This 10 minute presentation on breech birth looks at how maternal position affects pelvic diameters and discusses the influence midwives and medical practitioners have on position during birth. Previous posts (The obstetric bed: resistance in action and Active breech birth: … Continue reading
Tag Archives: labour
In the last three decades, women in New Zealand, as in the rest of the Western world, have experienced escalating levels of intervention during childbirth and a declining ‘normal’ birth rate – the latter being recorded as 65.0% of all … Continue reading
Active birth is taken as a given during birth at home. Women rarely choose to birth on a bed; rather they walk, crouch, rest on hands and knees, and sway and rock their babies out. This need to move in … Continue reading
In March 2006 I attended the first international Breech Birth Conference in Vancouver, Canada, which gathered together midwives, medical practitioners and researchers to discuss such issues as research, safety and techniques used during vaginal breech birth. Presenters came from eight … Continue reading
This post was originally published in Birthspirit Midwifery Journal 2009; 1: 13-19. Updated and revised 3 March 2014 Using deep warm baths in labour is a common strategy that many home birth midwives have used for at least three decades … Continue reading
In this post, originally published in Birthspirit Midwifery Journal 2010; 5: 19-22, Avon Lookmire, now a registered midwife, discusses how the current ‘stages of labour’ do not reflect women’s experiences of labour, and she shares her ideas of how the … Continue reading
Originally published in Essentially MIDIRS 2011; 2(9): 47-49. Revised As I compiled the statistics of my home birth practice covering a 22 year period many of the individual instances of how my knowing developed became definable – the watershed moments … Continue reading
Originally published in Birthspirit Midwifery Journal 2009; 4: 43-46. Revised Bedbirthing has predominated in Western countries reputedly since it gained acceptance after Louis XIV’s mistresses birthed in bed; the king covertly watched from behind a curtain Glasscheib (1963, p. 91). … Continue reading