

Imagine then my despair at my thirty-two week ultrasound when Uh-oh, the doctor said, looks like she's bottom-down breech. I stared hard at the screen, and there happy as can be, surrounded by my amniotic fluid: my pretty little daughter sitting on her pretty little bum. What are you doing in there? I wanted to yell.

I mean, how do you explain to an unborn child how difficult it will be in the real world to be upside down? You have to hunt down trapezes and monkey bars and yogis who cling wildly to inversions--it ain't easy. Do it now, I want to say. You've got your whole life to be rightside up!

So now in my spare time I google "turning a breech baby." Yes, it's only been forty-eight hours since I got the news (which, by the way, they told me was waaaaaaay too early in the game to worry about), but already I've done acupuncture and shoulder stand and cut out sugar (well, except for cupcakes) and talked to her and sang to her and made C. shine a flashlight at the bottom of my belly and put a bag of frozen peas near her little head.

And though I've yet to find "try shaming her into turning by writing about it in your blog," I thought I'd try that too.