This
is thanks to our new Qld MC branch committee member Helen Bremner.... we are on
a roll lately...
If you
are a Queenslander please respond with a letter to the editor [EMAIL PROTECTED]. We
need all the support we can get! This Molloy guy doesn't know what he's in for
by making comments like that. What a %&$*%*_(!
What
he failed to mention was that all the Term Breech Trial labours were medically
managed. Leilah McCracken critiqued the Hannah Study and said that
"All of the studied vaginal births were medically managed-
with a full 64.7%
of the women having their births induced or augmented with drugs, 46.3%
having epidurals, and 22.4% of the women having their membranes artificially
ruptured (AROM). It is no wonder that the women attempting vaginal births
had labor difficulties..."
of the women having their births induced or augmented with drugs, 46.3%
having epidurals, and 22.4% of the women having their membranes artificially
ruptured (AROM). It is no wonder that the women attempting vaginal births
had labor difficulties..."
Cheers,
Cas.
Courier Mail, 25 June, page 5
Doctors turn against natural births for breech babies
Leanne Edmistone Health Reporter
This healthy happy baby girl was born against the odds.
Stradbroke Island mum Julie Philips was looking forward to the natural birth of her fourth child when doctors discovered the baby was in breech presentation and told her she would need a caesarean delivery unless the baby turned.
Despite all attempts the baby did not turn and doctors at two Brisbane hospitals told Ms Phillips they would not attempt a natural delivery because of risks to her baby and for medico-legal reasons.
Distressed, Ms Philips enlisted the help of a midwife and at 2.20pm on Monday, after a 6 1/2 hour home birth, her yet-to-be-named daughter entered the world weighing a healthy 3798g.
"It was very easy, everything went very smoothly." she said yesterday, "She's a real chubby bubby, she looks like her brothers."
Ms Phillips's eldest son Namo, 6, was also a breech baby, but turned during labour and was delivered naturally, as were her three year old twins, Kiahn and Mali.
National Association of Specialist Gyneacologists and Obstetricians president Dr David Molloy said few doctors would perform a natural delivery of a breech baby and any parents pressuring doctors to do so were "selfish".
Dr Mollow said a recent international study was stopped after two years by a medical ethics committee because results overwhelmingly showed breech babies born naturally had double the risk of serious injury compared with caesarean breech births.
He said those results, in conjunction with the high medico-legal risk, had "effectively killed off vaginal breech delivery".
But Ms Phillips said she and the midwife weighed up her own good health, the ease of her previous labours and the baby being "in the best possible" breech position - bottom first with legs extended near the face, and decided to go ahead.
"It felt like the right thing to do, the midwife was very experienced and there were no (personal) health reasons not to....so we decided to have the baby naturally and I'm glad we did," she said.
Dr Molloy, whose eldest child was a caesarean breech birth, said the head was the largest body part and with a normal birth, it was quickly eivident if a caesarean was necessary.
He said because the head came last with a breech birth, there was a high risk it could become stuck and the umbilical cord could become squashed and cut oxygen to the brain, neck and jaw manipulation could result in bone breaks.
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