Segulah (also written segula; plural segulot) literally means a "remedy" or "protection" in Hebrew. The term is pronounced suh-goo-luh.
In Judaism, a segulah is viewed as an action that will lead to a change in one's luck, fortune, or destiny.
In Judaism, there is a segulah for just about everything under the sun. Having children, overcoming bad luck or illness, making more money, finding a job, picking out the right religious garments ... you get the idea.
With a breech baby, there are a bunch of different things that you can do to hopefully turn the baby, the most common and prominent being the typical ones: check your mezuzot (the parchments placed on the doorposts of the home) to make sure they're still viable and not upside down and make sure your seforim (books) aren't upside down.
The funny thing is, we should have checked our mezuzot before we even moved into the house, because after the balagan of buying the house and having some interesting challenges securing a mortgage, we came to find out that the mezuzah on the front door of the house (the guy who owned it was Jewish) was not only no longer usable, but it was also upside down. Yikes.
So we checked the books, or at least, we thought we'd checked the books. And everything was upright and accounted for. Then, a Chabad friend mentioned to me that they did the same only to discover later that the slipcover on a book had been right-side up while the book was upside down, so I told Mr. T we needed to check them again.
Lo and behold, he discovered that three of the machzorim (prayer book for special Jewish holidays) from his grandmother were upside down in a bookcase that is mostly filled with non-Jewish books. BAM!
Will the baby magically turn now before my version procedure on Friday where we go to the hospital and a trained physician attempts to turn the baby from the outside? I sure hope so. Everything I've read and heard about the procedure has me on pins and needles, terrified at the outcomes (or non-outcomes) and excruciating pain.
But after last time, I really, really really really don't want to have to go through another c-section and the recovery process. I just don't think that I can take it.
In the meantime, I'm hauling tuches to get work in order so that when this baby does show up (and for some weird reason I keep getting the feeling that The Blob will be early and that this is going to also be a hard birth), that my coworkers are good to go and not left in the dark. It's a huge undertaking of writing, scheduling, curating ... and my brain is totally mush right now.
Babies do weird things to your brain, your heart, your body. I can't get over how important the role of women, and mothers specifically, is, and how little I understood went into it before undertaking this journey first with Asher and now with The Blob. I also still can't get over how little respect and consideration is paid to mothers around the world, but specifically in the United States.