My Sunny Side Up Baby Gave Me the Back Labor From Absolute Hell

It was 3:14 AM on the linoleum floor of Room 4 at Mt. Sinai, and I was wearing my husband Mark’s faded 2012 indie band tour t-shirt because nothing else fit my massive, 40-weeks-pregnant body. I was clutching the hospital bedrail like it owed me money, trying not to scream, while Mark stood nervously in the corner holding a lukewarm dark roast coffee from the cafeteria that I desperately wanted to drink but also wanted to throw directly at his head.

My midwife, a lovely woman named Brenda who had the calm energy of a seasoned flight attendant during extreme turbulence, rubbed my lower back. She looked at the fetal monitor, then at me, and said, "Ah, she's sunny side up."

I blinked through the absolute blinding agony radiating from my spine. Sunny side up? Like eggs? Like a diner breakfast? What the hell was she talking about? All I knew was that it felt like a tiny, angry lumberjack was using my tailbone as a chopping block.

That was how I was introduced to the occiput posterior position, which is the fancy medical way of saying your baby is facing the wrong way in the birth canal. And let me tell you, it's a whole unique brand of chaos.

What the hell does occiput posterior even mean?

Okay, so from what Brenda the midwife explained to me—or at least what I retained while panting through contractions—babies are ideally supposed to come out looking at the floor. Like, facing your spine. They tuck their little chins to their chests, and the smooth, rounded back of their skull presses against your cervix to help open things up. It’s like a key fitting perfectly into a lock.

But Maya (who's now 7 and still aggressively stubborn) decided she wanted a view of the stars. She was facing frontward, toward my abdomen.

This meant the hardest, widest, most awkwardly shaped part of her skull was grinding directly against my spine with every single contraction. And let me tell you, when my pediatrician casually mentioned later that the skull bones overlap during birth to fit through the pelvis, I practically shrieked because YES, I FELT EVERY MILLIMETER OF THAT OVERLAPPING IN MY LOWER LUMBAR.

Anyway, the point is, instead of the pressure being localized in the front where you sort of expect period-like cramps on steroids, all the pain was in my back. Agony.

The back labor reality check

People love to tell you about the ring of fire or the pushing phase, but nobody ever properly warned me about back labor. I could rant about this for days. It doesn't even feel like a contraction. It feels like your pelvis is actively trying to divorce the rest of your skeleton. There were zero breaks. Even between contractions, my back was just a solid wall of throbbing, hot pain. Mark kept trying to do that counter-pressure massage we learned in our six-week birthing class, but he was rubbing my lower back like he was aggressively polishing the hood of a Honda Civic.

"Lower, Mark!" I hissed at one point. "No, harder! Wait, stop! Literally don't touch me!"

I felt terrible because he looked like a kicked puppy holding his sad cafeteria coffee, but I was out of my mind.

They also say that having a sunny side up infant makes the pushing phase take longer because they don't fit under the pubic bone as easily, but honestly, by the time you get to pushing, you're practically out of your body on adrenaline anyway.

Desperate gymnastics on the hospital floor

Because I was unmedicated at that point (a personal choice I was heavily re-evaluating by hour twelve), Brenda decided we needed to do some acrobatics to get Maya to flip.

Apparently, getting on your hands and knees takes the baby's weight off your spine and gives them room to rotate. So there I was, ass in the air, IV pole rattling next to me, swaying back and forth like a heavily pregnant, very grumpy cow.

The hospital pillows they gave me to rest my arms on felt like they were stuffed with shredded tax documents. It was so uncomfortable. Mark, trying to redeem himself for the Honda Civic massage incident, dug frantically into our hospital bag and pulled out the Organic Cotton Baby Blanket Calming Gray Whale Pattern we had bought a few weeks prior. He folded it up and shoved it under my face.

