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Breech Birth, Woman Wise.
Maggie Banks, 1998 Birth Spirit Books, 15 Te Awa Rd., RD 3, Hamilton, New Zealand
Order the book at BirthInternational.com
Active Breech
Birth: the point of least resistance
by Maggie Banks. In March 2006, I attended the first
international
Breech Birth Conference in Vancouver, Canada which
gathered together
midwives, medical practitioners and researchers to discuss
such
issues as research, safety and techniques used during
vaginal breech
birth ... (full
article in PDF format) from a list on BirthSpirit.
Commentary on The Hannah Breech Trial by Maggie Banks on Radical Midwives.

Breech Birth: What are my options by Jane Evans
Evans J., 2005 Breech Birth - What are my
options? Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services, Manor
Barn, Thurloxton, Taunton, Somerset, TA2 8RH
Buy at CAPERS bookstore.
From the Independent Midwives Association in the United Kingdom:
"Jane qualified as a midwife in 1976 and worked in the NHS for 20 years.
She was instrumental in raising homebirth rates, introducing waterbirth
and in developing a domino scheme in her local area of Hertfordshire.
Jane has become renowned for her experience in breech birth, twin birth
and VBAC. She has been a member of IMA since 1991."
Breech Birth. Benna
Waites, 2003 Free Association Books, 57 Warren Street,
London. W1T 5NR
Buy at Amazon
Medical Research
Many of the academic articles published on breech birth in the last decade have centered around the controversary following the Term Breech Trial, also known as the Hannah Trial.
Planned caesarean section versus planned vaginal birth
for breech presentation at term: a randomised multicentre trial. Term
Breech Trial Collaborative Group.Hannah
ME, Hannah
WJ, Hewson
SA, Hodnett
ED, Saigal
S, Willan
AR. Lancet. 2000 Oct 21;356(9239):1375-83.
Then two years later, the Hannah group came out with a reassuring finding:
Outcomes of children at 2 years after planned cesarean
birth versus planned vaginal birth for breech presentation at term: the
International Randomized Term Breech Trial. Whyte
H, Hannah
ME, Saigal
S, Hannah
WJ, Hewson
S, Amankwah
K, Cheng
M, Gafni
A, Guselle
P, Helewa
M, Hodnett
ED, Hutton
E, Kung
R, McKay
D, Ross
S, Willan
A; Term
Breech Trial Collaborative Group. Am J Obstet
Gynecol. 2004 Sep;191(3):864-71. Department of
Pediatrics, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Comment
in:
An excellent explanation of the weakness of the Term Breech Trial came in 2004 from physician Andrew Kotaska:
Inappropriate use of randomised trials to evaluate complex phenomena:
case study of vaginal breech delivery. Andrew Kotaska, senior registrar1 BMJ 2004;329:1039-1042 (30 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7473.1039 Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of
British Columbia, BC Women's Hospital, Vancouver, BC, V6H 3V5 Canada
Another rebuttal came from Dr. Marek Glezerman calling to withdraw the Hannah recommendations for universal cesarean for breech position:
Five years to the term breech trial: the rise and fall
of a
randomized controlled trial. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2006 Jan;194(1):20-5. Glezerman
M. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology,
Wolfson Medical Center, The Helen Schneider Hospital for Women, Holon,
Israel.
Comment in:
There are more great research articles, be sure to note if the articles and information you find on the web are research-based. Then read the research. Some research doesn't support the conclusions that the researchers make at the end of their published articles. Politics are in the birthing room. I'm not exempt, either. I have my opinion, too. Then, we have to separate the outcomes claimed for breech births where mother's are on their backs, and the midwife or physician extracts the baby compared to women on hands and knees with a "hands-off-the-breech" approach.
I was up putting this list on Spinning Babies as I waited for a midwife to call after her first breech catch. She and I had recently spent a day going over the Breech Update information I brought back to Minnesota after attending the Ottawa Breech conference last year. She had wanted to help the baby bend his knees, release his feet, etc. and every time she remembered me telling her, "hands off the breech, hands off the breech."
Mom and baby were tucked in, nursing, while she told me the story on her drive home. Now, I've got to go to bed, too.
Breech Guidelines
Vaginal or caesarean delivery? How research has turned breech birth
around Royal
College of Midwives-Evidence-Based Midwifery, Sept, 2008
by Mary Steen,Carol
Kingdon
I like this article because it sites Mary Cronk's breech protocols at the end. Very nice. Please take Mary Cronk's life-saving instruction to heart and hand:
"Independent midwife Mary Cronk has suggested that if the labour
progresses spontaneously, (that is, the contractions come often, last
longer, get stronger, the cervix effaces and dilates, and the breech
descends through the pelvis), the baby will be born. If this does not
happen there is no place for augmentation, that is, trying to push the
baby through the pelvis with contractions driven by oxytocic drugs. Nor
is there any place for trying to pull breeches through the pelvis with
managed breech extractions. Labours that do not progress are telling us
that the baby should be born by CS (Cronk, 1998). The RCOG has
recommended that a CS should be considered if there is a delay in the
descent of the breech at any stage in the second stage of labour (RCOG,
2006)."
Here are the Canadian Guidelines for Breech Birth. These are from the SOGC, and may differ from the guidelines of an experienced homebirth midwife who has done many breeches. See the quote above.
Vaginal Breech Delivery Guideline; The time has come. By Andre' B. Lalonde, Executive Vice-President of the Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecololgists of Canada.
Breech Birth stories on the web (please submit your own!)
While these are lovely stories, Spinning Babies does not link to them as examples of how to catch a breech. I'm hoping for photos of a mother in a knee-elbow (hands and knees) position with no one touching the baby. If you have the right to share such photos, I'd love to link to your site/blog. If you'd give me permission to use them in a Breech Update class for midwives, I'd love that, too, but I won't expect that from you, I'll just let it be an extra blessing if it comes my way.
A hands-off footling breech birth with Lisa Barrett Australian Midwife. Give it time to load and suddenly you will see the little video screen on Lisa's blog.
Stories at the Coalition for Breech Birth website.
BirthingWay.com Footling Breech story with photos.
Sebastian's Breech Birth. His mother said no to a version and no to a cesarean and went home to have her baby. Her skilled midwife did a hands-on breech delivery reflecting the influence of medical practice on home birth midwifery rather than the hands-and-knees, hands-off approach promoted here at Spinning Babies. Still, this a sweet birth story.
More breech births on Birth Love
A footling breech before the midwives could arrive, the lovely story of Bruno's birth.
A happy hospital birth story of a frank breech baby in the UK. James' Breech birth.
A happy hospital birth story of a frank breech baby in the US (Denver) with mom in the OR and forceps used (perhaps as a routine gesture?). Natalie's breech birthAm J Obstet Gynecol. 2004 Sep;191(3):864-71. |