Next month, I will be a Visiting Scholar at the University of British Columbia. This will include a workshop on my research and physiological breech birth practice, delivered alongside Andrew Kotaska, lead author of the Canadian breech guideline, and a highly respected obstetric and midwifery faculty.
Please share this information with any Canadian OBs and Residents who want to extend their skills to facilitate safe vaginal breech births. The course is accredited for MOC 3. Bookings can be made on-line.
After training with the Breech Birth Network, Isabelle Brabant gave us her feedback from her first training session teaching midwives in the far North of Canada:
Teaching Breech in Inukjuak
“I have to tell you a bit about Maternity up North. There are seven villages on the Hudson Bay Coast (just about 1200km long!). There’s a maternity service in three of the biggest villages: Salluit, Puvirnituq and Inukjuak. There is no road to get there, you can only go by plane or by cargo – if you have a couple of weeks to spare for the trip. The Inukjuak maternity services have around 40 births per year, and if a baby remains breech in the pregnancy they would offer an external cephalic version, but if unsuccessful the woman would be sent to services further south (to Montreal!) to have her baby – alongside the other approximately 15% of women who are referred for medical reasons. If ever a woman needs to be transferred in labour it takes no less than 8 hours as there is no plane in the village itself – yes 8 hours! In an undiagnosed breech situation the decision would be made to transfer, but the chances are that the baby would be born before transfer. This explains the interest and need for Breech Birth training with the midwives being very interested in the training – of course they have a small volume of births, but the possibility remains of having an undiagnosed breech birth at any time.
Teaching Breech in Inukjuak
The training was given to a small group of enthusiastic midwives in Inukjuak, where we started the day with what is normal for Breech which the midwives enjoyed alongside teaching essential skills and manoeuvres. I will be delivering this training three times to Quebec midwives in May and June.”
There are three more training sessions planned in Canada throughout May and June and the details are as follows:
6th May 2019: MdN de l’Estrie, Sherbrooke
31st May 2019: MdN Mimosa, Lévis
13th June 2019: Montréal (lieu à déterminer selon la taille du groupe)
A picture of my lovely Innukshuk, given to me by Kay Guruswami of Kensington Midwives in Ontario, as a symbol of what we are trying to do together: lead the way forward for breech. Thanks Kay ❤️
