How I Spun My Breech Baby with EFT Tapping (7 Techniques)
It was 5 pm and I was lying on a sheepskin blanket in my favorite place:
My midwives’ yurt.
Heartbeat sounded “beautiful.” But, as she felt my stomach, she kept pressing back and forth, bottom to top as if giving my little girl a massage.
“Is everything good?” I asked.
She cupped the top of my abdomen and frowned.
“She feels breech.”
My stomach dropped.
Breech: Please don’t use that word.
Only 3% of babies are born feet down, and most of them have to be delivered in a hospital. I was all prepped for a home birth (can’t you tell from the yurt?) and breech was not in our home-birth plan.
As a mom whose due date was quickly approaching, I tried not to cry.
As an EFT Practitioner, I tapped a few secret pressure points on my fingers.
She scheduled an ultrasound for 2 weeks out to “confirm” her predictions.
I had 2 weeks to help this baby turn.
Could EFT tapping spin my baby?
Yes or no, I want to share the steps I used during those could-be stressful weeks.
If you’re pregnant, trying to conceive, or have a friend in this situation, feel free to save or share.
If you’re not planning for a family, apply each technique to a situation where you feel like you’re not in control but feel desperate for things to change (or spin in the right direction ;)
Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor or midwife. My baby may have spun naturally, but even if she didn’t, the following techniques helped me release layers of emotion I never would have released if it weren’t for this stressful encounter with my midwife. (If you don’t have time to read the enre thing, scroll to the big whammy last exercise that changed my life!)
Techniques to change your state (and maybe your baby’s position ;)
Yoga: 10 min of hips over heart per day. Think down dog, or child pose with my knees on a pillow or low bench. Bridge pose or hips on a yoga ball.
Try it: Google “Spinning babies” and you’ll find tons of evidence-based yoga poses.
Breathwork: Every time I thought of my midwife’s words, I focused on my breath. At first, my heart rate would skyrocket, but then I would breathe. Inhale 4. Exhale 8: Exhales slow down the heart and calm the adrenals.
Try it: The next time you feel stressed about your situation, make your exhale twice as long as your inhale: 2/4.. 3/6… 4/8… 5/10 whatever pattern feels most soothing.
Polyvagal stimulation: When I went into worst-case scenario thinking, I would lengthen my exhales, but then I’d engage polyvagal techniques.
Polyvagal Techniques are designed to soothe the vagus nerve, which travels from the tongue down the spinal chord and acts lke a direct line of communication to the nervous system. Any polyvagal exercise will lower stress hormones and calm your nerves. Since the vagus nerve connects to your tongue, activities like vibrating the back of the throat (gargling, humming, etc) or relaxing the tongue muscle (resting it on the floor of the mouth or fluttering the lips) soothe the nerve AND the nervous system.
Try Humming: Breathe in smile… breathe out hum from the throat. Repeat until you feel your body, mind, and belly relax.
Try Horses Breathe: Breathe in smile… breathe out with lightly closed lips to make a fluttering sound with your lips (like a horse)
EFT/Tapping on Future fears: I made a list of hypothetical worst case scenarios that I kept ruminating on. Then, I rated each from high to low based on which was causing the most stress. I tapped on each hypothetical scenario until I could think about it without spiraling. For example, I tapped on the upcoming ultrasound for about 45 minutes. When I was done, the dreadful nausea was replaced with a grounded trust. I trusted that either a) my baby would spin head down OR b) there was some intelligent reason she needed to stay head up
Just for an example, my hypothetical list of fears included very specific scenarios:
getting an ultrasound in 2 weeks and seeing baby breech
midwives telling me “It’s too risky to deliver at home”
driving to the hospital with contractions
a doctor saying I need a C-section
Try it: What are you Farid of? List the 1-5 hypothetical future scenarios that keep crossing your mind. Start with the most emotional scenarios and learn to tap safely on specific events. Your tapping statements might sound like:
Even though this fear might happen, right here and now I’m OK
Even though I feel x thinking of this happening, I have compassion for how I feel
Even though I’m afraid that x will happen, part of me knows it might turn out better than I expect
Then tap as you scroll through the future scenario frame by frame. Repeat until you can scroll through the scene from start to finish without becoming triggered with fear. This is hard to do without a practitioner or training. if you’re invested in learning to tap like a pro, I recommend starting with a Level 1&2 EFT Workshop.
Contemplative tapping to embody a new vibration around your situation: Once the dread dissolved, I replaced the dread with supportive emotions. While I could have tapped on statements like: “I choose to feel hopeful. Everything is going to be OK, or I trust God…” I prefer to tao and ask myself questions.
Affirmation Tapping feels fake, while Question Tapping invites us to get curious about what feels true.
I coined this style of EFT Question Tapping or Contemplative tapping. As I tapped and contemplated my ideal future, I felt my emotional state lift. I wasn’t faking positivity, I was inviting myself to embody a new attitude… one that would serve me and the baby.
Here is what my Question Tapping sounds like:
How did I want to feel? What feelings would support me?
