ABSTRACT
There appears nothing in childbirth as infinitely controversial in terms of how to do it, whether to do it, who should do it, and how to study it, as breech. This chapter reviews some of the historical fallacies that have developed around breech birth and describes how three teams on three continents came to the same conclusions in different ways: that a return to the normal physiology of birth is the key to facing up to the demons and overcoming the now-global fear of the vaginal breech. It explores the stories of what has been done to reclaim and redefine breech birth in Ottawa, Canada; Frankfurt, Germany; and Newcastle and Sydney, Australia. Many ancient and intuitive ways of doing things, such as having a continuous support person during labor and movement or upright positions during labor have been discounted by the medical world, only to be proven by science to be vital processes for normal, physiologic birth.
