Welcome to the new
Understanding Birth Better
Curated by Betty-Anne Daviss RM, MA
Understanding Birth Better is your online resource for vaginal breech birth, and to learn more about birth in general.
Human Rights in Childbirth
Since 2006, Betty-Anne Daviss has placed a central focus on bringing back vaginal breech birth.
About us
What is the purpose of this site, why we wanted to create it and what our vision is for the future.
Research and Publications
Betty-Anne and her colleagues have been researching, gathering and publishing data, statistics and facts around Vaginal Breech Birth and about birth in general.
Breech Videos
Upright Position Breech Delivery
Although many women have agreed to have their births videoed for our teaching purposes, it took us some time before we were able to find a woman willing to have a video of her birth actually put up on the web to accompany the IJGO article, "Does breech delivery in an upright position instead of on the back improve outcomes and avoid cesareans?" published online Nov. 5, 2016. Threatened that we might have to use a video of a birth from Ottawa instead of from Frankfurt, Frank finally found a willing mother in Germany. When I received the video, I told him, "I like the socks." He said, "You can tell it's a midwife from the socks."
Podalic birth
One of my favourite centres in Ecuador is run by Diego Alarcon, a dear obstetrician who takes photos of the women who come to see him with every visit and then videos their birth. This is a video of a breech birth done there. They do ALL births in water now, but this was an early one: Note that the cord is around the baby's neck several times and causes no problems. In the Frankfurt data, the cord is around the neck, some part of the body or in a knot 18.6% of the time -- with only 1.8% of those babies being admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (and not necessarily admitted just because of the cord.) Also note that this obstetrician uses a version of what I have named the "Frank nudge," i.e., bending the shoulders slightly back so that the head will flex as it emerges. He did not learn it from Frankfurt; it was an intuitive response to facilitating the baby coming out. He keeps the baby far too long in his arms, instead of giving the baby to the mother, which I have told him already is so last century, but he is human, like anybody else.
