Thursday, October 15, 2009

Heads up!

Having a fantastic time at the International Breech Conference in Ottawa! It's late and I really need to get to bed but here are some of the highlights of the day:

  • Meeting Lisa Barrett, a Welsh midwife currently practicing in Australia. I was sad to miss her presentation because it was full by time I got to the sign-up table. She had red striped socks, flowery Birkinstocks, pale purple capris, and was doing quite well despite her luggage being sent to Toronto
  • British midwife Jane Evan saying "The pelvic floor is a lovely, beautiful valley." 
  • Betty-Anne Daviss and her gigantic pelvis and the Homer Simpson doll and the dry ice coming out of the statue's head (one of those "you needed to be there" moments)
  • Old-time OB from Colorado, Michael Hall, using said pelvis and Homer Simpson doll to demonstrate vaginal breech birth techniques. 
  • All the OBs talking excitedly about this amazing new breech technique, how it just makes so much sense, how they really want to start doing it. What is it? Birthing on hands & knees. (More later on how it took a German OB doing this in a hospital setting to finally make a blip on the obstetrical radar--even though midwives have been doing this, and writing about this, for a while). But I'm loving the buzz.
  • Getting oohs and aahs from passers-by over Dio in the MamaPoncho
More later, must get some sleep! 

9 comments:

  1. I'm so jealous! I hope you're taking good notes...is there any word if they're audiotaping the sessions?????

    ReplyDelete
  2. Please oh please- are American doctors getting on board with wanting to do breech delivery as well? I know it's an International conference. I just hope that things start to change!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. birthing on hands & knees ROCKS! It was a very restful position and I didn't have to push at all. My body did everything :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Had my last two babies on my hands and knees. Once I got in that position both babies began to move down and I delivered with much less pain.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "The pelvic floor is a lovely, beautiful valley."

    I love that! Were there any OB's from BC? I'd love to scratch that worry off my list, having a breech birth with a huge episiotomy isn't much better than a c-section, I'd much rather give birth on hands and knees.

    http://danandkimberlytaylor.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  6. I hope they catch on to vaginal breech birth! That is good news. But yeah, wish they would humbly look at the midwives...

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm LOLing at the revolutionary "new" idea of birthing on hands and knees. I guess it does seem like a radical idea from their POV...

    I loved being on hands and knees during my labor, I would have gladly stayed that way forever, but the deep squat was what Jacob needed to get born. Hands and knees was so comfortable though. I could just flop down on my mountain of pillows and pretend to be asleep. Mmmm.

    ReplyDelete
  8. When a woman has an epidural and an I.V. pitocin drip running, an all-4s vaginal breech birth is well nigh impossible. There's a real and present danger of the woman falling over.

    In order for hospital personnel to have safe breech births (as opposed to breech extractions), they must have birthing women who will give birth without medication of any kind. Then, they instinctively get on all 4's and there's a greater likelihood the baby will come out in good shape.

    I worry that breech practitioners will turn into superheroes when, really, it's the woman's journey and her glory when giving birth.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Its not the most important part to respond to, but I'd love to see a picture with you, Dio and the mama Poncho.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...