With all the hoohah in the news and on these boards about Caesareans, I wondered what other Mners would feel about having a vaginal delivery with a breech baby?
I faced this with dd2 who was discovered to be breech at 36 weeks. I had a very balanced and sane discussion with a consultant who said that I was potentially a good candidate for vaginal breech birth, since I'm 6 ft tall and previously delivered two big (9lb+) babies without any problems. BUT he warned me, with commendable honesty, that vaginal breech births were becoming so rare that midwives and doctors were losing the skills to carry them out successfully and that other consultants would be much more likely to push me towards a CS.
In the event, I had a successful ECV (turning the baby). Interestingly, the doctor who carried this out was Dutch and said that in Holland the protocol for breech births is to go for normal labour in the first instance, going straight to CS only if things don't progress straightforwardly. Presumably Dutch women and babies aren't so different to British ones, and their Drs read the same medical journals as ours, so the diffference must be primarily cultural.
For people who'd be happy with a Caesarian, this must be a total no-brainer, but there must be others like me who feel strongly that they'd prefer to avoid a CS if at all sensible. What would you have done?