Saturday, July 04, 2009

Heads Up! Study on Breech Pregnancy and Birth

If you gave birth to a breech baby, or if your baby was breech at some point during pregnancy, we would like to invite you to participate in a research study. Please share this announcement with others who might be interested in participating.

Research goals:
Breech research is often aimed towards health care providers and tends to focus on maternal and fetal health outcomes. Our research explores women’s experiences and feelings about carrying a breech baby; their decision-making process when discovering that their baby was breech; their care providers' recommendations and protocols for breech birth; and the birth options available to them, from vaginal breech birth to elective cesarean section. We will present the results at the Second International Breech Conference in Ottawa. We also hope to submit an article to a peer-reviewed journal. Participation is confidential.

Who can participate:
All North American women who have had breech pregnancies or births are invited participate in an essay-response survey, which takes approximately 15-30 minutes to complete. We are interested in participants who had breech pregnancies (breech babies who turned head-down before birth). We would also like to hear from women who have given birth to breech babies, whether vaginally or by cesarean section; with midwives, physicians, or unassisted; at home, in a birth center or in a hospital. We welcome input from both singleton and multiple (twin, triplet, etc) breech pregnancies and births.

How to Participate:
To take the survey, please visit the Breech Pregnancy and Birth Survey.

About the researchers:
Dr. Rixa Freeze has a PhD in American Studies and focuses on childbirth and maternity care. She blogs at Stand and Deliver. Julie Searcy is a PhD candidate at Indiana University with interest in the cultural discourse around birth.

Questions?
Please contact us at breechbirth.study@gmail.com.

10 comments:

  1. May I copy the text of this post to my blog? Or would you just prefer a link?

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  2. Feel free to copy & paste. I want to get the word out to as many people as possible.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've sent it out to the women I know who have given birth breech and also the midwives I know that support breech birth.

    Thanks for doing this, Rixa.
    Gloria Lemay in vancouver

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  4. I also started distributing to my friends that had breeches in North America.

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  5. Too bad this is only open to those in North America! I love sharing the positive breech birth experience I had with my girl. I want all pregnant women to know that it is possible to have an unmedicated natural breech birth!

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  6. We are actually open to receiving comments from women outside NA, as long as you indicate where you're from on the question that asks state/province of origin. We want to be able to accurately analyze our results geographically. Most likely we'll focus just on North America for the conference presentation, but in the future we'd like to look at breech experiences in Australia, the UK, New Zealand, etc.

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  7. I've sent several women over here, too.

    You may consider putting a widget on your sidebar with a link to this post and/or to the survey!

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  8. So funny Rixa, I got like 30 emails about this but had already seen it and responded since you're in my Google reader. They all immediately thought of me BECAUSE I'M THE ONLY ONE THEY'VE EVER KNOWN TO HAVE A VAGINAL BREECH.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Rixa,

    Can older women (with breech births of 20-30 years ago) be part of this study, or are you focusing on only current (within the past 5 years or so) obstetric climate?

    Someone responded on my blog wondering if she qualified, since her birth was so long ago.

    Thanks,
    Kathy

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  10. We didn't put a time restriction on our surveys. If a participant had a breech birth a long time ago, we would like for them to indicate in some place on the survey when it took place.

    ReplyDelete

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