Breech Babies Club

A perspective on breech water birth

By Maggie Banks, Birthspirit Midwifery Journal 2009; 3:15-19

“The use of deep water immersion with mal-presentation (read: breech) is contraindicated in hospital clinical guidelines on waterbirth, and the use of water is absent as a modality in vaginal breech birth guidelines. Embracing these, giving birth in water to a breech baby would be out of the question for some maternity providers. Yet others are very specific in seeing breech presentation as a positive indication for waterbirth because of the buoyancy afforded to the baby and umbilical cord, both of which are kept warm in the water until surfacing into the cooler air Ponette”

http://www.birthspirit.co.nz/a-toe-in-the-water-exploring-breech-waterbirth/

Recurrence of breech presentation in subsequent pregnancies

A question that comes up a lot is about recurrence of breech pregnancies. So here is some research carried out in New South Wales, Australia.

Overall occurrence of breeches for first pregnancies is shown as 4.2%,and this study shows that it increases to 9.9% in mums with one previous breech baby, and to 27.5% in mums with two previous breeches. Which still means that you are always more likely to have a head-first baby than another breech…

First pregnancy factors associated with subsequent breech presentation in a second pregnancy were placenta praevia, maternal diabetes, baby birthweight for gestational age, maternal age of 35 years or over and caesarean delivery.

Interestingly the overall rates for breech pregnancies decrease in subsequent pregnancies (from 4.2% for a first baby, to 2.2% for a second and 1.9% for a third), with an overall measured rate of 3.4%
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2883072/

Hands off that Breech! (by Mary Cronk)

“But what I want to discuss is not the necessary and proper use of surgery to deliver babies, but what I and many others consider unnecessary surgery, electively performed simply because of breech presentation. Performed because while we have good surgeons who can do a good CS, they, and we, have forgotten, that most breeches can safely be born vaginally. Many midwives have lost, or never been able to learn, the skills of how to assist a woman to give birth when the diagnosis is made “It’s a breech”. Though we know all about mechanisms and we have sat with enough women through enough labours to know when a labour is progressing well and one which is not.

I emphasise that I am not saying that all breeches can or should be born vaginally but then again, neither can all head-down babies. I have attended many breech births, and in my experience if the labour progresses well and spontaneously and by that I mean-spontaneous onset at or around term, contractions that come oftener, last longer, get stronger, a cervix that effaces and dilates, and a presenting part that descends through the pelvis, this baby will be born.”

~Mary Cronk MBE

AIMS Journal, 2005, Vol 17 No 1

https://www.facebook.com/notes/beautiful-birth/hands-off-that-breech-by-mary-cronk/240459222667522