Oh god, it was heaven. I practically buried my sweaty face in it. It was literally the only soft, familiar-smelling thing in that entire sterile, beeping room. It's made of this amazing double-layer organic cotton that’s cool to the touch but super plush, and I just focused on the little gray whales swimming across it while I breathed through the pain. Honestly, it's still my absolute favorite thing we own from the newborn days. Maya still drags that specific blanket around the house when she has a fever, which is kind of gross because she's 7, but also incredibly sweet.

(If you're putting your hospital bag together right now, throw a good blanket in there. Seriously. Don't rely on hospital linens. Explore more lifesavers in Kianao's baby blankets collection.)

The statistics they tell you while you're screaming

At some point, a very young, very peppy resident came in to check my progress and cheerfully informed me that like, a third of all babies start out facing the wrong way when labor begins.

I remember glaring at her from my hands and knees, thinking, Why are you telling me trivia right now?

But then she said that only something like 5 to 8 percent of babies are actually born that way. Which meant that the vast majority of these stubborn little creatures figure it out and rotate themselves while inside the birth canal. Which sounds like a terrifying magic trick, honestly. They just... turn around. My foggy, pain-riddled brain clung to that statistic like a life raft. She *could* turn. She *wanted* to turn. I just had to give her the space.

Doing everything different the second time around

Fast forward three years. I was pregnant with Leo (my now 4-year-old), and I was absolutely terrified of having another OP baby. I went down an intense internet rabbit hole about fetal positioning.

I convinced myself that the reason Maya was sunny side up was because I spent my entire first pregnancy slouched backwards on the couch watching endless reruns of The Office, creating a perfect little hammock for her heavy spine to settle into my back.

So with Leo, I was militant. I sat on a yoga ball at my desk. I slept exclusively on my left side with a pregnancy pillow practically duct-taped to my legs. I was so obsessed with curating the perfect, posture-friendly environment that I bought the Organic Cotton Baby Blanket Eco-Friendly Purple Deer Pattern thinking the woodland theme would somehow calm my anxiety. Honestly? It's totally fine. It’s super soft and breathable because it's that same GOTS-certified organic cotton stuff as the whale one, but the purple completely clashed with the living room rug I eventually bought. It lives in the trunk of my car now as our designated emergency picnic-and-blowout blanket. Still incredibly soft, though!

When Leo actually arrived (facing the correct way, thank god, labor was literally half the time), I carried that posture obsession into his playtime. We wanted to make sure he built strong core muscles, so we got the Wooden Baby Gym | Panda Play Gym Set.

Mark complained for like twenty minutes about putting the wooden A-frame together—he's so dramatic, it’s literally just a few pegs—but I loved the minimalist monochrome vibe. It didn’t scream "plastic neon circus explosion" in my living room. Though, to be completely transparent, Leo spent his first two months mostly just glaring at the little wooden teepee and completely ignoring the cute crocheted panda. Babies are so weird. But keeping him active on his back and tummy felt like I was doing *something* proactive.

The messy end of the story

If you're reading this at 38 weeks, hyperventilating into a cup of decaf because your ultrasound tech said the baby is OP, please don't start aggressively doing pelvic tilts while crying and trying to memorize a dozen different labor positions all at once.

The truth is, bodies are unpredictable, and babies are going to do whatever they want.

With Maya, after three hours of me crawling around the hospital floor, doing side-lying releases with a peanut ball between my legs, and drinking my weight in apple juice... she flipped. She literally rotated at the very last second right before the pushing phase began. I actually felt it happen. It felt like a massive, weird internal somersault, and suddenly, the back pain just... vanished. Poof. Gone.

Ten minutes of pushing later, she was screaming on my chest, covered in vernix, and Mark was crying into his cold coffee.

It was messy, it was loud, and it absolutely didn't go according to the neat little birth plan I had printed out in a pale pink font. But we survived it. And you'll too.

Ready to prep your hospital bag or your nursery for whatever wild ride your baby has planned? Shop Kianao's sustainable, organic essentials here.

My Messy FAQ on Sunny Side Up Babies