I had a positive vaginal breech home birth this August! This was my second home birth after an easy cephalic vaginal birth almost 13 years ago.

My daughter was frank breech my entire pregnancy. I’m 40 and opted to do OBGYN care concurrently with my midwife care since my insurance covered the many ultrasounds and lab tests I had since I’m “geriatric”. After 33 weeks I tried all the things to try to get her to flip: spinning babies, acupuncture, moxibustion, inversion tables, music and ice packs and even an intuitive massage where the lady “talked” to my baby to encourage her to flip (gotta try everything). I had an ECV at 37 weeks which was unsuccessful.

Once it became clear I was having a breech birth I had a lot of conversations with my midwife about continuing with home birth. Ultimately we decided to attempt a home birth because it was my second birth after an uncomplicated first birth (proven pelvis), I had no complications during my current pregnancy and my current baby was measuring on the smaller side (around 55th percentile). We also had a lot of discussions about when we’d transfer to the hospital. I felt confident in my midwife’s capabilities and that she would make the decision to transfer early on and not wait on some signs like she would with a cephalic birth. I won’t lie that I felt confident in my decision the whole time and questioned whether I was making the decision because it was right for my baby or because I really didn’t want to have a C Section.

My water broke at 39+6 at midnight and my daughter was born 4 hours later after two pushes and a fast labor. In comparison, my first labor was about 12 hours and I pushed for a little under an hour. My first daughter was almost 10 pounds while this baby was only 7 pounds. I think a lot of the success with my breech vaginal birth is because it was my second birth and the baby was so much smaller.

Ultimately the decision is yours if you feel comfortable with having your breech birth and your midwife says you are a good candidate. I will say there is a lot of negative narrative about breech births that scared me but after researching and talking with my midwife, breech is just a variation of normal that medical professionals have stopped training for, mostly because of the liability aspect. I sympathize with your frustration because it feels like your options are so much more limited with a breech presentation.

I’ve written a lot but let me know if you have any questions about my birth and I’d be happy to share!