Breech Birth Video

I came across this video today and I have to share it. In it, a baby is born in footling breech position. It is not a particularly quick birth. What makes it amazing is how well you can see how baby is active in the birth process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD5939e5PZ8&NR=1

I'm not sure that I will be doing breech births at home, well, ever. Not that I might not be singing an entirely different tune at some point in the future, but my intention in the meantime is not to plan breech births at home. They are riskier, it's true, which doesn't mean that they should never be done, just that new-minted-midwife me isn't going to be the one doing them. How difficult this choice is may make these births more triumphant when they're successful (which I'm totally happy about, I'm just not sure I'm the practitioner that can help with that). In the meantime, living semi-vicariously through the videos and others' accounts, knowing full well that I don't yet have the knowledge or the patience to be as hands-off as the midwife in this video is. I want this kind of birth to be an option for women. Right now, the standard is c-section for those women whose babies are in heads-up position at term, and it is darned hard to get any other kind of birth without splitting entirely with the medical community. Thank goodness for trained practitioners (of any sort) who know their stuff and are willing to attend vaginal breech births. I just wish there were more of them out there. Maybe someday I'll be one of them.