How do I want to relate to the word breach? How did I want to relate to “bad news”?
What do I want to remember/ embody/ practice during the ultrasound?
How would my highest self act in this situation? How would she show up? Carry herself? Treat others? Speak? Speak to herself?
What inner dialogue so I want to practice? What inner dialogues do I need to release?
What would it take to feel hopeful and trusting?
I tapped and asked, giving myself a full tapping round to contemplate each question.
Try it: Write a list of questions you would typically journal about regarding your situation. Instead of answering from your head with pe and paper, tap and ask so you can hear answers from your heart. Feel free to write your responses when you’re done.
Bilateral Tapping to Cultivate Ideal Emotions: Bilateral tapping (alternating left right left right) is proven to amplify positive feelings because it increases communication between both brain hemispheres, increasing intuition and creativity. You can activate both brain hemispheres by tapping bilaterally on any of the points as you call to mind your desired feelings and intentions. For example, I daydreamed about what it would feel like if the ultrasound technician told me my baby had turned! I would feel a rush of relief and ecstatic gratitude. i let myself soak in that elation for a few minutes. I’d alternate between tapping bilaterally and tuning into the relief of seeing her head down on the ultrasound, with tapping. After a few minutes, the relief and joy filled my entire body.
Science tip: This exercise feels great AND it helps your baby feel great as it floods your bloodstream with endorphins!
Try it: Think about how you want your situation to go from start to finish. Visualize the best case scenario. Don’t just see it, sense it and feel it. Then bilaterally tap the collarbone left right left right for 3 breathes. Tune in again. Tap 3 breathes. Tune in. Repeat until the feeling expands.
When I didnt feel like self-guiding, I used tapping meditations in my ideal future portal… especially the Ideal Feelings EFT Meditation and then the Ideal Mindset EFT Meditation which let me tap on the limiting belief that my birth was going to be stressful.
The Advanced Tapping Exercise that Changed my Life
Final Exercise: Tap and Talk to Baby: This practice, which blends EFT with Two Chairs Technique, was by far the most important. Two Chairs is when you sit across from an ancestor or loved one or ex and have a conversation in your mind’s eye. I decided to use the technique to talk to my baby in utero. I followed the 4 C’s protocol I teach in my Expert Level 3 EFT Online Training.
After establishing connection, consent, compassion, and curiosity, I was able to hear some life-changing messages from the womb.
The unspoken question is, “Am I making up the baby’s answers?”
Here’s the truth: Whether you tap and make up their answers or get a download straight from their preverbal mind to yours, the answers are always helpful.
Many practitioners will tell you that a head-up baby is trying to communicate something to you and boy was she. Maybe they sense you’re not ready. Maybe they need you to prep the nursery, or your heart, or some unfinished business.
The entire story of what she told me would fill a book, but here’s the jist: Baby needed me to know it wasn’t my fault.
She didnt need ME to know it, she needed my 5-year-old self to know it.
To keep it short: I had been blaming myself for 30 years for a tragedy I experienced at 5 years old.
When I found out I had a breech baby, I equally blamed myself. I thought: it’s because of me that she is head up. I sit at my desk to much. I work too much. I must not be ready for the baby so she is not ready to turn.
I was blaming myself for something that was out of my control…. just like when I was 5!
While my midwives kept encouraging me to connect to the baby and ask her what she needed, I kept getting the same answer: “This is not about you. This is my choice.”
My inner 5-year-old needed to hear these words, except not from baby.
I needed to hear “It’s not your fault,” from my brother: My older brother died when I was five, and I’d been (unconsciously) blaming myself ever since.
Her baby spirit told me again, “This is not about you. This is my choice.” And all I could feel was my big brother saying the same thing to me for the first time, “It was not about you. It was my choice.” Dang. Who knew that a breech baby had to do with an early childhood loss. Now I know.
Whether I “made up” my baby’s message or not, the message I got in Two Chairs Technique was life changing. The message that her position was not my fault allowed me to release a belief I had unknowingly carried for 30 years. I think it was the night after that Unfinshed Conversation that I felt her feet kick upwards for the first time: She’d turned.
Try it: Tap and talk to your baby. Spend 5 minutes grounding with breathwork. 4 in 8 out. Then begin to see and/or sense your baby in the womb. Ask if she has anything to tell you. Then, listen. Tap. listen. Trust what you hear.
If you want to learn to use stressful situations to release 30-year-old emotional weight using Bilateral Stimulation, Advanced Tapping, and Two Chairs Technique, explore the modules within the Level 3 EFT Online Training (currently enrolling for immediate and lifetime access).
This post may not be what you expected, but I hope it hits a chord, that helps you turn the tides of your life.
Sending love, hope and courage,
Jackie Viramontez
EFT Master Trainer
P.S. I’m still on maternity leave so if your lovely emails or questions don’t get a reply, know I will be emailing back by June.
If you want answers sooner, can find extensive information on the workshop pages here or in the Idea Future portal FAQ here.
