Justifying to a seven-year-old Anubis why I’m going to Germany for my week off – and missing mothers’ day, helped crystallise objectives and motivation for this busman’s holiday* (*a form of recreation that involves doing the same thing that one does at work). “I’m going to see some babies be born bottom-first.” “Don’t you see that […]
Simulations in Christchurch, NZ, October 2017 – photo by Tina Hewitt
To kick off the new year, Breech Birth Network are providing a study day in Norwich on 14 January 2017. If you’ve been wanting to encourage your obstetric colleagues or trainees to attend training, this will hit the spot. Our teaching team includes Dr Anke Reitter, FRCOG, Shawn Walker, RM, Victoria Cochrane, RM, and Mr Eamonn Breslin, MRCOG. Send your colleagues the link to our Eventbrite booking page, with a personal invitation! Or download a poster for your work environment.
This study day for obstetricians, midwives, paramedics and students will provide an engaging and interactive update on professional skills to facilitate physiological breech births, planned or unexpected. The study day would be especially useful for clinical skills teachers who want to include physiological breech methods in professional skills updates or student lessons, due to access to resources after the workshop. The focus is on collaborative, multi-professional working to improve the safety of vaginal breech birth using the skills of all maternity care professionals.
Training will include:
* A research update given by leading researchers in the field, including Dr Anke Reitter, FRCOG, IBCLC of Frankfurt
* Thorough theoretical and hands-on explanations of how breech babies journey through the maternal pelvis in a completely spontaneous birth (the breech mechanisms), enabling you to distinguish between normal progress and dystocia
* Hands-on simulation of complicated breech births and resolutions, using narratives and videos of real breech complications, to enable you to practice problem-solving in real time
* Models of breech care that work within modern maternity services
* An accompanying booklet containing handout versions of all of the slides and resources used in the training
* One year’s access to the on-line learning space following the training, to continue viewing and reflecting on birth videos (one per month) in a secure forum, and resources for sharing teaching with professionals in your practice community
* Lunch and refreshments
Registration begins at 8:30 for a 9:00 start
Hosted by the University of East Anglia University Midwifery Society. Profits from the study day will benefit the UEA Midwifery Society annual charity, the Orchid Project. See here for directions to Norwich from further afield.
Feedback from study days in Christchurch & Auckland, October 2016:
My main concern was lack of training of staff leading them to believe that breech birth is an emergency. Our RMOs and MWs loved the day and I think feel more empowered. — SMO (Consultant Obstetrician, Senior Medical Officer)
Thank you so much, this has been the best study day ever! — Midwife
Information was clear and concise and well presented. Myths dispelled and physiological VBB and when to intervene very clearly explained. Methods to resolve when there are issues during delivery explained and demonstrated. Clear examples given with supporting video and photographs. Extremely valuable. — RMO (Registered Medical Officer)
Honest, real explanations. How to intervene in a timely manner as opposed to be hands off the breech. — Midwife
Thank you for a brilliant day of teaching and training. You covered a lot of material not taught as part of our training and it has been valuable. — RMO
Learning about manoeuvres to use in upright position, eg. shoulder press; visual components have been amazing, the broken down physiology of a breech birth. — Midwife
Facilitators:
Dr Anke Reitter, FRCOG, IBCLC, is the lead Consultant Obstetrician and Fetal-Maternal Medicine Specialist at Krankenhaus Sachsenhausen, Frankfurt am Main. Although originally from Germany, she worked in India and the United States during her medical studies, and in England (including Liverpool) for 4 years during her obstetric training. After returning to Germany, she specialised in perinatal medicine. Prior to her move to Krankenhaus Sachsenhausen, where she initiated a new breech care pathway in a unit which had not supported breech births for years, Reitter practiced in the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department at the University Hospital Frankfurt. A large observational study of the hands/knees breech births in Frankfurt is due to be published soon in the FIGO journal. Her special interests lie in breech, multiple pregnancies, high risk pregnancies and prenatal ultrasound. She is an internationally known speaker, teacher and researcher in several areas, but especially breech birth.
Shawn Walker, RM, MA is a UK midwife and PhD candidate researcher who studies how professionals learn skills to safely facilitate breech births. Clinically, she has worked in all midwifery settings – labour wards, freestanding and alongside birth centres, and home births. She led the development of a breech clinic pathway at the James Paget University Hospital (2012-2014), where she worked as a Breech Specialist Midwife. Her research focus on breech birth is part of a wider interest in complex normality – working with obstetric colleagues to enable women at moderate and high risk to birth and bond physiologically where possible. She currently works as a bank midwife at the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, in addition to periodic teaching, consultancy and breech support across the UK and internationally.
