This was in the Washington Post this week and I thought it would be nice to show that there are established professionals that have good advice on how to keep babies being delivered by Caesarean in western hospitals. Live and learn :)

Doctors are losing the ability to manipulate breech babies before they are born

Tuesday, January 12, 2010


Special deliveries


As a former labor and delivery nurse, I was able to attend several breech births at Georgetown University Hospital ["Doctors debate how to deliver breech babies," Jan. 5]. There are more ways breech babies can be turned than were described in the article. The art and skill of external cephalic versions, or ECVs [in which a doctor manipulates the fetus from outside], are being lost, as fewer physicians are doing them, and rising OB-GYNs are not learning how to do them. An ECV can be done in a controlled hospital setting where a mom can then be induced and deliver vaginally, or wait for labor to begin on its own.

As the mother of two breech children, I had one external cephalic version performed by a midwife and an OB-GYN, and went into labor naturally two days later. For my second pregnancy, I diligently practiced Ina May Gaskin's technique of spending time upside down in a swimming pool. (Gaskin is a famous midwife and the author of "Spiritual Midwifery.") Being inverted shifts the baby and creates the space it may need to move a hand or a foot to turn around. After a session of about 20 handstands in a pool, my daughter turned on the way home from the pool and I went into labor two days later.


Lois Wessel