Vaginal Breech Birth

I have just completed placement at SCBU (Special Care Baby Unit) as part of my course and whilst I was working the other night, there was a Code called over the PA at the hospital in delivery suite.

As all news, the word travelled fast... the reason, an unsuspected footling breech.

It was quite fascinating to observe the conversation and attitudes to this as I went about what I was doing. Like Mitch always says, 'opinions are like arseholes'... everyone has one (excuse the language!) Some were of the mind 'so what', others seem to spiral into a discussion and debate about what was going to happen and what should happen.

A midwife that I was working closely with and who trained in the UK, looked at me and I looked at her and we had to giggle. We had only shortly before that engaged in a conversation about breech presentation initiated by the fact that Jyrus was breech for most of my pregnancy.

It is an example of the fear that I have seen nearly everyday I have worked within the hospital system. Somehow and somewhere along the line, this variation of normal has become abnormal and in this case, an emergency. You would think that people would work the logic and realise that there is a possibility that a baby may opt to enter this world bum first if it chooses and in that see it as normal... who created the fear that has resulted in the obviously normal occurrence becoming an emergency? And more, why do midwives and obstetricians continue to treat it as such?

Is it just because the law percentages, statistics and averages suggests that breech only occurs in 4% of all pregnancies that we freak out and deviate from the natural birth process? I have to question the studies that have been done and their suggestion that planned caesarean for breech presentation reduces infant mortality. If vaginal breech are no longer treated as normal, it figures that the amount of care providers experienced in vaginal breech on the verge of being non-existent and to add to this, how do we define experience particularly in relation to the hands-on/hands-off debate? Who defines experience?

It also says a lot about the 'birth industry' (excuse my choice of words but to me it sometimes feels like this) that we can base policy and protocol on one study alone, depriving women from having a choice... because that is truly what it comes down to. Regardless of whether statistically or by opinion breech birth results in greater complications or risk, why has it become someone elses decision to surgically abuse women?