Gentle Methods to PREVENT & TURN a Breech Baby

Gentle Methods to PREVENT & TURN a Breech Baby

Interview with Dr. Daoshing Ni and Dr. Jessica Chen, by Allie Chee

 Just the word “breech” can strike fear in pregnant women—and rightfully so.

 In the U.S. hospital environment, a breech presentation would “almost certainly mean a cesarean section, considered major abdominal surgery that generally leads to longer hospital stays, longer recovery and, like all surgery, the risk of complications[1]”—and loss of any hope of a natural childbirth experience.

In the case of home birth with a midwife, some midwives will deliver breech babies and some won’t. World-acclaimed midwife, birth educator and activist Ina May Gaskin said in one of her lectures, “At first, we brought breech pregnancies to the hospital, but we found after a while that we could deliver them here just fine. Footling breeches, which are thought to be the most difficult, in our experience, they often just slid right out.”[2]

However, today more than 90% of breech babies are born by Caesarean [2]. A woman will be hard-pressed to find a provider who will happily encourage a vaginal birth with a breech presentation and she will likely find herself in the OR on her big day.

But for any woman wanting to avoid that scenario—great news!

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) offers an extremely gentle, painless procedure with a high success rate for turning breech babies.  Further, TCM offers suggestions and ideas for how to avoid a breech presentation in the first place.

To find out more, I interviewed two doctors considered top in the field:

NO FEAR of BREECH - The New Mother Cover Story

NO FEAR of BREECH

 The New Mother book cover is based on the image of a woman approximately 32 weeks pregnant—me. When working on design ideas for the cover, the production team asked me to send a photo of myself pregnant, and that ended up being the inspiration for the cover.

But that’s not where the inspiration stopped.  In other words, it’s not a literal image.

New Mother Cover Design

We don’t see an umbilical cord; there’s no placenta in sight; and the baby, rather than in the ideal position for birth, is “cradled” in the mother’s arm and looking straight at the reader—smiling!

If the baby had been presented exactly as she was positioned at the time, she would have been head-down, nestled in the pelvic girdle, and the reader would have a lovely view of her back and bum, or maybe her curled legs and feet. That could be important for a medical journal, but the artist had an intention with her cover design.  She wanted the baby to interact with the reader—to say: I’m a participant, aware and involved.

I loved the idea and the image, and the idea that the baby was “breech” never crossed my mind.  After a reader contacted me saying