Victoria Cochrane, RM, MSc is the Consultant Midwife for Normality at the Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust. RM, MSc, Supervisor of Midwives. The majority of her clinical career has been working in and developing caseload and continuity models for women and their families in the community. She is deeply passionate about working with colleagues to support women making pregnancy and birth choices that sit outside of routine guidance. In her current role she works to support normality for women in all aspects of pregnancy and birth. Breech presentation became a special interest in 2009 when her daughter spent a few weeks in that position at the end of pregnancy; it’s amazing what one can learn in a short space of time when faced with challenging choices. This led to carrying out a cross-site service evaluation of the management of undiagnosed breech for her MSc dissertation.
References
Reitter, A., Daviss, B.-A., Bisits, A., Schollenberger, A., Vogl, T., Herrmann, E., Louwen, F., Zangos, S., 2014. Does pregnancy and/or shifting positions create more room in a woman’s pelvis?Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. 211, 662.e1-662.e9.
Walker, S., Scamell, M., Parker, P., 2016. Standards for maternity care professionals attending planned upright breech births: A Delphi study. Midwifery 34, 7–14.
Walker, S., Scamell, M., Parker, P., 2016. Principles of physiological breech birth practice: a Delphi study. Midwifery 43, 1-6. FREE DOWNLOAD until 13 December.
Walker S, Cochrane V (2015) Unexpected breech: what can midwives do? The Practising Midwife, 18(10): 26-29 Click here to download – PDF.
When I talk about ‘upright breech birth,’ I mean a birth where the woman is encouraged to be upright and active throughout her labour and able to assume the position of her choice for the birth. This is in contrast to the classic lithotomy position, in which the woman is flat on her back, usually with legs in stirrups. Upright includes all fours, kneeling, standing, sitting on a birth stool, lying on her side if her body (and not her attendant) tells her to, etc. Birth position is not a static concept. The defining feature of upright breech birth is the woman’s ability to follow her birthing instincts, to move spontaneously in order to assist the birth. However, many providers have developed preferences, having observed women birth successfully in a variety of positions.
Many advantages have been claimed for upright positioning. But if supporting this ideal is to become a reality, we need two things. Firstly, we need evidence regarding the outcomes for breech births managed in non-lithotomy positions. And we need skills in managing complications which occur when women are in non-lithotomy positions.
A step forward for the evidence occurred this week with the publication of research covering 11 years of experience at a large metropolitan teaching hospital in Australia (Foster et al 2014). This retrospective study, which used an intention-to-treat analysis, found much lower rates of complications than the Term Breech Trial, in line with those achieved by the PREMODA group, concluding that in experienced centres, vaginal breech birth is a reasonable option. For me, the take home message coming from the increasing number of studies which show the same comparatively better results is less about the inherent safety of breech birth, and more about how fundamental the local experience level and organised team approach is to achieving optimal safety levels.
Although the article does not discuss birthing position, the correspondence author, Dr Andrew Bisits, is well known for supporting upright breech births using a birthing stool, and in many of the births in this series, the women would have remained upright and active (see also Kathleen Fahy’s description of spontaneous breech birth). Some evidence indicates that use of a birthing stool may shorten duration of labour (Swedish birth seat trial), and this would certainly be an advantage for a breech birth.
Another advantage to using a birthing stool is that health professionals who are comfortable with lithotomy manoeuvres do not have to make any major adjustments to their practice, aside from a willingness to get closer to the floor. The baby emerges facing the same way, the same signs of descent are observed, very similar manoeuvres are used to resolve a delay in progress. An obstetric bed can also be adjusted to mimic a birthing stool, but women have more ability to stand up and move spontaneously when their feet are planted on the ground.
Active Birth Labour Support Stool
A number of birthing stools are available in the UK. Active Birth Pools supply a model which is very similar to the Birthrite seat. A birthing stool is a good investment for a Trust. As one of my former obstetric colleagues put it, “If they are good for breech, they are probably pretty good for cephalic babies as well!” Indeed.
Midwives have long supported women to birth in upright positions (for example, Maggie Banks, Jane Evans and Mary Cronk are well-known midwifery authors about breech), but as the RCOG guidelines (2006) recommend lithotomy, supporting this in hospital settings has been difficult. However, around the world, obstetric departments are increasingly discovering the benefits of enabling women to be upright, especially in all fours, kneeling and standing positions. These include teams in Frankfurt (some statistics, some background), Salzburg, Ecuador (Parto podalico), Brazil (parto natural hospitalar pélvico, Parto Pélvico Existe Sim!, and of course various parts of the UK.
Facilitating this type of breech birth requires a change in perspective and an understanding of new manoeuvres to assist in the event of complications or delay. The sooner these alternatives are incorporated into national skills/drills training, the more women with breech babies will be able to follow their instincts to assist with securing the safest possible delivery for their babies.
Shawn