breech

[mizznicole]

Why does breech = auto cesarean in this country?

[QuestionGal]

b/c the vast majority of dr's are not taught how to deliver a breech baby. They aren't taught how in medical school and the few OB's (all older) who know how are aging out of the system. The knowledge of HOW to assist in a breech delivery is being lost.
I'm sure there is a concern on the part of the hospital/insurance companies etc about possible complications and the liability associated with vaginal breech births.

[sanguine_speed]

Because a faulty study called the Term Breech Trial convinced everyone that vaginal breech birth was dangers for a long time. When it was finally proven invalid, few doctors retained breech catching skills.

And it's never automatic. Women can say no, even though there is a compeling reason to agree to a c-section, which is mainly that doctors can cause more harm when they don't know how to keep their hands off.

I refused a c-section for my breech a few years ago.

[MeepyCat]

It's not necessarily an automatic c-section - it depends where you are, how experienced the available medical professionals are in managing breech birth, and sometimes what kind of deal the hospital has cut with their liability insurance.

Breech vaginal deliveries involve a higher risk of umbilical cord prolapse, which can cause brain injury or death to the baby. Those are frightening outcomes, and one way to ameliorate the risk is to avoid the entire process and do a c-section. If it were me, and there were no doctor experienced in breech delivery (by which I do not mean a dozen or so births, I mean a hundred or so) available, I would prefer the c-section. I don't know that i would have said that *before* the c-section I actually had - I was truly terrified of abdominal surgery.

I do know that, were I to have a baby injured in the course of a breech delivery, given my family's resources and insurance, we would probably have no choice but to sue the hospital in the hopes of reaching a settlement large enough to allow us to care for that child.