Want to see something amazing? Birthing a footling breech

[Tobily]

Wow - those pictures are just incredible.

Would be interesting to know if the footling presentation was a surprise to the midwives ... I'll assume it was. Goes to show what a birthing woman and midwives can achieve when there's no hospital or Ob involved! An Ob would've booked her in for a C-section at 38wks ... well, at least that's what happened to my sister last year as her bub was a footling breech.

Just looking at that again more closely (I was at work when I found it...lol) the baby had the cord around it's neck twice as well.

Yep Andie, in an OB managed pregnancy this would have been a scheduled c/s at 38 weeks for sure. Let alone the nuchal cord! I'm not sure whether the midwives knew it was a footling breech or not but it wouldn't surprise me if they did, and they certainly would have palpated that it was breech in some form. Interestingly, midwifery training (and I note that the midwife in the pictures is old school) teaches that breech presentations are a variation of normal.

Interesting that bubs took a while coming out then mum flexed her pelvis and out she/he came - does that mean breech births are better totally upright or was she on all fours to slow it down (safer??). Interesting about the cord re-filling too.

Breech births need to be active births - the mother needs to be free to move into positions that will birth her baby safely and she will do that instinctively if supported to do so. This is one reason why breech vaginal birth has become more risky in hospitals - the perception of increased risk because the baby is breech means that the temptation to monitor and control the labour is huge - and monitoring and control means less mobility for the mother. So it increases the risk, it doesn't minimise or control it even though at face value it would appear to.

I was thinking.. oh are they going to catch the baby.. but it was all how it was meant to go I suppose lol

In traditional midwifery training the rule for breech births is "hands off the breech!". Until the umbilicus is birthed, touching the baby stimulates it to start breathing - and you don't want the baby to start breathing before its head is born. So you have to leave it alone. You can see in the photos how the midwife doesn't touch the baby at all until the belly is out. Again, completely at odds with the medical philosophy of managing and intervening, and again another contributing factor to the risk of birthing a breech in a situation where your birth attendants aren't trained in breech vaginal birth.

Breech birth is safe when you're attended by someone who understands it as a physiological process. Obstetricians are generally not trained in breech birth, which is why most women with a breech baby will be counselled to elect a caesarean. Not because it's necessarily safer for you or your baby - but because it's safer for the person attending your birth.